[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '
')To bad you can't live on calories alone. How do you replace the topsoil lost by monoculture? Modern farming is no more viable than Fiat currencies in the long run.

[Pops]

If those gurus offer better methods why aren't we using them?

The answer is they aren't economically competitive.

So what is the alternative?

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I')f those gurus offer better methods why aren't we using them?

The answer is they aren't economically competitive.

So what is the alternative?

[Pops]

No he isn't successful, Monsanto is successful.

Monsanto's penetration in the seed corn market went from 0 to 78% and changed everything about how grain is grown in just a few years. Just a decade or 2 before other traits had increased harvests several hundred percent and a couple of decades before that widespread use of traction and fertilizer had done the same.

I'm not advocating for monsanto I'm just pointing out that several billion people are alive today because of modern farming. Small gardens have been around for millennia, they just had a short break last century, there is nothing new there even if it sells books.

The problem is we've outgrown subsistance farming by about - what do you guess? 4 Billion people?


Giving an unemployed real estate agent a book about composting and some confiscated farmland is not gonna change that fact.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'N')o he isn't successful, Monsanto is successful.

The problem is we've outgrown subsistance farming by about - what do you guess? 4 Billion people?

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'T')he problem is we've outgrown subsistance farming by about - what do you guess? 4 Billion people?

Giving an unemployed real estate agent a book about composting and some confiscated farmland is not gonna change that fact.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o we will just continue improving production with no consequences?

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'L')and redistribution could be the basis, perhaps is the only basis, for the 'fresh start' the USA and so many other countries are going to need/ need desperately now.

How this might be done is open to discussion. I feel this is a healthy way to approach the looming end of the nanny state, post oil economic disaster, perhaps even a new basis for currency?

[SeaGypsy]

It is much easier to line up for soup kitchen handouts from corpguv survival inc. Why would anyone want to go actually work?
Heck, we got machines to do all that. We can spend our time surfing the net at corpguv communications inc. Virtual holiday forever!

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o we will just continue improving production with no consequences?

[nobodypanic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'F')irst a little perspective on modern farming (pardon my 4th grade cyphers):

Field Corn has 2400 calories per pound x 2,000lb/ton x 4 ton/acre (this example says 6 tons/acre on irrigated land in central california but we'll be conservative) = 19,200,000 cal/ac

/ 2000 cal/day/person = 9,600 person/days =

26 years worth of calories for one person from one acre of modern corn!

According to the same paper it takes 28 gallons of diesel to farm that corn or just over 1 gallon per year to produce a year's worth of calories!
Somewhere else below it says it take 30 gallons of gasoline equivalent to make fertilizer for one acre of corn (I'm running out of time) so lets say that's 3 gallons of FFs per year per person plus another 3 gallons for milling and transport for a total of 6 gallons FF for a year's worth of calories.

That's less than 3 days of per/capita FF use in America, 5 in the rest of the OECD, outside the OECD it's about a month's worth of FF consumption. If you think my allocation of FFs is too low, double it, tripple it, raise it as much as you want.

THe net effect is modern farming is incredibly efficient and there is no real alternative at this level of population, I've heard all the claims that this guru or that one is 33 thousand times more efficient growing tomatoes in a 3x3 garden but the comparison is silly.

What will happen in the short term is the ethanol boondoggle wil reintroduce grass based protein. Today grassfed beef it is a niche market and hugely overpriced (in the US) but CAFO feeding of lightweight steers in grow-yards will largely go by the wayside and the finishing period wil get shorter and shorter as demand for ethanol here and food prices rise everywhere.

Consumption of dairy, eggs, pork raised on grain will fall and dairy and beef will be raised more and more on grass. Grazing of course reduces phosphate and potassium use by 98% in cattle because P&K is not volatile when "recycled".

So...
There is no reason to imagine that modern farming will ever go back to the scythe - we aren't going to forget how to make a grain drill and combine even if it's pulled by a team of oxen. Certainly we won't forget so soon to think land will be taken from the most productive use and returned to the least.

