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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: see clearly now who wrote (201675)	12/14/2010 9:51:37 AM
From: see clearly now	Respond to of 361829

Japan should raise food self-sufficiency to 50% in FY 2020: panel Tuesday 30th March, 02:14 AM JST TOKYO — An advisory panel on Monday presented the agricultural minister with a basic farm policy plan calling for raising Japan’s self-sufficiency in food to 50% on a calorie basis in fiscal 2020. The plan warns that there are concerns about medium- and long-term food security due to the growing global population. The government reviews its basic agricultural policy plan every five years. The current plan envisages raising the nation’s food self-sufficiency to 45% in fiscal 2015, compared with 41% in fiscal 2008. To raise the sufficiency at a faster pace, the new 10-year plan stresses that Japan should increase the production of wheat by means of double cropping in order to reduce its heavy reliance on imports. It also calls for an increase in production of feed rice for use as an alternative to imported corn. © 2010 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission. COOMENT: "I see no reason why 100% is impossible. Some things are happening or could happen if necessary to achieve this. 1. De-emphasis of food appearance as a criterion for food 2. Quasi-vegetarianism 3. Locavore-ism 4. Use of more organic inputs 5. Ending the use of human food as silage Regarding those points, Japan needs to use MORE of the food it already produces by using lower grades of foods. You cannot market an apple that is shaped oddly, but it can be dried or mashed or juiced well. It is tough to process those odd shapes sometimes, but we need to find ways to do that, or feed those foods to animals. Animals consume a lot of calories to make animal protein. That wasteful process should be cut way down. We can eat almost everything a pig eats. Who needs the pig? Consumption of foods that are not imported saves oil that could be used to produce nitrogenous fertilizers here in Japan. Japanese people and animals produce tons of sludge that, if properly chelated and composted, would be more than enough to support 100% self-sufficient agriculture. Finally, more productive root crops such as kikuimo and yakon could be produced for silage, freeing rice, corn and wheat for human consumption. Japan needs to produce a little more, but it can use what it has a lot better. The following was in the article. "To raise the sufficiency at a faster pace, the new 10-year plan stresses that Japan should increase the production of wheat by means of double cropping in order to reduce its heavy reliance on imports. It also calls for an increase in production of feed rice for use as an alternative to imported corn. " You can see the problem. The powers that be want to use more non-organic fertilizers to double crop WHEAT, which we don't really need anyway, and which requires imported inputs, and which wrecks the land. The second part speaks a little to what I mentioned above regarding animals, but taking rice to feed cows and pigs highlights the absurdity. Importing too much corn as silage? Eat less beef and pork and the problem is solved. Chickens and rabbits produce protein much faster from a greater variety of inputs. The real problem here is the absurdly wasteful "western" consumption patterns of ever greater production and ever greater waste... based on... guess what... oil.