[sudo-discuss] let them eat bugs

[Hol Gaskill]

the trick would be to invent something that can convert small quantities of grain, and some insect matter, maybe along with some household food scraps, into meat...and maybe eggs...wait

There are always higher and lower impact foods.  A few chickens and goats on even a fraction of an acre can be sustainable in terms of feed and waste.  A feed lot where wet shit collects on parched soil awaiting rain, or even better gets hosed off concrete cell floors into holding tanks waiting to overflow is a sure way to discharge excess nitrates into the surface water supply.  As someone pointed out a while back, being vegetarian doesn't do much good for "the environment" if in the process of getting that soy protein you're saturating tens of millions of acres with persistent herbicide and using diesel fuel powered equipment to do the collecting of nutrient-bearing matter for you.  I personally don't see anything wrong with having solar powered plants picked up by plant-powered animals and then collecting both by hand.  Personally, I can't say that's what I do on a regular basis - I try to get organic stuff and used to grow alot of my own veggies when i had space, but I'm right there guilty of all this.  Just talking through nutrient acquisition externalities.

As preferred input feeds are consumed or pre-allocated elsewhere, there will always be pressure on people to do more with less - and I think if knowledge exchange continues at its current rate (it is more likely to accelerate, barring total war or any other engineered scarcity mechanism), it will be a tough sell that there is not enough meat or veggie protein to go around.  Of course some will starve and some will feast, in perpetuity, for the rest of human history in my opinion.  It's a distribution question, right?  I think it's tied to the distribution of land and the concentration of population in cities.  I'm not advocating against cities at all, but if you live in a city away from hunting/foraging/planting grounds your survival is not under your own control unless you've managed to set up a considerable economic buffer or a very reliable influx.  Though it's not like if you have bad luck or start with a severe disadvantage in the city, you magically have this option to go foraging about the countryside like a frontiersman.  Wilderness survival knowledge and wild animal devourings aside, the territory is pretty much all carved up and assigned to other humans or nonhuman organizations.

Breaking down into hastily-enumerated groups here, for US city-based food distribution to those without the monetary means, we have soup kitchens, government aid, food not bombs, etc.  For city-based production, we have community gardens, private yard gardens, and guerilla crop installations on publicly accessible land.  The first solution is a start but there simply aren't enough empty lots to provide real coverage.  It gets easier to eat the lower the population density assuming the land is good.  Rural and city areas seem to be for the most part separate in terms of having a sense of community, so there will always be a disparity in food production which is OK if it means we get to increase the concentration of humans and speed up economic reactions at certain nodes.  What we want is to bake into our culture the awareness of the need for the ability to, when resources are tight, have enough general bounty (water in the tank, acres planted, laying hens, dried grain, canned food, charged batteries, bottled whiskey, bitcoins, entertainment devices, etc) in each community to weather the tough times and not be as tempted to accept whatever solutions are floated by those with the power advantage, but give ourselves room to maneuver/negotiate/demand/secure reasonable access to basic needs.  Taking the focus off of survival for a greater proportion of mankind would truly allow us to evolve.  Eating bugs, if part of a balanced diet, could be a crunchy and enjoyable culinary experience, possibly even an addictive snack food to go along with our voluntary enjoyment of the rest of the fruits of the earth.  I don't think anyone needs to be freaked out at the prospect of being forced to accept a subpar feedstock.  We have the power to prevent this outcome, and absolutely nothing to fear.