If population rise can be restrained; and if food self-suffiency, at local and regional levels, is the key policy.
So two propositions:
This could be encouraged and coordinated with "bigger" farming by national policy. But better perhaps regional in the sense regions of the world. See Michel Barnier's position in favour of regional common agricultural policies.
Trade is not intrinsically a bad thing: moving flour slowly (train and sail boat will do!) from continental Europe to Ireland and shipping meat back seems sustainable if you're not assuming civilisational collapse. Flying lettuce around the planet is another issue, of course.
I guess what I'm thinking here is some form of subsidiarity for food - it should be produced as locally as makes sense. I suspect a lot of this would be sorted out simply by pricing the externalities into the shipping and production methods. Maybe a properly regulated market is the best way of doing the job?
What is efficiency?
Understanding also that regional policy, (eg CAP), can deal with the coordination of a lot of the differences between local capacities.
How far do you think that by "efficiency", you are in fact thinking of comparative advantage?
Isn't comparative advantage more-or-less about efficiency?
What kind of efficiency is comparative advantage about?
However, an urban market ... whether a market in a city or the market consisting of a small town ... is an essential element in sustainable agrarian development, so the level at which food self-sufficiency becomes a goal to consider adopting is the local region, consisting of an urban core and its rural hinterland.
Of course, legalists always want boundaries for definitions, and so units of analysis like local regions give them hissy fits, because its hierarchical ... one local region consisting of a small town and surrounding countryside is part of the hinterland consisting of a small city and its surround small towns and countryside, and that is part of the hinterland of a large city and its surrounding small cities and their surrounding small towns and countryside.
And of course in many high income nations we have planted large, difficult to heat and cool single occupancy homes directly across that countryside, so we have to learn how to plant around those kinds of obstacles.
Every large nation must aim for food self-sufficiency. All of its main regions must aim for as much food self-sufficiency as it can achieve, and some of its regions must arrive at a surplus to the extent that some of its regions fall short.
And every local region must aim to be an active center of agriculture development in its rural hinterland ... even if the peasantry in the rural hinterland presently drive SUV's to work in cubicles eighty kilometres away. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
a negative effect on fighting global warming and resource efficiency
Because of..?
Unless that is you simply mean local in the sense more stuff from within a few hundred kilometers and less stuff coming in from halfway across the world. If so I agree, at least in areas that have plenty of suitable land nearby. For places like the US southwest where that isn't the case you'll actually see less of that sort of 'local', though what agriculture there is in such areas will be more oriented towards the local market rather than commodity production as it is now.
In the second sense (your paragraph 2), I'd use "regional" rather than local. But yes, I am against consecrating certain regions of the world "food-producing" and shipping food across the planet. To feed the world, I think we should be producing food everywhere, and aiming at reducing transport.
You are looking at one dimension of the problem, density per square kilometer at the level of a country/district ...
... but sprawl is not simply having people live outside a densely urbanized large metropolis.
Its having them live outside of a densely urbanized large metropolis, at low densities per hectare for the median occupied hectare.
Clustered suburban villages with occupied densities of 400/km^2 spread across a former suburban hinterland surrounded by truck gardens, with the occupants of the former suburban sprawl going to the closest suburban village for their main jumping off point for the regional transport system ... whether commuting to work elsewhere, traveling for shopping, education, leisure, or collecting items they have purchased ...
... that's not suburban sprawl.
But if we are going to continue having large numbers of people living in large cities ... IOW, by "going to continue", if we are going to live in that way sustainably ... then that kind of settlement system is going to have to surround those cities, because the current system of flying fresh strawberries from Chile for a supermarket in Northeast Ohio is a system that is premised on cheap and abundant energy resources ... and its economic growth is therefore premised on an inexhaustible supply of cheap and abundant energy. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
In a survey of life in the 27 European Union countries, the Institute for Family Policy said that pensioners now outnumbered teenagers, and more people were living alone. The report, The Evolution of the Family in Europe 2008, which was unveiled in the European Parliament in Brussels, described the European birth rate as "critical".
In a survey of life in the 27 European Union countries, the Institute for Family Policy said that pensioners now outnumbered teenagers, and more people were living alone.
The report, The Evolution of the Family in Europe 2008, which was unveiled in the European Parliament in Brussels, described the European birth rate as "critical".
Expertise and experience could be retained and transferred more effectively, health outcomes are likely to be better, especially if flexible working (reduced hours to better meet individual needs) is really pushed as a good way forward not just for women with caring responsibilities but for disabled people and older people too.
As you say, the ideology needs to change. Ad astra per aspera
If you reduce beef and meet to a tenth (basically what a human body would need according to some emerging consensus, which could eb wrong), we would basically be able to have around 4 times more grain availbale.. this probably makes a population limit of 20 billion people, half of them eating a ration of meat.
if your reduce agricultural intensity to rational levels by using standard industrial techniques you can probably feed comfortably 10 billion people .. well more than probably, mostly for sure. Now.. what would happen if we take fertilizers out of the equation and we do no allow for more than 200 km distances in the food transport...
The the intensty threshold is reduced, greena griculture becomes a need adn soil uses and monocultives disappear.. the numbers change dramatically... so I know nothing .. I have never read any number which makes sense in this case.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
what would happen if we take fertilizers out of the equation and we do no allow for more than 200 km distances in the food transport...
There are two suppositions there that don't call for a Boolean AND.
Also: what do we mean by fertilisers?
What if it's a question of aiming at reducing distances (200km is an arbitrary choice...) rather than organising food production in certain parts of the world to be transported to others?
And by fertilizer I eman anything which needs. I did not count natural fetilizers or so-called "alternative ones".
My point was I have nto seen anythign regardign the effect of complete lack of oil in agriculture (considering machines can be driven by electricity), nor the effects of area redsitribution if one wants to minimize transportation.
I just indicated my lack of knowledge.
Its clear that on a spectrum from fresh leafy vegetables at one extreme to dry grains at the other, there are natural, intrinsic priorities on what we would wish to localize first, based on energy cost to transport and store.
All areas should be as self-sufficient as possible in fresh vegetables and fruits.
At the other end of the spectrum, grains can be readily warehoused and transport over long distances with fractions of the energy inputs required the logistics of fresh fruits and vegetables grown and consumed a continent apart. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
As Deni says, this does not necessarily involve the free market, but instead could call for some form of global governance.
Meanwhile, growing as locally as possible whatever perishable fruit and vegetables are possible seems more efficient (and less environmentally destructive) than flying these around, and more likely to deliver the vitamins and other healthful substances involved as freshly as possible to as broad a cross-section of the population as possible, in whatever part of the planet.
Putting a priority on localizing fruit and vegetable production means growing fruits and vegetables locally wherever ... and, indeed, in our current farming system, it means increasing fruit and vegetable production in many farming area.
Putting a priority on as much regional self-sufficiency as we can reasonably accomplish means that every local region, even if not every locale in that region, will engage in some grain or other staple food production (it may, after all, be tubers rather than grains that dominate in many areas).
So, IOW, grain (and other staple food) production far more locally regionalized than at present, but not necessarily localized. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
"Yes, (What you said) this (este) is how I see it too."
or
"No, (What I originally said) that (ese) is still how I see it."
I'm reading the first, but seeing somebody might possibly read the second ... obviously if we were talking face to face, it would be clear from tone of voice and expression. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Speaking of "regional", I've been trying to use it here as "regions of the world", (though I realize it may more often be used to speak of regions of a country), and would be interested in your take on "regional agricultural policy" as suggested in this diary.
