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The World's Expected Carrying Capacity in a Post Industrial Agrarian Society
Posted by Euan Mearns on November 1, 2007 - 10:00am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: calorie, carrying capacity, food, infant mortality, life expectancy, pakistan, water [list all tags]
This is a guest post by WisdomfromPakistan. Wisdom is a computer engineer living and working in Karachi, a cultured city of some 20 million people. He has been conducting his own research into human nutritional requirements and the Earth's carrying capacity which he now wants to share with The Oil Drum readership.
As peak oil approaches, shortly followed by peak gas and eventually peak energy, we have to retreat to agriculture as the prime energy producer in society. Post-peak agriculture will be radically different to modern agriculture. Today’s agriculture is more an energy consumer than an energy producer. In developed countries it takes ten calories worth of energy from fossil fuels put into a farm in the form of fertilizers, pesticides and transportation fuel, to get one calorie back in the form of food (see also here and here).
Happy children fetching water
Some of this input can be reduced by localization, which cuts considerable expenses in the form of transportation fuel, but other expenses like fertilizers and pesticides can’t be reduced without having a considerable reduction in food production. A detailed look on the situation, how we got here and an account of agricultural productivity before industralization is therefore necessary.
Up untill 1950 the World's agriculture was mostly run on organic lines with no artificial chemicals put into the soil. After the Second World War efforts were made to dump the large amount of chemicals made for military purposes into farm chemicals. In the 1960s, with the advent of the green revolution world agriculture slowly transitioned to an artificial fertilizer base. As a result, food production increased 2.5 times on average. This increase in productivity comes from higher nitrogen absorption, selective cropping and high grain-mass to plant-mass ratio.
Higher nitrogen absorption means more water use. This was supported with intensive dams construction along with canal systems to have enough water in winters to have two crops per year.
Higher grain-mass to plant-mass ratios mean less crop residue available for animals as a larger part of the plant is now eaten by people.
Selective cropping
Selective cropping means only high-yield varieties are grown. This reduces resistance against pests as miles and miles of the same crop variety is an easy target for pests. To compensate, a lot of pesticides are used. It also means reduction in crop-diversity. For example in China in 1949 about 10,000 varieties of rice were grown, in 1970 it reduced to 1000, in 2002 that further reduced to 300. The 14 leading varieties occupy more than 40% of chinese wheat fields now. India had 30,000 different types of wheat, now 90% of the wheat acreage is covered by 10 different but highly productive varieties (“Saving Crop Diversity Key to Winning War On Hunger”, Reuters, 7/3/01). Out of 700 crop species that have been domesticated by humans, only 30 species now provide 90% of the global food intake. (FAO, “The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resource for Food and Agriculture”, Rome, 1997, p 14).
As in all systems, efficiency was gained at the cost of resilience, as low productive but more shock-absorbing components were taken out of the system.
World’s average wheat production used to be 400 kg per acre per year in 1950. By the 1970s this was boosted up to 2000 kg per acre per year in South Asia and 4000 kg per acre per year in Europe and the USA. That is one of the reasons the world was able to compensate for rapid increase in population. In 1950 world population was about 3 billion, it is more than double now, but world's agricultural land area is about the same. Also, the world's diet shifted from a mostly vegetarian diet to a more meat based diet. Now, there is no more increase in agricultural productivity that the green revolution can provide and the World population is still increasing. Not much unused agrarian land is available. As a result per capita agriculture production is starting to decline.
Energy needs and a balanced diet
The basic need of humans is food. We need food to have energy to perform vital body functions, to reproduce, to work and to have fun. The unit of energy used by dietitians is the Calorie (or kilocalorie), that is, 4200 joules of energy, enough to raise the temperature of one kg of water by one degree celsius.
The energy need of a typical adult is 2500 Calories per day. Children and elderly need less than that. That brings the average to 2000 Calories per day for all. The calculation can be done here.
