We could use technology that is over 100 years old to provide food for over 100 billion people

I was at the Brains events Immortalist Audit event on Saturday. It was a fun and interesting event. There was a question posed at the event. What happens if Radical life extensions happens ? What happens in 50-100 years ?

1. It will take some time for radical life extension to be developed for anyone

2. We can see how medical technology gets spread with how long it has taken inexpensive vaccines to be provided to everyone and how long it has taken for the AIDS drug cocktail to be developed and then become cheap enough for the developing world at about $100/year. AIDS drugs are being deployed to Africa at a cost of $100/year from now through 2025

Let us slightly simplify the radical life extension effect and assume that people pre-radical life extension can live 100 years. So with radical life extension 1% of the world population who would have died do not die from the point of worldwide deployment. So 50 years after radical life extension (people living to 150 or more instead of 100) then population would be 50% higher assuming that long lived people did not further delay having births. In 100 years, after radical life extension (people living to 200 years or more instead of 100) then population would be double assuming that long lived people did not further delay having births.

So instead of looking for 50-100% gain by killing all Grandma’s and Grandpa’s in a delayed version of Logan’s Run. (In Logan’s Run everyone is killed at the age of 30 in the movie and 21 in the science fiction novel). We can first look at boosting agricultural yield, achievable infrastructure construction and minor reorganization to support higher population.

It is also interesting how some people have a knee jerk reaction like the following. Well we must stop people in Africa and Asia from breeding to prevent an increase of 20% in world population. However, driving around in SUV with 10% ethanol from corn with an hour commute each way from their McMansion to their office is not considered.

Business as Usual progression of Agricultural Yield

Regular agriculture is on track to boost yields to 15 tons per hectare for most of the grains.

Deploying what is already grown in outdoor test fields

Yuan Longping, China’s leading agricultural scientist, realized one of his 80th birthday wishes recently when his super grain brought yields of 13.9 tons of rice a hectare, setting a new world record for rice output. The rice breed, DH2525 (Y two superior No 2), produced a harvest of 13.9 tons a hectare during its trial planting in Longhui county in Hunan province.

Does the present breakthrough translate into a yield of 13.5 tons per hectare at commercial scale? Yuan did not think so, but 80% at more than 10.5 tons per hectare is realizable according to past experience.

The highest rice yield in the world is in Australia, on average about 9.9 tons per hectare (660 kg/mu), followed by 6.7 tons per hectare (445 kg/mu) in Japan. The yields of China’s super-rice have now reached 550 and 600 kg/ mu, respectively, at large scale, as the result of the first two phases of development. So spreading best practices boost worldwide yield by 50%-100%. What is done across an entire country (Australia) to other countries.

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Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/02/we-could-use-technology-that-is-over.html