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248 comments on The World's Expected Carrying Capacity in a Post Industrial Agrarian Society
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248 comments on The World's Expected Carrying Capacity in a Post Industrial Agrarian Society
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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.