The caloric values must come 55% - 60% from carbohydrates, 12% - 15% from proteins and 33% - 25% fats. The variation based on climate, culture and personal preferences. For our calculation we take the most recommended 60% from carbohydrates, 12% from protein and 28% from fats. It must be kept in mind that this is an attempt to summarize highly complex and variable data into a meaningful format. There are hundreds if not thousands of food items available for human use, which particular item one uses depends a lot on one’s religion, culture, climate, personal preference etc. Food productivity differs a lot on the basis of geographical location.
A scheme of balanced daily diet (link to Excel file):
| Kgs / year | |
|---|---|
| Grains & Cereals | 100 |
| Milk | 100 |
| Fruits | 100 |
| Vegetables | 25 |
| Meat (goat, horses, sheep) | 25 |
| Oil | 12.5 |
| Sugar | 12.5 |
| Dry Fruits / Eggs | 12.5 |
| Spices | 12.5 |
Average worldwide food output kg per acre per year before green revolution:
| kg per acre per year | |
|---|---|
| Grains & Cereals | 400 |
| Fruits & Vegetables | 800 |
| Milk | 200 |
| Meat (goat, camel, horse) | 50 |
| Meat (fish, chicken) | 100 |
| Oil | 200 |
| Sugar | 200 |
| Dry Fruits / Eggs | 200 |
| Spices | 200 |
Land needed per person in sq meteres:
| sq meteres per person | |
|---|---|
| Grains & Cereals | 1000 |
| Fruits & Vegetables | 500 |
| Oil | 250 |
| Sugar | 250 |
| Dry Fruits / Eggs | 250 |
| Spices | 250 |
| Pasture | 1000 |
| Cotton, tea, coffee, wool etc. | 500 |
Notes:
4000 sq metres = 0.4 hectares. 1 hectare = 2.47 acres. Therefore, land required per person is roughly 1 acre.
• It is estimated that egg production in kg would be at least twice than chicken meat per acre. That is because of the savings in energy when eggs are directly used in diet that would otherwise be used by the chicken in its life time, after it hatches out of the egg, grows up and gains weight up to age of a few weeks before being finally slaughtered.
• Land needed for vegetables is so little (25/ 800 * 4000 = 125 sq meter) that a side crop along with grains/cereals can be grown for that. That’s the traditional Chinese method of having a crop of vegetables along with rice. A nitrogen-fixing crop is needed anyways as a side crop on land where grains/cereals are grown to maintain soil fertility.
• A quarter acre dedicated to pasture grows 200 kg of fodder per year. The total fodder requirement for milk and meat is 400 kg. It is because 2 kg of fodder is needed to have 1 kg of milk and 8 kg of fodder is needed to have 1 kg of goat/camel/horse meat. The other 200 kg of fodder comes from crop-residue, leaves etc from grain/cereals, fruits and vegetables. 100 kg of grains/cereals leave 160 kg fodder, 100 kg fruits leave 200 kg fodder, 50 kg of miscellaneous (oil, sugar, spices and dry fruits) leaves 80 kg of fodder. Assuming it would have half of the caloric values left when finally consumed by animals that is equivalent of 200 kg of fodder.
A simplified division of land is as follows:
| Farm (for grains/cereals) | Quarter acre per person |
| Pasture (for growing fodder) | Quarter acre per person |
| Orchard (for growing fruits) | Half-Quarter acre per person |
| Farm (for tea, cotton, wool) | Half-Quarter acre per person |
| Oil (for veg oil) | Quarter-Quarter acre per person |
| Sugar (honey or sugarcane) | Quarter-Quarter acre per person |
| Dry fruits | Quarter-Quarter acre per person |
| Spices | Quarter-Quarter acre per person |
Water
Water is another important factor in farm productivity. A land rich in organic material and minerals is of no use without a supply of water. The primary source of water is rain falling directly on land. Secondary sources like canals are also used to increase productivity. Finally tertiary sources like wells and tube wells are used which to some degree recycles the water already used at the farm.
