Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Its not cornucopicism, its merely the certainty that the future is not going to be a copy of the past in any way, shape or form. Peasant farming is far less productive, (and also far more ecologically destructive) than industrial farming is, and farmland under the plow is the limiting factor on our food production. I am not certain that the future will have enough food, I am merely certain that regardless of what happens its not going to involve regressing to primitive farming techniques. If climate change wrecks the grain belts- well war will provide for all, either in victory or in death.
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:34:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
farmland under the plow is the limiting factor on our food production.

Well, no.

Under the present system, access to synthetic fertiliser is the first constraint that will really bite.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:39:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
.. Fertilizer are primarily needed for nitrogen fixation. That means ammonia. Ammonia is synthezied from hydrogen and nitrogen with modest pressure and heat -this means that the actually nessesary inputs are electricity, air and water. With no requirements whatsoever as to the quality of water, nor any pressing need for most of the electricity supplied to be reliable - for electrolysis intermittant power will do just fine as long as you have a tank to store hydrogen in.
The very first artificial fertilizer factory ever built ran off a single norwegian dam and supplied most of europe for decades. This is not a resource that is ever going to run short. The land squids farming the canadian shield in 1.5 billion years from now will not be short.
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:03:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Fertilizer are primarily needed for nitrogen fixation.

Phosphates would like a word.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:27:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Thomas:
Peasant farming is far less productive, (and also far more ecologically destructive) than industrial farming is

Would you care to enlighten us on the ecological destruction caused by peasant farming?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:47:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
The fertile crecent isnt so much anymore for a reason. Also, africa, south america.. Really, just look at anyplace that still practices it?
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:05:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
What ecological destruction has actually been caused by peasant farming?

And how can you sidestep the ecological damage - toxic run-off to rivers and coastal areas, water-table pollution, excessive irrigation demands, soil erosion and decline of soil fertility, creation of specific pests and diseases through monoculture, destruction of biodiversity through same and through use of pesticides, flash-flooding and freak winds as a consequence of destruction of hedges and ditches, concentration on products of doubtful necessity like over-production of meat/dairy and their attendant maize, GHG emissions through excessive livestock production, rainforest destruction not carried out by small peasants - caused by industrial farming?

Or is your version of industrial farming some techno-wet-dream that will be happening in 1.5 billion years?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 12:31:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Really? Deforestation, hunting, overgrazing, soil erosion, and so on and so far. Peasant farmers are extremely bad news for the ecosystems they encroach upon - for a given output of food, much, much worse than industrial agriculture with even minimal enviormental regulations in place.

This is really simple: Primitive farming techniques are much less productive per square meter than advanced ones. This means that trying to feed any given number of people with lesser techniques means cultivating far more land. Which destroys the ecosystem that used to be there. We already have 7 billion people on the planet - if modern farming caves in, not a single one of them will go quitely into the night, but all of them will try to find things to eat. This would cause a mass extinction near total in scope of just about everything edible, and nearly everything is edible to humans hungry enough. Societial collapses nearly always take the nearby ecosystems down with them. This has happened many, many times. It still happens - Haiti doesnt really have a vibrant ecology anymore, for example. It will happen again if we should fail at maintaining our technosphere.  

Maybe I come across as very fond of technological fixes and somewhat panglossian, but the thing is, if we do not find technological fixes for the ecological issues facing us, it is not mankind that is screwed, it is the planet earth. This is for example why the reaction to fukushima pisses me the fuck off - Noone died, and people are still fleeing from one of the very few energy sources we have that has low ecological impacts. No nuclear accident is ever going to do anything of any significance whatsoever to the non-human bits of the ecology it happens in. The deathrates from cancers are so far down into the noise for wildlife that it is not even funny.

by Thomas on Tue Jul 26th, 2011 at 07:50:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: