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Re: The Limits To Growth



David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:

: >Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: >: As an aside, I will note that the majority of agricultural land in the
: >: world is farmed with low-tech inefficient methods.  Expantion of the use of
: >: modern agriculture, new species, and good infrastructure, can more than
: >: double world food production.  All without an additional acre being farmed,
: >: though, in the US at least, agricultural land usage has been on the decline
: >: for many years.   Perhaps you have some statistics here?
: >
: >You are welcome to calculate the increase of the crude oil drawdown rate
: >if the rest of the world farms the way the US does.

: There is nothing here about the rest of the world farming "the way the
: US does."  Feeding chemical fed corn to cattle is a singularly stupid
: way of both using land and feeding people.

But Mike is quoting North American yields.  That means North American methods.

: The major hindrances to the productivity of land are the lack of
: potassium and of nitrogen.  The United States burned its eastern
: forests to export potash to Europe, then conquered the Pacific to get
: the islands it authorised itself to seize under the Guano ct of 1899.

It is good to see the truth here.  No platitudes about democracy here.

: Modern agriculture -- modern, not American, being Asher's keyword --
: replaces these olde tyme moves with the simple strewing of phosphate
: rock, available in vast quantities in Saskatchewan, Idaho, California,
: Peru, and elsewhere.
:  
: In American agriculture the main source of nitrogen is ammonia, which
: used to be made out of electricity, and is today made more cheaply
: from natural gas.  This is not the only way of doing it. India and
: China both built large populations on small land areas by planting
: nitrogen fixing plants, lentils and soybeans, respectively. 

I repeat my comment about energy stocks.  I note that it went unanswered.

: It will be a quick fix, literally, in Sudan once the civil war ends,
: to alternate soybeans with millet on the Bor uplands.  This will mean
: an immediate, cheap, and huge improvement of productivity; the
: necessary survey work has already been done, by satellite, and is on
: file on the Internet at University of Arizona.  My partner's family,
: those who have not been murdered by the government, own some of the
: land, and bide their time in universities in Europe, Canada, Botswana.

Yes, landowners.  What will be left for those who have had their land
confiscated?  

: I think there is an automatic Nobel Prize in either chemistry of peace
: for the person who comes up with the nitrogen-fixing grain, tuber, or
: fruit tree.  As genetic engineering -- think of it as a new kind of
: biodiversity -- proceeds, I expect these prizes to be claimed over the
: next few years.

It is nice to hope.  In the meantime, I'll let you eat all that lovely
Monsanto gentech grain.  If they aren't too cowardly to mark it, we can
both have the type we want.

--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
       
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/



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