A 10 inch rain fall on one acre means 1000 tons of water. For a summer crop, at least in my part of world 80% of rain falls during the monsoon, right when the crop needs it. So 800 cubic meters of water directly from rain is enough (same Excel file as before) to grow the food per person per acre using these water requirements (see also here), assuming 20% loss of water at the farm due to evaporation and soil absorption before being used by plants. The calculation includes water needed for world average use of 3.5 kg cotton, 1.1 kg coffee and 0.5 kg tea per capita per year.
If canals are used an additional 800 meter cube of water (one acre ft with 33% loss between dam and farm because of soil absorption, evaporation etc) is available per acre to support two people per acre.
Carrying capacity
Lets try to estimate the World’s carrying capacity based on the above mentioned diet. The world land area is 150 million sq km that means about 37.5 billion acres. 10 percent of it can be used to grow grains. 10 percent as pasture land and another 20 percent as forests to raise animals on. Altogether 15 billion acres are useful for food production.
Those 15 billion acres can be used to grow food for total 15 billion people sustainably provided:
1) There are no other species than humans.
2) Human population is distributed in such a way that more people live where there is more arable land.
Out of 4 million species of plants and animals today, we are just one specie. There are many species of animals, birds, insects that we need for our survival. For example, some of them eat others to keep their numbers in check. Some like honey bees are needed for pollination without which food production would be very low etc.
Human population is not distributed on the basis of where arable land is. In Australia and Canada 20 million people live in 9 million sq km, about 2.5 people per sq km. In the Indian sub-continent at least 1.2 billion people live in just 4 million sq km, 300 people per sq km. So, at some places there is much less arable land available per person and vice versa in other places.
Today, out of total food production of this planet, humans consume 40%. That confirms that total life support on the planet is 15 billion people (or other animal, insect, bird species of same mass).
Assuming that we can sustainably use 40% of world's food production for our use leaving the rest for all other species, we can have food for 6 billion people on this planet if our population is distributed evenly. Since it is not, long term human population support on this planet ranges from 2 billion to 4 billion. Taking the average 3 billion, this is roughly the population of the world at the end of the second world war.
How to increase productivity
If crop-residue can be saved in a better way, so that most of its caloric values are retained, the need of pasture would be eliminated, saving a quarter of acre. Also, in a culture that use more rice than wheat more land can be saved as rice productivity is typically thrice that of wheat, without destroying the soil. Both of these together can reduce per capita land requirement to half an acre.
If two crops can be grown instead of one, by using excess water from canals and underground, productivity can be doubled.
In more fertile lands with crop output double than world’s pre-industrial average, half the land would be needed per capita. Looking at the large picture, the increase in productivity in more fertile land is mirrored by decrease in productivity in less fertile land. “The magic of big numbers”. So this is not a large scale solution.
In short per capita land requirement can fluctuate between 4 acres in feudal ages of middle Europe (where half the land was kept fallow and on other half output was half that of world’s average) to a quarter acre in a rice-eating vegetarian culture. For the world as a whole, it’s safe to assume the average to be 1 acre.
Conclusion
In the detailed discussion above we found out that long-term, average-diet, pre-industrial, per capita arable land requirement is 1 acre. We also found that using 40% of all food produced in the world (currently consumed by 4 million species of plants and animals) that 6 billion people can be supported on Earth. Since human population is not distributed on basis of availability of arable land, in reality only 2 billion to 4 billion people can be supported. An educated guess is 3 billion, the population of humanity after the Second World War and before the green revolution.
What will happen to the surplus population is a matter of mere speculation. Since fossil fuels will not decline in one day one can expect a gradual decline in population either right after peak energy or over a period of time.
How the population declines is also a matter of mere speculation. In a poorer world higher birth rates may be expected, as is observed in developing countries vs developed countries. So, the decline is more likely to come from reduction in health care with a reduction in life expectancy and an increase in infant mortality.
Surely the effects of Climate Change, floods/droughts and changing water availability is going to have (ing) a noticable impact on food production calculations, not to mention competition with biofuels as attempts are made to fill the fuel gap post Peak Oil, and thus, particularly CC, will have a large impact on actual carrying capacity.
