[cplease]

Really? So, we go from, say, 450M agriculture waged workers today, to 2 billion. Or 3 billion. Or 5. Slaving away with hoes on their tiny biodynamic farmsteads . Problem solved, 10 billion fed (although living in abject circumstances, ignoring pollution etc. here). Let's take it to 15 billion people. What does the planet earth look like then?

Also, I think your premise that "natural polyculture" can scale up to feeding the high 10 digits of people in anything resembling the kind of society we expect to live in is unrealistic, to say the least.

[briantakita]

Really. Don't let the marketing of large chemical manufactures fool you.

The UN has a report that small scale, distributed farming is more efficient & yields more food than large monoculture farms. It's been measured.

http://www.technologywater.com/post/69995394390/un-report-sa...

The only "disadvantage" is more people will be required to grow food. However, given the amount of people who are out of work & economically displaced, this would be a good thing. These people will be given autonomy & food sovereignty.

There is historical evidence that monoculture, petrol farming does not work. Look at the "green revolution" in India. India is moving back toward natural farming techniques because they work.

[Turing_Machine]

"These people will be given autonomy & food sovereignty."

You're kidding, right? Small-scale peasant farmers have historically been the most downtrodden and oppressed group. Serfdom or outright slavery is the norm.

"There is historical evidence that monoculture, petrol farming does not work."

No, there is historical evidence that it does work. China hasn't had a major famine in close to fifty years, and India hasn't had one since the 1940s.

Yes, there are still hungry people there, but you don't see the kind of mass die-offs that were common under the "natural farming techniques".

"The only "disadvantage" is more people will be required to grow food."

Cool. You get to go first.

[Turing_Machine]

Historical corn yield in Missouri:

http://crops.missouri.edu/audit/images/CornYields_MO.jpg

What was that you were saying about "does not work"?

Note that even in a horrible year, the yield is still about 3x what they were getting in the early 1900s. In a good year it's 7x-8x.

[briantakita]

> What was that you were saying about "does not work"?

Things that do not work: the overuse of till farming, soil erosion, drought, loss of habitat of wildlife, water pollution, inefficient water usage, desertification, famine, uneven food distribution, the reduction of nutrients in food, the obesity epidemic of the consumers of monoculture petrol agriculture, methane pollution from concentrated livestock, to name a few...

Note that the graph you present is a myopic & reductionistic lens on the system's performance. It is also based on the evolution of the tradition of monoculture till farming, which can work (in an unoptimal way) in forgiving (even rainfall through the year) climates, but devastates the ecosystem in brittle (uneven rainfall through the year) climates.

> No, there is historical evidence that it does work. China hasn't had a major famine in close to fifty years, and India hasn't had one since the 1940s.

Yes, look at the "fertile crecent", that is Iraq, Iran, etc. It was once a lush paradise that has been till farmed to desert. Look at the farmers in India who are going back to natural methods because they are going into debt due to chemical agriculture's exploitative & inefficient practices.

In China, look at the Loess Plateau being transformormed from desert into green land with Natural & Permaculture methods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A

And famines happen all over the world. Centralized food production results in unequal food distribution.

Re: traditional agriculture, we have been improving on a fundamentally broken tradition for thousands of years; We & Earth's ecosystems have suffered. It's time to go back to basics & work with, not against, nature.

Reductionistic policy creates many externalized consequences, because we optimize for the things that we measure. In a monoculture mindset, we optimize for one crop. In a systemic mindset, we optimize for the entire system. Polyculture farms grow food by acre than monoculture farms. The many plants interact with each other to form a symbiotic food web, having introduce chemicals.

Natural farming techniques, such as no till farming, have been shown to consistently out perform chemical monoculture agriculture.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&feature=youtu.be and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka

One "challenge" is the diversity of the ecosystems on Earth call for a diversity in natural growing methods. There are many bioregions. The natural farmer needs to be in tune with the land & the ecosystem.

On a side note, we have an epidemic of overly reductionistic thinking, which tends to blind us from the bigger picture.

> Cool. You get to go first.

I am. I'm taking part in the solutions to humanity's biggest issues. You are invited to as well.

[Turing_Machine]

"Note that the graph you present is a myopic & reductionistic lens on the system's performance."

Measuring actual, you know, food output is "myopic"? Okay.

"Yes, look at the "fertile crecent", that is Iraq, Iran, etc. It was once a lush paradise that has been till farmed to desert"

That was done with "tradtional, natural farming methods", dude.

"Centralized food production results in unequal food distribution."

