flood watch

[vtsnowedin]

Erm a lot of trees etc and the animals that live in them, would probably be very upset!

Meanwhile, I used to think like you (vt) about population but the subject of my ire has moved on: there exists a tranche of people who, numbering in their mere 100s, own and "earn" more than the total of billions of the rest of us. Yes even the moderately-rich thee and me.

Given that ecological damage is very roughly proportional to money, it is these people whom we should be addressing, not the sheer numbers of everybody.

I can't agree with you here RC. A few thousand living like kings and flying around in private jets can only consume so much and pollute so much ground. But billions of poor people each consume their 2200 calories of food each day and produce the equivalent amount of poo and other byproducts. The energy to grow ship and cook that food though small on a per person basis when multiplied by factors of seven billion is enormous and the root problem facing us.
There are only two possible solutions that could save humanity from a major and perhaps extinction level collapse and they are one 1. Decrease the birth rate to well below replacement level or 2. Increase the death rate to much higher then the current birth rate. Means to achieve either one of those rapidly enough to succeed are horrible to contemplate.

[emordnilap]

Practically every adult needs roughly the same number of calories a day, rich or poor. The way those calories are produced, processed and distributed that makes a huge difference, such as in shipping US strawberries to Europe or Israeli potatoes to Ireland.

Given education, basic tools and elimination of corporate interference, thousands of millions can grow much of their food with virtually zero impact.

[biffvernon]

So putting all these sea defences, presumably made from concrete? Don't you think it a bit ironic you are suggesting the use of a high embedded energy product just so you can maintain your lifestyle?

No, there's very little concrete used. A major scheme of 'coastal realignment' has just been completed on the bit of coast nearest me. I would guess that something like 99% of the construction material has been locally derived clay, shifted tens of yards by bulldozers. Concrete and brick were only used where rivers and drains have to pass through the earthworks via sea gates. It's a similar story in the Netherlands and Germany.

Most of the Lincolnshire coastline is protected by natural sand dunes, the artificial earthworks just filling in gaps here and there.

I don't think my lifestyle is at issue. Rather it's a vast swathe of land from the Humber to Cambridge. Not for nothing is the 'Isle of Ely' so named. And I expect you've seen the dramatically blue coloured map of London protected by the (concrete and steel) Thames Barrier.

[vtsnowedin]

Given education, basic tools and elimination of corporate interference, thousands of millions can grow much of their food with ....virtually zero impact.

Absolutely not! The acreage required is enormous and that land and the water used is not available to other species that would use the same space and water. Also you have the effect of people accessing the fields to grow it themselves taking up more space for access paths etc. that you don't have in a large field agricultural setup.
The only way to have zero impact is to have zero people.

[emordnilap]

Don't be silly, it's not enormous, no need to exaggerate - note I also said 'much'.

Anyway, ask John Jeavons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture

Or watch this.

[PS_RalphW]

My kids bought some cheap sweets in the local shop. Being Christmas, the packaging weighed almost as much (and occupied 50 times the volume) of the contents. They claimed to be made in a factory just 50 miles away, but the primary ingredient came from Africa. The ingredients listed in the back were in 5 european languages, and indicated they were also exported to Australia, 12,000 miles away.

We may, as individuals, may not directly consume that many resources, but the embedded energy of the products we buy, our cars and homes, are huge, as is the energy already spent in the infrastructure of our built environment, and consumed maintaining that infrastructure, and providing our health care, education, national defense, etc. The billion people or so who have a modern lifestyle consume as much as the 6 billion who are either at a level of consumption that would have been modern in 1970, or are getting by at a basic day to day level, or are really struggling to find their next meal (the last is also about a billion people).

This is actually a reduction, the middle ground is growing at the expense of the poor, ie. China is growing at the expense of the third world, but they have a long way to go to reach the wasteful levels of the OECD in general, and the US in particular.

Yes a billion starving people can do a lot environmental damage, mostly to their own immediate environment. The real planet killers are the industrial scale farmers and miners who destroy entire ecosystems in order to put cheap overpackaged sweets in local grocery stores.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes a billion starving people can do a lot environmental damage, mostly to their own immediate environment. The real planet killers are the industrial scale farmers and miners who destroy entire ecosystems in order to put cheap overpackaged sweets in local grocery stores.

The real planet killers are the industrial scale farmers and miners who destroy entire ecosystems in order to feed seven billion people.
There fixed that for you.

[peaceful_life]

The real planet killers are the industrial scale farmers and miners who destroy entire ecosystems in order to feed seven billion people.
There fixed that for you.

Wake up before it is too late.
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrar ... 2d3_en.pdf

http://www.groundswellinternational.org ... l-farming/
'Yet the 3 billion small-scale farmers and food producers are already the ones producing 70% of the world’s food. And agroecological farming by family farmers has been demonstrated to be highly productive and sustainable. It just needs more support to spread. By contrast, industrial farming currently produces only about 30% of the food consumed globally'

[vtsnowedin]

Somebody's facts are a little off. It's a good thing the guys that wrote that report don't farm for a living. We would all starve.

Agriculture Fact Sheet
Use the following information in your efforts to promote the dramatic impact of agriculture on Americans’ lives.

Profile of the Farmer
More than three million people farm or ranch in the United States. Individuals, family partnerships or family corporations operate almost 99 percent of U.S. farms. Over 22 million people are employed in farm or farm-related jobs, including production agriculture, farm inputs, processing and marketing and wholesale and retail sales.

According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture, 50 percent of the farmers are 55 years of age or older, up only three percent from 1997. Average age of the principal operator is 55.3.