"Surely the effects of Climate Change, floods/droughts and changing water availability is going to have (ing) a noticable impact on food production "
Don't think about this too much unless you want to don't want to sleep.
Some folks have been under the illusion that we can simply grow our temperate crops farther north as a result of global warming. For example, the papers are filled with stories about Vineyards in Ontario and England with the suggestion that Swedish Wines are next. There is a little problem with assuming that you can grow any crop when the temperature and water regieme is right. It assumes that the soil quality is the same.
And it's not.
Our last Glaciation period ended 10,000 years ago. One American benefit of the glaciers is that they pushed all of Canada's nice top soil into the upper Midwest, Plains States, Mid Atlantic states, and the Columbia River Valley. Canada wasn't left with much. If you try and grow crops north of say Lake Superior, you hit bedrock a few inches down. That's why farming never took root north of Lake Superior. It's cold and the soil is really thin. So the soil in the northern latitudes may not be very good for growing large quantities of cereals, vegetables and other things.
The second problem is that the soil in northern climes post glaciation that has been built up is from falling pine needles. This is called Podsol or spodsol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spodosol
The needles don't breakdown nicely like decidous leaves do into a rich organic loam. Combined with the fact that conifers in general don't drop their needles, the ground stays cold and dark all year round. Thus, they don't decay quickly and they have the potential to preserve things with their tannins. Where do you think bogs come from? The point is the soil is really crappy and you need to put lots of fertilizers (phosphate, nitrogen, iron, calcium) to grow anything on it.
So, in conclusion, as the climate heats up, it will push the deserts in the Horse latitudes (30 degrees to 35 degrees) north and south. In Europe, this will push the mediterranean climate north and the temperate climate north into the poor soils. This has the potential to reduce agricultural production significantly.
Sleep tight.
Charles
And the length of sunlight, darkness etc. are not the same, and who knows if the temperature at night will "be right."
That's an excellent look at food and agriculture without fossil fuel inputs, and also a sensible analysis of carrying capacity with its nod to other species and population distributions.
Here's something else to consider regarding post-peak effects. It's probable that following peak energy there will be a dramatic decline in per-capita GDP in the developing world.
We know that the developing nations, characterized by low energy usage, are also the ones that have the highest TFR, well above replacement. That means that even as energy declines their populations will keep rising. In the case of Pakistan, the UN Medium Fertility Case projects that the population will rise from about 165 million today to 344 million by 2050 - a rise of 110%.
The research of Kummel and Ayres (as reported in David Strahan's excellent book "The Last Oil Shock") has indicated that every additional 1% growth in energy use results in approximately a 0.7% growth in GDP. If this same relationship holds in decline as well, total GDP will drop along with energy use post-peak.
In a recent speculative analysis (World Energy to 2050) I concluded the world total energy supply would decline to about 70% of its present value by 2050, for a 30% drop. Of course, that decline would vary from country to country depending on the mix of energy they consume. In a lucky coincidence I did a detailed calculation for Pakistan yesterday, and concluded that the decline there would be on the order of 45%.
If that happens, I'd expect the GDP of Pakistan to decline by 45% * 0.7 = 33% by 2050. The effect of combining such a drop with the projected rise in population is obvious: a drop of 66% in average per capita GDP. That implies a decline from an average of $2650/person today to a mere $884/person in 2050.
Given the inevitable rising cost and increasing scarcity of nitrogen fertilizer due to the loss of natural gas supplies, the unavoidable conclusion is that fertilizer use in the developing world will drop dramatically, cutting grain yields sharply just when greatly increased yields are needed.
The developing world faces a gloomy future as their ranks are swelled by their fertility as well as the impoverishment of many borderline nations, just as energy supplies start to decline and fertilizer costs begin to soar.
As you say, how populations will decline is a matter of sheer speculation, but when one takes regional and national disparities in energy and fertility into account along with the effects of climate change, aquifer depletion and soil fertility loss, some decline seems inevitable.