You couldn't be more wrong. Centralized food production and distribution is exactly why we don't have famines any more.

Where we do see famines, it's where the central distribution mechanism has been destroyed by war or by the government in the area being otherwise fucked up.

Your "must grow locally" idea is guaranteed to produce at least localized famine when the crop fails (as will from time to time).

Before mechanized agriculture China had a famine in one or more provinces almost every year, for over a thousand years.

"I am"

No, you aren't. Writing about it online and actually living the life of an agricultural stoop-labor peasant farmer are two different things. Entirely.

[Turing_Machine]

Let me ask you this: what is the largest percentage of your total caloric intake that you, personally, have ever produced for yourself using hand/low-tech farming labor?

Maybe you should give it a try before advocating it.

[cplease]

@briantakita If you read between the lines, what that says is all of our options are bad.

Unchecked population growth will exceed the limits of any system. No amount of conservation and "permaculture" will reduce the footprint of a nonmiserable human to less than a substantial fraction of what is currently, much less zero. You can't manufacture or farm virgin wilderness by any means. We eclipsed optimum population and blazed by sustainable population in the last millennium. We pay the price in this one.

[Turing_Machine]

"Unchecked population growth will exceed the limits of any system."

Good thing we're not seeing that, then. The world population growth rate has halved since its peak in the early 1960s, and the rate is continuing to decline.

"You can't manufacture or farm virgin wilderness by any means."

Good thing modern farming techniques don't need virgin wilderness, then.

[cplease]

> Good thing we're not seeing that, then. The world population growth rate has halved since its peak in the early 1960s, and the rate is continuing to decline.

Good thing? World population was 3 billion in 1960, in the post-war baby boom when population growth was 9% on an extremely anomalous rebound above historical rates. So, the world added 270M people that year to 3 billion.

In 2012, the world hit 7 billion people with a population growth rate of 4.5%. You are right, the rate was half of the 1960 peak. So, it added 315M people that year to 7 billion.

Now that you've seen the arithmetic, what do you think has a bigger impact on the environment, 270 million people added to 3 billion people, or 315 million people added to 7 billion people, who are consuming a hell of a lot more than they did in 1960?

Easing off the accelerator while the world is driven to hell is nothing to pat ourselves on the back for. We need to slam the brakes and go in reverse.

> Good thing modern farming techniques don't need virgin wilderness, then.

Let's just pave and plow every single inch of the planet until we have a lifeless moonscape then. Do you know nothing about ecology? Have you never taken a hike off the beaten track?

[Turing_Machine]

"Let's just pave and plow every single inch of the planet"

How does "we don't need to use virgin wilderness" equate to "let's pave and plow every single inch of the planet"?

Be specific.

"We need to slam the brakes and go in reverse."

I'll repeat what I said to the other guy: you first.

In fact, virtually every advanced society is either population-neutral or actually losing people.

WRT: "Have you never taken a hike off the beaten track?"

I grew up without electricity or running water, and currently live in Alaska.

You?

[cplease]

> How does "we don't need to use virgin wilderness" equate to "let's pave and plow every single inch of the planet"? Be specific.

Virtual all arable land is already cultivated and grazable pasture is cowburnt now with population 7B. The notion that it's not a problem to scale up because we can just keep chopping down rainforests for lumber, soy and palm oil plantations etc is sickening. No, agriculture doesn't need wilderness, but the inhabitants of earth do.

> I'll repeat what I said to the other guy: you first.

I have << 2.1 children; I've done my part.

> In fact, virtually every advanced society is either population-neutral or actually losing people.

So what? The rest of the world is churning out babies and are more than eager to move. Overpopulation is a global problem. Arithmetic again. Mathematically and physically of course population growth will end at some point. But it's the major driver of all the major social, environmental, and political problems facing nations and the earth today, and it's the easiest one to do something about.

Do you think that population growth just slowed down by magic? In developed countries, family planning is universally accessible. In developing countries where overpopulation is most acute, countries with well-run organized population programs like Thailand, Iran, and China have been extremely successful at managing population growth and have reaped the benefits.

[Turing_Machine]

" The notion that it's not a problem to scale up because we can just keep chopping down rainforests for lumber"

You're clearly more interested in preaching that listening to what I say.

Technology increases the yield from current land. By a lot. Thus reducing the need to "pave and plow" more of the planet.

The United States, for instance, has considerably more forest now than it did at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Where do you actually see slash-and-burn agriculture and similar wilderness-destroying methods of farming? Bingo: in the low-tech peasant farming operations that you and the other guy hold out as models.