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Re: The Limits To Growth



Michael Turton includes:

     Define "efficiency" please?  Is using heavily subsidized oil
     and water to increase yields "efficient?"  As Arnold Pacey
     points out in _The Culture of Technology_, from the
     yield/hectare standpoint capital-intensive farming is more
     "efficient," but from the energy input/yield standpoint,
     low-tech, labor intensive farming is more efficient, many
     times more, in fact.

Making energy efficiency a general goal is foolish.  What counts is
the labor efficiency that permits two percent of the American
population to grow food for all of us and then some for export.
Even yield/hectare is much less important than yield/man-hour.
American farms are typically less efficient than European in
yield/hectare and more efficient in yield/man-hour.

-- 
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.



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