GliderGuider,
Firstly I think you need to ditch Fig3 in your analysis, it detracts from an otherwise good piece of work. Notwithstanding the value of the ELM, to extrapolate based on such a small data set is erronous and misleading IMO.
Having said that your analysis does give some hope and points to a future where conservation and efficiency are numero-uno considerations.
Personally I think we will see much much larger introduction of PV than you are predicting given the upcoming TF technologies and perhaps double your Wind rollout. Far from being dead-zones the Oceans will be bought to life effectively tripling usable area (actually its better than tripling as oceans are 'more 3D' -i.e. we don't just rely on 1 metre of topsoil but tens of metres of depth). Nuclear will undergo a renaiscence.
The thing I see scuppering survival is a potential collapse due to the shock of decline but surely once the cause of decline is widely recognised and the full extent of the problem grasped it will be full steam ahead on the solution?
Nick.
On reflection, I agree with your comment about my inclusion of net exports in this analysis. It really belongs in a yet-to-be-written chapter on geopolitical influences on the energy supply. Accordingly, I've dropped the entire discussion from the article.
As I say in the article, the speed and depth of penetration of wind and PV is fraught with unknowns. Worse, it will vary drastically from country to country - I would expect Germany to end up with a much higher amount and proportion of wind power than Indonesia, for instance. I'm content with my projections as they stand. In fact I think I've been uncomfortably optimistic. If developments prove them to have been pessimistic, so much the better for humanity.
How exactly are the oceans going to be brought back to life? The state of the oceans is among the most dire of any ecosystem on Earth right now. As Scripps oceanographer Jeremy Jackson is fond of hyperbolizing, we have eaten everything in the oceans over a meter long. All that's left seems to be jellyfish and plastic. I'm not sure how to revitalize an ecology that's been that badly damaged, especially within the next 40 years. But maybe that's just my doomer heart mourning.
Full steam ahead yes, but within tightening resource constraints and a closing ecological/environmental window. There's no advantage in denying the challenges.
Haha, I'd better not go in the sea then as I am over a metre long myself!
Seriously though the oceans do represent a great opportunity for humanity but it takes a bit of lateral thinking. The upwelling zones of the oceans are amongst the most productive areas -where deep sea nutrients enter the sunlit upper layers of the ocean plankton blooms cause huge amounts of life to be found. There's about 30+ metres of sunlit region so it represent a vertical stacked farm opportunity in theory.
Do some research on OTECs -Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. A by-product of this energy conversion technolgy is deep sea, nutrient rich water by the kilo-ton...
Another by-product is fresh water. So we already have three major prodcuts that look to be in shorter supply: Energy, Water, Food and there are a lot more. I am one of the editors of www.otecnews.org -OK its currently just a fascinating bit of 'GreenTech' but given a fair wind...
Regards, Nick.
Another view on the oceans:
It really doesn't matter how deep you go fishing. The productivity of the oceans is dependent on the amount of solar energy that falls on the surface. All living things are, ultimately, solar powered via photosynthesis.
You've entirely neglected the ocean thermal vent ecologies powered by the endogenous heat energy of the Earth.
We could start eating these vent worms:
Doesn't that look tasty?
Some people even think that those thermal biosystems are the origin of life on earth and, gosh, they could amount to a tiny fraction of the bio-productivity of the ocean even today.
I am of course seriously joking.
"In the case of Pakistan, the UN Medium Fertility Case projects that the population will rise from about 165 million today to 344 million by 2050 - a rise of 110%."
"The effect of combining such a drop with the projected rise in population is obvious: a drop of 66% in average per capita GDP. "
Of course, there is one thing you seem not to have considered - one or both of these projected trends might impact the other. For example, medium sized families that are already struggling for cash might decide not to become large families. Alternatively or additionally, poverty induced by the second trend could lead to earlier death and so reduce the population rise. It seems to me the UN population projection shows what would happen if the resource base existed to support it, while the peak oil trend simply says that the resource base will not exist. As such, I don't think mapping it out 40 years and saying "it'll be a catastrophe" is useful - because before it becomes so it will be a trend with it's own negative feedback.