But, as pointed out above, protein will return to grass and this will be the outlet for those eliminated from the 9-5 economy. Today I'd say there are hundreds of thousands of acres of small scale acreage suitable for grazing but not for large scale row cropping. Some may have become overgrown or are marginally usable for crops today and soon will be ruined for tilling. Today grass fed beef is not competitive with feedlot beef in quality but as corn is increasingly burned in ICEs the price will rise to a point it will again be the norm for the average guy. After all, he won't be eating feedlot raised beef fillet, he'll be eating hamburger -
on a good day.



ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petro ... d_text.htm
http://seekingalpha.com/article/210551- ... n-plummets
http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu/files/CornSV2008.pdf
http://green.autoblog.com/2007/03/01/mo ... logist-pu/
http://phosphorusfutures.net/peak-phosphorus
http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calori ... ous_foods/
http://www.fapri.missouri.edu/outreach/ ... rsions.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fu ... gy_balance
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourc ... fertilizer

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '
')fiat currencies are as perfectly viable as any form of money. you should change your name to luddite.

[Loki]

The US had a land redistribution policy until the early 20th century. Some of it explicitly populist (1850 Donation Land Claims Act), some of it explicitly corporatist (railroad land grants). All of it requiring violent removal of the Indians.

The railroad land grants in the American West are a notoriously dysfunctional example of land redistribution. These grants involved transferring “public lands” (recently seized from Indians) to large corporations. That's how the Weyerhausers made their fortune, among many others.

I seem to recall that a UK government task force recently considered land redistribution as a mitigation measure for catastrophic climate change. Except it wasn't the populist utopian land redistribution that many lefties imagine, it involved comprehensive land seizure from small farmers and other small landowners, their property to be handed over to large agri-business conglomerates. Apparently they're the only ones who can “feed the people” in the face of climate change. Regardless of the absurdity of that proposition, that's likely to be the land redistribution we'd see in the future. It won't be subsistence farmers eeking a living out of a small patch of earth, it'll be large corporations owning everything.

That's not to say we shouldn't encourage small-scale homesteading with public policy measures like tax credits and abatements, zoning exceptions, and the like. I'm even rooting on the collapse of the housing market, property values have been bloated for far too long, they need to get a lot lower.

But forced land redistribution will not turn out well.

I've got plenty to say about Pops' apology for industrial ag, but that'll have to wait for another time. We need a dedicated thread to agriculture, pretty ridiculous that PO.com has neglected such an important topic.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'T')hat's less than 3 days of per/capita FF use in America, 5 in the rest of the OECD, outside the OECD it's about a month's worth of FF consumption. If you think my allocation of FFs is too low, double it, tripple it, raise it as much as you want.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'H')ow this might be done is open to discussion.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Somewhere else below it says it take 30 gallons of gasoline equivalent to make fertilizer for one acre of corn (I'm running out of time) so lets say that's 3 gallons of FFs per year per person

[AgentR11]

Last I checked, the FF source for fertilizer is natural gas. Of which we have more than we know what to do with...

[SeaGypsy]

Yeah I spend a lot of time on the 'new lands' around Pinatabo, Mt Anganwangin is on the edge of my wife's hometown, we have thought about squatting it under DNR rules but there are hundereds of competing claims and it's a bit messy.

I don't see land distribution as any quick fix, far from it, people are too damn lazy and it will take some time for this spell to break. I do believe that there will be a breakdown of title systems anyway in many areas, proving title with your GPS is one thing now but something else when the Lands Office is gone and there's no internet?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'T')hat's less than 3 days of per/capita FF use in America, 5 in the rest of the OECD, outside the OECD it's about a month's worth of FF consumption. If you think my allocation of FFs is too low, double it, tripple it, raise it as much as you want.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'I')'ve got plenty to say about Pops' apology for industrial ag,