This is a guest post by Phil Harris, a plant scientist based near the Scottish border in the UK. He has worked for government agencies in such areas as food safety and plant quarantine. Since 1997, he has worked amid the agricultural results of system-collapse in ex-communist countries of Europe.

In Part One, I looked at trends in primary production and their consequences. Here, we look at possible bases for more sustainable approaches, including the biological fixation of nitrogen and the Village Ecosystem approach. It is likely that changes will be hard in a complicated world.

Even within ‘Western’ agriculture where NPK fertilizer is fully available, there are different productivities per acre and the primary yields of calories and protein can be handled in very different ways. According to this USDA booklet:

To average consumers, U.S. agricultural production seems uncomplicated – they see only the staples that end up on grocery store shelves. The reality, however, is far from simple. Valued at $200 billion in 2002, agriculture includes a wide range of plant and animal production systems.

This complicated web of sub-systems, input/output budgets, economics and ‘demand’ has sent ‘Western’ agriculture ‘upmarket’, to promote meat and a-seasonal fruit and vegetables, and has even taken large ‘Western’ acreages out of production. Biofuels are seen as a smart (subsidized) way of using spare land. The system extends much wider than the USA. In the big picture, urbanization underpinned by industrialization continues to expand globally. But just as in the story of the Great Plains: “… they had no strategy for the very long term.” We must again talk about food security.