Of course I am assuming that the people of Pakistan would, on the whole, rather have fewer children than watch some of them starve. If they choose to do things differently, well, that really is their business.
The eventual thrust of the argument I'm starting to make here is that these trends are in fact antithetical. This initial positioning simply outlines the influences using some well-accepted (in the case of the UN projection), academic (in the case of Kummel and Ayres) and speculative (in the case of my energy analysis) trends and relationships.
There is obviously going to be feedback. The question is what the feedbacks paths are going to be. If an outcome is unsupportable, as this one may well be, there are several ways events could unfold. Energy inputs (and their derivatives, food and GDP) might be increased above the projection by redirecting discretionary expenditures to the energy sector. Population might fall below the projections, either voluntarily through fertility control or involuntarily through mortality increase. Efficiencies may be introduced to make better use of the existing energy. Some combination of all these (increased energy, decreased fertility, increased mortality and increased efficiency) is probable, but the relative contributions of each are quite speculative at this point. Which factors one believes will dominate depends at least as much on the mindset of the analyst as on the data.
What does not seem speculative is that in a country where energy availability is declining as population continues to rise, and the combination of those two slopes exceeds the rate at which efficiencies (or foreign aid) can be introduced, eventually something has to give.
An interesting analysis and its good to get a viewpoint from another region but I think it strives too far to analyse the detail without consider the wider possibilities.
Ever since someone said "why don't we use a machine to do this?" we have been running ahead of this Mathusian brick wall. That's 200 years of progress and I don't see any going back. I admit that if fossil fuels and technology where to dissapear very quickly then we would be looking at the Billions+ die off scenario but I think we have time to adapt and probably will.
Some notes:
1. You only consider land as capable of providing a base for agriculture, 2/3rds of this planet is covered in Ocean -suppose we boost the 'productivity' of this unused region? 95% of the ocean is currently the equivalent of a 'dessert'.
2. The majority of people now live in cities. This is not 'overpopulation', for Billions of individual reasons it 'just makes sense' to do so. We are awash with space -even coastline.
3. A work friend of mine uses seaweed as fertilizer: GOTO1
4. Aquaponics and vertical local farms continue the Malthusian beating tradition albeit at the expense of greater dependance on technology but do you really expect us to go back to plow and horse?
Regards, Nick.
Yeah, I think there's a flaw in pretty much all of the "what will agriculture look like post-peak" articles - they assume that it will be fundamentally the same, minus fossil fuel inputs. In other words, that we end up back with Jethro Tull's style of agriculture.
I'm pretty sure that many previous civilisations have had efficient and productive agricultural systems that were not built on the annual monoculture model, and they didn't have the benefits of a scientific understanding of ecology and plant nutrition. A permaculture approach based on perennial polyculutres, developed to fully leverage everything we know about plant ecology (and everything we could learn if we really put our minds to it) could be a very different proposition. Our agriculture really hasn't changed that fundamentally in the last 7,000 years or so - we've just thrown increasing amounts of energy and mechanisation at the problem, because that's what we had going spare.
I'd also like to see one of these articles as produced by someone with real, practical experience in organic agriculture. It seems that many people think that agriculture isn't a specialized discipline, and that any educated layman can just slap some numbers together based on a bunch of questionable assumptions. It's very much like when economists opine on reservoir engineering...
gregorach
We don't need to look much further than Egypt for a civilisation based on a garden culture rather than a monoculture. Although they had areas that their farmers could move to, the Egyptian culture was pretty much contained to the Nile River Valley. Yes, they had some conquests and trade, but the valley was a self-contained area isolated by hundreds of miles of deserts and an ocean, prosperous and a happy place to live. Until the growing commerce and greek pirates ended the middle kingdom, there was sveral thousand years with little instability and immense creativity.
You're also right about the amateurs with questionable assumptions about reservoir engineering backed up with credentials as economists. Just because a symetrical curve looks pretty it doesn't mean its true... More facts and less opinion! Its my worst flaw too, thats why I can see it.