Forty-one percent of U.S. total land area is farmland (938.28 million acres). In 1900, the average farm size was 147 acres, compared to 441 acres today.

The top five agricultural commodities are cattle and calves, dairy products, broilers, corn and soybeans. U.S. farmers produce 46% of the world’s soybeans, 41% of the world’s corn, 20.5% of the world’s cotton and 13% of the world’s wheat.

Farmers and ranchers are independent business people who provide for their families by growing and producing food and fiber. They use modern production techniques to increase the quality and quantity of the food they produce. In the 1960s one farmer supplied food for 25.8 persons in the U.S. and abroad. Today, one farmer supplies food for 144 people in the U.S. and abroad.

[RenewableCandy]

vt, the last post before yours ended with the word "globally". That includes countries that aren't the USA

A lot of the people who live there grow a lot of their own food. It is harvested and then eaten, without ever having been bought or sold, so it never shows up in GDP or suchlike figures.

Labour-wise this is not a very efficient process, but if your limiting factor is land are, it suddenly looks like a lot more of a goer.

[vtsnowedin]

vt, the last post before yours ended with the word "globally". That includes countries that aren't the USA

A lot of the people who live there grow a lot of their own food. It is harvested and then eaten, without ever having been bought or sold, so it never shows up in GDP or suchlike figures.

Labour-wise this is not a very efficient process, but if your limiting factor is land are, it suddenly looks like a lot more of a goer.

Yes I'm aware of that, but with American Family owned farms producing that large a percentage of the worlds food this "Evil corporate big AG" mantra is quite exaggerated.
What parts of that report I have had time to read are often contradictory to other parts. In one place they state a goal of reducing the number of animals raised on farms. OK if you don't mind eating chicken feed instead of chicken mind you but in another they talk of adding manure to improve the soil. now if you get rid of the animals where is your manure coming from? In yet another place they are promoting close grazing a plot of land just prior to 'no till' planting a grain crop on it and counting the value of the feed grazed off in their profit accounting. Nothing wrong with that but again with what animals and where did they graze while the crop was growing?
Things like deep double digging sound great but really are no different then deep subsoil plowing done by tractor only much slower and more expensively done. Anything a man with shovel and hoe can do to the soil a tractor with the right implement can do as well and cheaper. Anything you want to add to the soil can be added by machine.
They pretend that modern mechanized farming does not already make use of available organic biomass as fertilizer and soil amendment when in fact farmers use all they can get. The same with erosion control and water management. Sure you can do it better then people that have been doing it for decades. NOT!

[peaceful_life]

vt, the last post before yours ended with the word "globally". That includes countries that aren't the USA

A lot of the people who live there grow a lot of their own food. It is harvested and then eaten, without ever having been bought or sold, so it never shows up in GDP or suchlike figures.

Labour-wise this is not a very efficient process, but if your limiting factor is land are, it suddenly looks like a lot more of a goer.

Yes I'm aware of that, but with American Family owned farms producing that large a percentage of the worlds food this "Evil corporate big AG" mantra is quite exaggerated.
What parts of that report I have had time to read are often contradictory to other parts. In one place they state a goal of reducing the number of animals raised on farms. OK if you don't mind eating chicken feed instead of chicken mind you but in another they talk of adding manure to improve the soil. now if you get rid of the animals where is your manure coming from? In yet another place they are promoting close grazing a plot of land just prior to 'no till' planting a grain crop on it and counting the value of the feed grazed off in their profit accounting. Nothing wrong with that but again with what animals and where did they graze while the crop was growing?
Things like deep double digging sound great but really are no different then deep subsoil plowing done by tractor only much slower and more expensively done. Anything a man with shovel and hoe can do to the soil a tractor with the right implement can do as well and cheaper. Anything you want to add to the soil can be added by machine.
They pretend that modern mechanized farming does not already make use of available organic biomass as fertilizer and soil amendment when in fact farmers use all they can get. The same with erosion control and water management. Sure you can do it better then people that have been doing it for decades. NOT!

http://www.valuesandcapitalism.com/dial ... r-part-two

'The U.S. has 36 million acres of lawn and 35 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. That's 71 million acres, which is enough to feed the entire country without a single farm or ranch'

Are you suggesting that, Sepp Holzer, isn't up to scratch with erosion and water management?

[biffvernon]

A friend of mine recently told me of a trip across the US mid west he had made recently. He noticed some land under cultivation but other areas just left to it's own devices and asked the locals why this was so. He was told that they had plenty of land and just hadn't got round to cultivating those bits. It was an approach unknown in Europe.

One of the issues we have with American (and to a real but lesser extent with European) agricultural policies is that farmers are subsidised to overproduce and the surplus is then 'dumped' on the poorer countries, depressing local prices in the food markets and putting local farmers out of business. This increases the push factors to urbanisation and reduces the local food production. The Western world's farmers grow richer and the third world farmers grow poorer.

[peaceful_life]

A friend of mine recently told me of a trip across the US mid west he had made recently. He noticed some land under cultivation but other areas just left to it's own devices and asked the locals why this was so. He was told that they had plenty of land and just hadn't got round to cultivating those bits. It was an approach unknown in Europe.

One of the issues we have with American (and to a real but lesser extent with European) agricultural policies is that farmers are subsidised to overproduce and the surplus is then 'dumped' on the poorer countries, depressing local prices in the food markets and putting local farmers out of business. This increases the push factors to urbanisation and reduces the local food production. The Western world's farmers grow richer and the third world farmers grow poorer.

Not far wrong, but not all western farmers are rich.

[biffvernon]

Indeed - but some of the cereal farmers round my way are very rich!