A Defarming Update

ABSTRACT:
A NewScientist article published on August 31, 2011 stating that lab grown meat will be in the stores within six months keeps generating spinoff articles and links on social network sites.  Actually, these articles began appearing around 2008 and clearly grab the imagination of the Technologists.  However, I have been talking about 'The World Defarms' for quite some time.  It will be more far reaching in its effects, but, as you will discover if you google the term, I am alone in discussing it.

Precisely what do I mean by the World defarms?  About 40% of the U.S. land area is dedicated to farming.  Surprising to most people, that percentage has actually been falling at the rate of 1% per decade for quite some time.   This is happening because yields per acre have increased between 200% and 500% over the last decade. While some of this due to more and better fertilizers, most is related to selective breeding.  The seed companies now produce hundreds of high yield strains carefully matched to local climate and soil conditions. 

However, now a new phenomenon is taking place; food production is leaving the land entirely and becoming a manufactured, soon to be robotically manufactured product.  The effect is still small, but soon it will not be.  As incomes explode and the live anywhere option creates demographic shifts to high value, idyllic locales, food production will leave the farms very quickly to be replaced by local food manufacturers that are nearly completely vertically diversified. 

Around 2030, the percentage will begin to fall dramatically, not just in the U.S. but across the entire world.  Nations that are not producing enough food today or suffer from periodic droughts and famines will rather rapidly find that they have a reliable and sufficient food of good quality and reasonable price.  The world's farms will be left fallow.

It was not my intent to write much of anything in the Premium Service about 'The World Defarms' at least until Spring 2012.  Since it is an event subsequent to The Income Explosion and The Live Anywhere Option, it is not a matter of immediate relevance.  However, recently, fueled by general economic pessimism and worries over Global Climate Change, posts about famine and global starvation are surfacing with greater regularity. 

These concerns affect how people think about today, not just tomorrow.  Consequently, this weekend I will polish a piece I wrote a while back about Defarming and post it on the Premium site.