Bob Ebersole
OMB (I like that.. you're not David Stockman in disguise are you? :))
Egypt provides an interesting data point. And perhaps modern Egypt could to some extent replicate the agriculture system they used 2000 years ago.
A couple of minor issues though. I believe that their population has grown a little bit so they will need to produce a greater amount of food in the valley. Unfortunately they have also built a few structures on that valley land in the intervening years. And, of course, there is the issue of the Aswan Dam. It seems to have stopped the yearly Nile flood that deposited vast amounts of nutrients across the valley floor (the old Law of Unintended Consequences issue). After the dam was built the soil quality quickly degraded and the use of large amounts of synthetic fertilizers has been required since.
While they had a sustainable system then, they are a better example now of a location that the proponents of an agricultural collapse would use as a cite.
Wyo
Nope, my real name is Bob Ebersole and I live in Galveston,Texas. I do like history and have read quite a bit of history and archeology all of my life-my father became an archeologist after he retired from the oil business.
The Aswan Dam is a huge mistake ecologicly. But now Sudan and Upper Egypt have 30 years of topsoil accumulated in the former Nile Valley, a real treasure when the dam is drained.
For the last 100 years, we have been replacing the people's purpose on the land with oil. Unfortunately, the real problem is that we have devalued people to a point where there is no going back without collapse. The increase in populations is equivalent to what the Fed has done to the dollar. People are no longer considered valuable, except in a commercial to sell something. The System thinks that wealth comes from oil wells, so that's where the system sends the people: to die for oil and to shovel dollar bills in New York.
The oceans' fertility is dependent upon the complete ecosystem of the ocean: predators and all. We've already eaten the top of the food chain, so the rest is in disarray. Seaweed included.
Whatever we go back to, we need to go back to individual people being valued as something other than for buying crap they don't need. That was what the Constitution was supposed to guarantee: individual rights against the bullies of churches, governments, mobs, and corporations.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. Especially if it's gold.
...then we shall rebuild the ecosystem from the ground up from its two major inputs: nutrient rich water and sunlight. Put these two together in sufficient quantities and you get the basis for the rest of the pyramid. The top of the food chain is us unless you consider the shark... ;o)
Nick.
Now who's being the Optimist, Nick?
Sure, it can be rebuilt from the bottom up. It was done before.
The problem is a temporal one. Most of humanity will be long gone by then.
Thanks, Wisdom! In regards to water, I just read today of one man's attempt to initiate rain water harvesting on his recently purchased plot of barren land: A Pond is Born. Recommended.
JN2, your link seems to be broken.
link working now.
nice read. just putting the finish on a dam myself.
tis a big, big job, but it was one of my last major P.O. projects that this year's drought brought home
it's importance[possible necessity in a po world.
wisdom
very nice work. i was aware rice was/is the biggest beneficiary of the green revolution. is it as productive w/o fossil fuel inputs? it does not store as well as wheat & many believe this factor crucial to ag civilization due to the resilence factor..
This 10:1 ratio thing I have seen quite a bit lately... where does this calculation come from?
at the discover magazine link
is this study up to date and seen as definitive?
Boris
London
I've seen quotes from others at 12:1 ratio.
But 10:1 seems "to be an accepted value"
The 10:1 is pretty close, but I have seen more recent analyses that suggest the ratio is a bit better than that, more like 8:1, at least in the U.S.. Then again, since those studies came out food miles have been increasing....This is all pretty tough stuff to get good data about, but see:
http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1389
cheers
Boris
London
The caloric values must come 55% - 60% from carbohydrates, 12% - 15% from proteins and 33% - 25% fats.
Now those is fightin' words!
Try 80%, 10%, 10%.
Protein intake required is only 5% and it's impossible to go that low if you're eating "whole foods" and getting enough calories. Fat intake is really just essential fatty acids, again about 5%, omega 3 and 6 and 3 is the really the one we're lacking as we're overloaded in 6 primarily because of factory farming (reduces omega 3 in eggs and meat and increases omega 6). Either way we seem to be able to survive that, but it is kind of neat how we, in the west, can get diseases of malnutrition while eating 50% more calories than we need. Thank processed foods for that.
