[bumby]

It’s been a few years since I looked deeply into it, but I think we produce enough to have everyone survive but not necessarily thrive. At the time, it came out to something like 1700 kcal per person. Even if we did have enough, the next problem is logistics of allocating that food to everyone who needs it.

[maeln]

A lot of food production worldwide is used by meat production, which is quite inefficient. It does generate some useful side product (manure), but also a lot of bad side product. In some places, almost every field is dedicated to meat production. Consuming less meat and shifting food production away from meat would be very good for the environment and instantly solve the issue of the amount of calorie produce.

But as you pointed out, this is not the actual issue. Getting food to people who need it is almost entirely a political and logistical issue at this point. War (especially civil war), natural disaster, with local power stealing international aid, etc, are mostly the biggest responsible for hunger in the 21' century. We have the technology and logistics to accurately drop-ship huge amount of food in even the most remote places in the world, even when the local infrastructure is heavily damaged or inexistent. We cannot deal with local power decision to voluntarily starve a place.

[bumby]

>Consuming less meat and shifting food production away from meat would be very good for the environment and instantly solve the issue of the amount of calorie produce.

The problem with this statement is that it implies all calories are equal in terms of nutrition. Meat is very protein dense compared to most plant foods and that can be important. That’s not to say it’s impossible to live healthily on only plants, but it’s not as simple as swapping calorie sources.

[maeln]

Fun fact, some plant like Bulgur or Lentil are almost as calorie dense as some meat. But to my understanding, they lack “complex” protein or something ? Regardless, your don't have to cut meat entirely. The issue is that we consuming way too much of it. In many developed country, eating meat every day is very common. Eating meat once or twice a week is enough to get all the right nutrient and not having deficiency in things like B12.

[bumby]

They lack all the essential amino acids, but you can easily circumvent that by combining sources. People have been doing so with combinations like rice and beans for generations. But the question is whether the calories cited come from enough variety to meet those nutritional needs. Again, all calories aren’t created equal.

I don’t disagree that western societies probably eat too much meat. But that is the trend of any burgeoning middle class, and it’s doubtful it will change.

[wat10000]

According to this, it’s more like 3,000kcal/person/day: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-production#explore-d...

[bumby]

Where are you seeing that value in the link?

The average per capita is closer to 2,600 kcal/day. Not sure how that breaks down when normalized by the individual country population. It also doesn't include waste. In the US at least, waste is near 40%.

[wat10000]

At the top, under FOOD, select "All food." In the country list, select "World." Above the map, click "Line." Finally, mouse over the graph to see the values. The latest value they have is for 2023 and shows 3,005.52kcal/day. Awful lot of significant figures there....