# Outlook for high-yield agriculture is not good. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853 "2015-10-27T06:21:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/41 "2015-10-29T05:21:53Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > So? What right do they have to inflict their condition upon their future children? Everyone, including the poor, has a right to have children. You, on the other hand, do not have any right to meddle in anyone else’s decision about whether to have children. > [@](#): > > Here is the actual text [UDHR](http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml). It says you have the rightt to have a family. No mention of numbers of family members or if conditions can’t be placed upon it. > [Denial Springs Eternal](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/10/01). You say that the UDHR says protects “the rightt [sic] to have a family”, but what it actually says is “the right to marry and to found a family.” Every single person who reads that knows perfectly well that it means the right to have children. Why embarrass yourself by pretending that it doesn’t mean what it plainly does mean? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/42 "2015-10-29T05:32:41Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Of course not - it’s an industry like any other. And as such, it benefits from constantly advancing technology. > > All of the agriculturalists I’ve known (including in my own period working on a farm) were very tech-savvy, constantly tinkering and innovating, and many of them had advanced college degrees in agriculture, engineering, botany and biology. There was nothing old-fashioned about what they did. Not that there is anything wrong with old-fashioned if it happens to be right. A friend of mine has spent the last 15 years working mostly on crop prediction and one of the things he’s been doing is check “old farmer’s wisdom” with modern, statistical methods: he sums up his results as “the old folks didn’t know statistics but they bloody well could count”. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/43 "2015-10-29T10:36:05Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yeah, why should anyone believe what you say about what damages the environment? You haven’t even defined what you mean by damage to the environment, much less provided any basis for your claims about what damages the environment. Sorry, I don’t argue with climate change deniers. > [@](#): > > Should every activity that damages the environment be stopped? Do you ever damage the environment? Yes, but I’m not suggesting that people currently alive should be killed to lower the population, am I? I’m saying that people should be limited in their breeding so that the numbers of people decrease over time. That will help the environment. It’s for our own good much like making someone wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/44 "2015-10-29T11:07:53Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > The funny thing is that your average subsistence farming family, ten kids and all, uses a fraction of the resources of one small American family. The earth can support a lot more poor people than rich people. > . Yeah, how many families of the developed world would be willing to live in a hut with no electricity and their only source of food and income being their little patch of ground and some goats? Are they willing to gather and burn cow poop as a heating source (which my ancestors did on a treeless prairie)? ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/45 "2015-10-29T11:32:12Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Everyone, including the poor, has a right to have children. You, on the other hand, do not have any right to meddle in anyone else’s decision about whether to have children. If I vote, I have the right to meddle. I could help elect people who will stop supporting people with my money who breed irresponsibly. > [@](#): > > You say that the UDHR says protects “the rightt [sic] to have a family”, but what it actually says is “the right to marry and to found a family.” Every single person who reads that knows perfectly well that it means the right to have children. Why embarrass yourself by pretending that it doesn’t mean what it plainly does mean? Have and Found mean the same to me. Let’s assume that means they can have kids (that is unless you say two married people who don’t have kids aren’t a family? Having kids ‘extends’ the family, they don’t make it). There is NO mention on the numbers of children or that they can’t be limited to certain numbers if warranted. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/46 "2015-10-29T11:44:00Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Somehow we hijacked the Canadian election thread after the election was over. I pointed out that using fossil resources for fertilizer isn’t sustainable, and got this in response. > If you didn’t insist on growing human population every generation, you wouldn’t have these problems. > > [Since now we’re way off-topic for a Canadian election thread, it continues here.] > > But hey, bitching about environmentalists, that’s sure to somehow magically help. :rolleyes: Well if you don’t have a solution, and I don’t, and no one does, we are going to need someone to come up with one, so we need to have more children so we have better odds at getting a solution. Children are the solution, we are the problem. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/47 "2015-10-29T12:01:40Z")
Nm ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/48 "2015-10-29T12:03:04Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Yeah, how many families of the developed world would be willing to live in a hut with no electricity and their only source of food and income being their little patch of ground and some goats? Are they willing to gather and burn cow poop as a heating source (which my ancestors did on a treeless prairie)? Yeah, clearly poverty isn’t the answer. But Uzi seems to think that poor people are somehow the problem. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/49 "2015-10-29T13:35:04Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > Notice in Article 13 Section 2: ‘(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.’ Yet, I need a passport to do so. A restriction placed upon my freedoms that no one seems to think is unreasonable as every single country (that I know of) does it. My passport is an instrument of freedom, not a restriction; it PROVES I am a citizen of Canada and can therefore re-enter the country. (As for leaving the country, it’s not Canada that checks my passport on my way out. I may have a right to leave Canada, but I have no right to enter Italy.) And even if I lose my passport while abroad, Canada will let me back in. I’ll have to prove some other way I’m a citizen, but it happens all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/50 "2015-10-29T14:52:42Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Yeah, clearly poverty isn’t the answer. But Uzi seems to think that poor people are somehow the problem. I’ve said the number of people are the problem. I’ve laid out some conditions on which to limit people from breeding willy nilly that include people who don’t have the minimal means to support their kids. It does not exclude rich people unfit to care for children. I’m truly baffled why people would object to preventing selfish people from breeding who have no way to raise their kids effectively? > [@RickJay](#): > > My passport is an instrument of freedom, not a restriction; it PROVES I am a citizen of Canada and can therefore re-enter the country. So, you are saying that the condition on my freedom is that I prove that I am a citizen of a particular country. That is different from me saying that there should be conditions on having children such as some minimal capability to support those same children how? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/51 "2015-10-29T14:59:44Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > I’ve said the number of people are the problem. I’ve laid out some conditions on which to limit people from breeding willy nilly that include people who don’t have the minimal means to support their kids. It does not exclude rich people unfit to care for children. I’m truly baffled why people would object to preventing selfish people from breeding who have no way to raise their kids effectively? I think what you don’t understand is that the vast majority of people in the world believe that having children is a basic human right. People don’t like it when you take their rights away “for the greater good”. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/52 "2015-10-29T15:44:37Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I think what you don’t understand is that the vast majority of people in the world believe that having children is a basic human right. People don’t like it when you take their rights away “for the greater good”. Well, there is China…but they are looking to (finally) start to consider getting rid of their 1 child policy (for a 2 child policy per couple). Of course, it’s taken them practically hitting the wall with an aging population that is also unbalanced to even consider that this policy might have been misguided… ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/53 "2015-10-29T19:10:59Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > It does not exclude rich people unfit to care for children. I’m truly baffled why people would object to preventing selfish people from breeding who have no way to raise their kids effectively? Do you understand why rights exist at all? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Sound familiar? ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/54 "2015-10-30T00:48:12Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Do you understand why rights exist at all? So, we’ll keep patching the symptoms rather than fixing the root cause of the matter? [QUOTE=XT] Of course, it’s taken them practically hitting the wall with an aging population that is also unbalanced to even consider that this policy might have been misguided… [/QUOTE] Why was it misguided? One report says it prevented 400M additional people being born. A 30% difference. Does China need an additional 400M people more than the 1.36B they currently have? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/55 "2015-10-30T00:53:34Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > So, we’ll keep patching the symptoms rather than fixing the root cause of the matter? > > Why was it misguided? One report says it prevented 400M additional people being born. A 30% difference. Does China need an additional 400M people more than the 1.36B they currently have? One report. In reality, China’s birth rate was already shrinking when the policy was enacted, and it has followed the same pattern as Thailand- which of course does not have a one-child policy. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/56 "2015-10-30T00:56:42Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > I’ve said the number of people are the problem. I’ve laid out some conditions on which to limit people from breeding willy nilly that include people who don’t have the minimal means to support their kids. It does not exclude rich people unfit to care for children. I’m truly baffled why people would object to preventing selfish people from breeding who have no way to raise their kids effectively? But, again, the earth doesn’t really care if you are receiving welfare payments or not. Pollution is caused by consuming resources, which is overwhelmingly the realm of the rich. If your real agenda was environmentalism, you’d be aiming to restrict the reproductive rights of the rich first. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/57 "2015-10-30T01:41:02Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > One report. In reality, China’s birth rate was already shrinking when the policy was enacted, and it has followed the same pattern as Thailand- which of course does not have a one-child policy. > **[China to end one-child policy and allow two](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34665539)** > > China decides to end its decades-long policy of allowing couples to have only one child, increasing the number permitted to two. So, what you are saying that the one child policy didn’t have any effect at all? > [@even\_sven](#): > > But, again, the earth doesn’t really care if you are receiving welfare payments or not. Pollution is caused by consuming resources, which is overwhelmingly the realm of the rich. If your real agenda was environmentalism, you’d be aiming to restrict the reproductive rights of the rich first. Sure, who’s providing those welfare payments, btw? Everyone who doesn’t need them perhaps? And in this context who is rich and who is poor? Because I’m getting a ‘noble poor’ and ‘evil rich’ vibe here when I’m just singling out people who don’t have the capacity to raise children. Unfortunately, an economic capability is one of those conditions. If you can’t even feed your children why should you be allowed to have more until such a time as you can afford to do so? “Hey, neighbor! The wife and I want to have another kid. We have 5 already but don’t really feel complete with only that number. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough money to feed the little blighter, so I’ll need money to cover his expenses. I figure $12K a year should cover it initially. Don’t look like that! The other neighbors are pitching in for the other 5! Here is my bank account number, start wiring the money in immediately.:). Oh, btw, sorry about the police being here late last night. The wife was getting a little uppity and needed a bit of a ‘correction’ after she found out our Daisy was helping out her ol’ Pappy, if you know what I mean, heh heh heh.” ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/58 "2015-10-30T01:50:25Z")
I’m just saying if you want to beat up on the poor, there are better ways to do it. “Only rich people should reproduce because I’m worried about the planet” doesn’t make any sense. Maybe you are worried about the planet and also want to take away the human rights of the poor, and that’s fine. But they don’t tie together. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/59 "2015-10-30T01:57:05Z")
> [@ITR Champion](#): > > Do you understand why rights exist at all? > [@Uzi](#): > > So, we’ll keep patching the symptoms rather than fixing the root cause of the matter? You didn’t answer the question I asked you. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/60 "2015-10-30T02:02:07Z")
> [@ITR Champion](#): > > Should every activity that damages the environment be stopped? Do you ever damage the environment? > [@Uzi](#): > > Yes, but I’m not suggesting that people currently alive should be killed to lower the population, am I? I’m saying that people should be limited in their breeding so that the numbers of people decrease over time. So to summarize, in order to “protect the environment” you’d like to deprive other people of their basic human rights, but you won’t voluntarily make a small sacrifice of your own towards the same goal. That’s a massive instance of hypocrisy on your part. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853.md?page=4)