In the part of the world where I live (where we get this thing called winter) I believe that the primary issue is simply getting enough food that can be stored thru the winter until crops grow again in the spring - tubers, beets and whatnot.
Of course one can fast for a month every year; while food is scarce. I think that fasting for a week would be a good thing; can't see doing the whole month bit though.
Also as much as I'm nearly vegan; when the manure hits the fan a diverse food supply helps ensure survival and cured meats and high fat foods are better than nothing at all.
80/10/10 is probably closer to what our ancestors ate for many thousands of years; it is closer to the diet that we as a species are adapted to eat, with the exception of those humans that live in extreme conditions like the Arctic. Of course, us rich Westerners can now eat all the things our ancestors craved but could not get enough of, like meat and other fatty foods as well as new things like purified sucrose and high fructose corn syrup. In addition, foods that require processing have higher profit margins (in general) so now we have the 'iron triangle' ensuring that Westerners think food with an extremely long shelf life and wrapped in plastic is safe and sanitary and that a person needs to eat lots of meat and milk products to stay healthy. We as a people like to eat these things, and want to believe! Peak Oil will change our minds.
Paleolithic diet has more proteins in it than 10 %. From Wikipedia article on Paleolithic diet:
Such diet would emulate the diet of hunter/gatherer people before the discovery of agriculture.
The amount of fat you list sounds correct but it is also the most important. it's the only way the human body gets certain vitamins and the fat it's self is needed to stimulate the intestine to make bile to absorb/ process other vitamins, for example turning beta carotene which is often substituted for vitamin A into said vitamin at a 6(beta carotene) to 1(vitamin A) ratio.
http://paleodiet.com/
Then again, this issue appears to be highly politicized. I highly recommend a Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course to understand this issue more fully. The Propaganda says that meat production is more energy intensive than grain production. However, goats, rabbits, and chickens eat things humans simply can't. There is no stopping with farm animals either.
These issues can't be solved by adding up how many acres it takes to grow corn, then add the number of acres to grow beans, then for squash. In fact, if you grew all three together (and more), the yield for the same combined acres far exceeds monoculture production (See Fukuoka; Rodale Institute; etc). Note: soak the corn in a wood ash wash to get your niacin.
Think of it as building an ecosystem. The combined species on a given area of land should result in an ecosystem. This ecosystem negates the need for tilling, fertilizer, biocides, and weeding. Let nature do the work. Live there, a human ecosystem, and there is no transportation requirement either.
A true polyculture would not be vegetarian and could well include the hunter-gatherer diet that we have adapted over millions of years.
We grew/ate dry corn , beans , squash , figs , almonds
Corn was germinated
Instead of animal fats we made/ate olive oil
Perhaps many people don't realize about food production but to get you through winter versus a continual supply of greenhouse goodies grown and presented to you at your weekly shopping trip then most of it will have to be grown without commercial fertilizer. Otherwise it will rot. Which of course is a good food quality test. This would also be tempered by choosing different cultivars that boast longer storage qualities.
The miracle in miracle grow is that we can still live after consuming food grown with it.
To address the fertilizer problem this leads one to the realization of the necessity for animals to cycle nutrients for you. Cows, horses, chickens are great in a mix. But then you have to be able to make hay for winter for them and have fenced pasture for them in the summer. Again energy inputs.
and machinery that is in continual demand for parts and fuel.
And then this leads to the understanding that you have to do this at a continual funancial loss so you have to seek off farm work to subsidize your efforts as the market is fixed.
The bottleneck is designed to offer others the profit for your labour. Welcome to small time farming. If you don't want to be that small farmer then where will you get the manure that you need? Nightsoil? And when t.s.h.t.f. then the small farmers cease production because they can't afford to so this will squeeze the supply. Though I haven't figured out what becomes of the big guys? Any guesses?