vtsnowedin wrote:You organic proponents wouldn't have a chance of winning the debate if manual labor was required.
Eventually it will be all muscle power, just as it was before we entered this short period of fossil fuel burning. The era will return shortly, though whether we see it return is doubtful.
I have to seriously doubt that. A gallon of biodiesel run through a farm tractor will have an excellent EROEI and it will take much less land to grow the biodiesel then it will to feed horses or human farm hands. Tractors and the fuel to run them will be one of the last things to go.
ceti331 wrote: why did we go to all the trouble of developping the complex systems we have now..machinery,international trade, supermarkets,refridgerators..
It's a pretty rubbish system. What all that lot did is to allow those with land and capital to become rich. It was a powerful driver. Feeding people was just a byproduct. It doesn't do that very well as a couple of billion don't get enough and another couple of billion get too much. And half the food gets wasted.
vtsnowedin wrote:You organic proponents wouldn't have a chance of winning the debate if manual labor was required.
Eventually it will be all muscle power, just as it was before we entered this short period of fossil fuel burning. The era will return shortly, though whether we see it return is doubtful.
I have to seriously doubt that. A gallon of biodiesel run through a farm tractor will have an excellent EROEI and it will take much less land to grow the biodiesel then it will to feed horses or human farm hands. Tractors and the fuel to run them will be one of the last things to go.
There's more to a tractor than biodiesel, though I do concede that tractors can be made to last a long time. Not forever though.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
emordnilap wrote:
Eventually it will be all muscle power, just as it was before we entered this short period of fossil fuel burning. The era will return shortly, though whether we see it return is doubtful.
I have to seriously doubt that. A gallon of biodiesel run through a farm tractor will have an excellent EROEI and it will take much less land to grow the biodiesel then it will to feed horses or human farm hands. Tractors and the fuel to run them will be one of the last things to go.
There's more to a tractor than biodiesel, though I do concede that tractors can be made to last a long time. Not forever though.
Indeed. The whole point of EROEI (and it's weakness) is that it is energy got out from something against all the energy required to get it (though as the I, Pencil story shows that calculation is not really possible as such),
Peter.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the seconds to hours?
1) We waste half the food we produce, so there's huge slack in the system.
2) A lot of the "food" that is produced is downright harmful by the time it reaches the plate.
3) The rate of growth of the population is slowing and will soon go into reverse, possibly hitting 9 billion but unlikely to. See Fred Pearce for more on this.
4) We have any number of open loops in the system, allowing useful fertility to drain away. We shit and piss into fresh water, flushing it out to sea. I have collected about 15kg of teabags from one office in London in a couple of months, which will go to feed my fruit trees over many years.
So my answer is Yes - we could feed the world organically, but it will require such huge changes in how we do business, relate to the land, and relate to each that it is unlikely ever to happen. Politics and business, not organic food, will cause the die-off.
emordnilap wrote:There's more to a tractor than biodiesel, though I do concede that tractors can be made to last a long time. Not forever though.
They will not stop making new tractors or the spare parts for the current stock. They are just too valuable to the population to let go. New PCs on the other hand probably will go out of production.
For anyone talking about permaculture, I thought the basic idea was to have a mix of crops/plants that maintained the natural balance of nutrients in the soil anyway so you didn't need to keep applying fertiliser?
How viable would it be on a large scale or do we not know this?
the_lyniezian wrote:For anyone talking about permaculture, I thought the basic idea was to have a mix of crops/plants that maintained the natural balance of nutrients in the soil anyway so you didn't need to keep applying fertiliser?
How viable would it be on a large scale or do we not know this?
If the system is self-contained then large scale or small scale makes no difference, except for the amount of labour input. Labour will be plentiful when people are hungry.
the_lyniezian wrote:For anyone talking about permaculture, I thought the basic idea was to have a mix of crops/plants that maintained the natural balance of nutrients in the soil anyway so you didn't need to keep applying fertiliser?
How viable would it be on a large scale or do we not know this?
If the system is self-contained then large scale or small scale makes no difference, except for the amount of labour input. Labour will be plentiful when people are hungry.
Perhaps it is the idea of self contained that is the problem. On a small holding where all crops that are produced are consumed by the humans and animals on the small holding and all their waste products can be recycled back to the soil you could certainly achieve a balance and a constant rate of production. But on the other hand if the major part of the crop is to be exported to feed people in a remote city in exchange for goods and services that were not organic in nature you would have a nutrient stream leaving the land that would be not replaced. Now someone will chime in that all the garbage and human waste can be brought back from the city which is true but the energy costs to transport the crop away and the waste back will be a constant drain on the closed system.
But to get back to the original question, How many tea bags will it take to produce the 110,000,000 tons of nitrogen fertiliser needed to feed the planets human population?
In days of yore the muck in cities was collected by non-squeamish (or just desperate) people and lugged out to the countryside where it was sold. Yes, people were paying good money (or equivalent) for human muck. This would probably work a lot beter now we know the "mechanics" of how muck can make you ill, which they didn't in those days.
Or you can have the whole lot automated, like they do here in York. The "water treatment plant" (isn't the English euphemism wonderful ? ) is powered by methane from muck.
? ) is powered by methane from muck.