World Carrying Capacity

[dcfirefighter]

Doing a little surfing and I came up with the fact that the world has 5 billion hectares of agricultural land.

One book I'm reading on biointensive gardening gives a year's worth of food, in a balanced, vegetarian diet, from 10,000 s.f. of land, 10" of rain, and a 4 month growing season, without fertilizers or pesticides. In the US, only AZ, NV, and NM receive less than 10" a year. Those states receive at least 7", so you'd need 10/7th's as much land.

While some land would need to be used for fiber and building materials production, this is enough agricultural land to theoretically support more than 50 Billion people. (World population now is 6.4 Billion).

It seems to me that the problem is a flawed economic system.

[bananas]

1. Yup

[taliesin]

2. may i ask the name of the book?

[Massacure]

3. The key is more of a balanced diet than it is vegetarian diet.

A lot of people don't know the meaning of balanced though.

[dcfirefighter]

4. we're under the limit by far

so people can still eat meat (thankfully).

The books are by John Jeavons
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=q98jv3xBZ1&isbn=1580082335&itm=1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=q98jv3xBZ1&isbn=1580080162&itm=3
http://www.growbiointensive.org/

[Viking12]

5. Your extrapolation is flawed....

Of the alleged 5 billion hectares of ag land how much of that land meets this criteria?

10,000 s.f. of land, 10" of rain, and a 4 month growing season

I am guessing a small percentage.


Moreover, I really question the 10,000 s.f. of land, 10" of rain, and a 4 month growing season formula. According to this formula, even in the highly productive midwest, this would mean you could support a family of four on one acre. I find that equation hard to believe.

[NNadir]

6. The world is already way beyond its carrying capacity.

The environment is clearly in free fall.

The calculation is flawed because the only variable is arable land. Other variables are water, air, mineral balances in soil and far more subtle things, like genetic diversity, pathogen limitations, and climatic stability.

A full planet of arable land will be useless if it doesn't rain. Just ask the Martians, or better yet, given the direction we're headed, the Venutians.

[dcfirefighter]

8. True, the only constraint was land

but, water falls from the sky with regularity. The where might change, but with a warmer planet, I think it'll happen faster - more heat driving the water cycle, especially with rising oceans.

Air: high carbon dioxide content increases the caloric output of crops, though not the other nutrients.

Soil: the whole point of the method is cultivating soil (and genetic diversity).

Don't think for a moment that I think nothing's wrong, and nothing should change, I'm just pointing out that I don't believe mass starvation is a neccessary outcome.

[NNadir]

10. I'm sorry, but this is like betting your kids on a dice game.

Water does not fall from the sky with "regularity." As the climate destabilizes it falls in fits and starts and sometimes not at all. A sound agricultural policy depends very much on predictability and there isn't any.

A cursory look around the planet, from Spain to Mumbai, to Florida, to Illinois, to the Himilayas gives lie to the notion of predictability.

There is no evidence whatsoever that high carbon dioxide increases the caloric output of crops. There is excellent evidence that a high carbon dioxide content destabilizes ecosystems and allows for the introduction of new pathogens and insects. Whole areas of forest are being stripped by bark beatles etc. I guarantee with 100% assurance that the complete melting of montain glaciers, which is currently underway, will permanently remove major river systems on which most of humanity now depends for food.

There is no way in hell this planet can support 6 billion people, never mind 50 billion people. Catastrophe is rapidly becoming a certainty.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Where are you going to get the fertilizer?

And who/how are you going to work the land? A significant portion of the population is physically unfit to do that kind of work. I don't mean "soft" -- I mean old, too young, handicapped, etc.

Using animals requires even more food. Using machines requires an energy source.

Then there's the need for water. There's plenty of water, but it's difficult getting it to the right places; desalinization is also a problem. Each requires more energy.

Preparing food also requires more energy.

But the fertilizer problem is the big one. Right now, agriculture is a major fertilizer "sink". It is massively wasteful; it also uses much more water than a natural ecosystem can easily provide. Vegetarians may want to keep in mind that modern farming kills billions of small animals a year.

Our civilization is in a real bind. We certainly do have a flawed economic system, and the basic, low-level support systems are also dysfunctional. Everything has become abstract, and people no longer work to survive, they work for symbols called "money". There is no real-life correspondance between money and food, and it is possible for a situation to exist where there is a lot of money and no food. And you can't eat money.

To sustain fifty billion people is currently impossible. I wish it wasn't so. The prospect of a human die-off exists, and hunger would be the engine of the machine of mass death. Even for the most macabre aficionado of apocalytic thought, a die-off of 5-6 billion people is just too horrible to imagine.

Terrestrial carrying capacity is up to the decisions and choices we make, but so far, we've made all the wrong choices. It's an unpleasant reality, but maybe if more people understood it, that reality would get fixed.

--p!

[dcfirefighter]

9. I'm going to grow it

1 person with simple hand tools working 1 acre 40h a week, feeding himself and 3 others. Obviously if 25% of the population is working the fields, we'll have trouble with scarcity in other vocations, but this is a bare dirt minimum.

Most agricultural lands receive enough rainfall, though often not at the right times. Properly conditioned soil (and crop selection) stores the moisture. 5 gallon buckets and cheap drip irrigation can widen the crop selection. Closely packed plantings shade the soil and reduce evaporation.

Food preparation for a vegetarian diet doesn't require much energy. A solar oven can be made from a cardboard box and aluminum foil.

Fertilizer: the method is largely organic (it doesn't preclude spot applications of insecticide if nothing else has worked). Compost crops are grown during the winter, and all other crop wastes are compested and reincorporated to the soil. The method 'grows' topsoil at a rate 100's of times faster than nature. If animal and human wastes can be composted and incorporated into the soil, so much the better.

50 billion probably is impossible. But since there's less than 6.5 billion of us right now, I'm merely pointing out that land, food, and agriculture should be far from the limiting factors. In fact, with different technologies and use patterns, the limiting factors will change. If a population limit is to be reached, the limiting factor SHOULD be some natural resource: labor increases with population, and with labor and resources, we can produce more capital goods. Now when there is inequitable access to natural resources, our labor can't produce, and our capital is useless.

[bananas]

11. These calculations have been done many times by many people

Here's an example, from the website of the creator of the "Lisp" programming language:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/sustainability-faq.html

Q. Can the world grow enough food for 15 billion people?

A. Yes, it can, and with present technology. With better technology, probably a lot more.

[PaulaFarrell]

12. the problem is that a lot of land degrades over time

is it's not replenished.

For example, in the Amazon, land that is slashed and burned is only fertile for 2-3 years, and then is abandoned. From that point it's useless for growing just about anything, and even the jungle doesn't regrow. This is happening on a wide scale in Brazil, and what's worse is the effect that this could have on rainfall in the entire region.

Technology isn't the solution, it's part of the problem. The most productive farming units ever recorded were small-scale organic-style farms, but these rely on manual labour which is exactly the opposite of the way farming is going. Chemical fertilisers provide an initial boost but they contaminate the water and in the long run lead to minerals leaching from the soil, meaning industrial food is less nutritious than traditionally-farmed food.

[dcfirefighter]

14. The method is as much about 'growing' soil as it is growing food n/t

[bananas]

18. Small-scale organic farming is a technology

Any kind of farming is a technology, it was a big leap from hunter-gathering technology, to be able to stay in one place and farm the land. Today's organic farms use a lot of well-developed technology, and they are thriving because of it. I am a big fan of organic food and organic farming. People used to tell me that organic food would never reach the mass-market for two reasons: 1) it was too expensive to produce and 2) the American mass market is picky and wanted uniform looking food, organic vegetables came in all shapes and sizes and were full of bugs. So the organic farmers worked on their technology, and now you can buy competitively priced organic produce in the supermarket and it is bug-free and the shape and size of each piece is consistent. It's now a huge market.

As far as the forests - McCarthy has a report on his website which concludes that not only can we grow more food, we can also give a lot of the current farmland back to nature. I don't agree with McCarthy on a lot of things, I'm just providing it as a point of reference, as I say a lot of people have looked at it and came to the same conclusions, the problem isn't food production but human factors like political control and greed.

"The report envisages considerable land being withdrawn from agricultural production so as to leave more land for nature."
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/agriculture.html

[Boomer]

13. 50 billion people.... living where?

Okay, some theoretical formula may indicate that agricultural land could support 50 billion people (shudder), but people need a LOT more than food to survive. They need fuel, shelter, clothing, and material goods, even if it's just a few pots for cooking and jars for storing food.

So where exactly are 50 BILLION people going to get enough building materials for their houses, wood for their fires, cotton for their clothing, and metals and minerals for durable goods? And just where are they going to put those houses and those goods? And the factories for making those goods? And the transportation system to deliver those goods?

A large portion of that non-agricultural land is also unfit for habitation so at some point the population is going to need that land for something other than growing food, which means the figure is bogus.

And that doesn't even begin to explore the issue of how many people can be supported by non-edible resources: wood, fibers, metals, coal, oil, that we suck up at an incredible rate.

The ocean ecosystems have been fished out and are in the process of collapse. Many other natural resources have been stripped out from areas of easy access. All this for "just" 6.4 billion people. The attempt to support that number several times over would turn this world into a desert.

Not that humans wouldn't try it anyway, but our inefficiencies will kill us off way before then. I just hope we'll leave enough debris to sustain a few hardy life forms that will survive our scavenging of the earth.

[dcfirefighter]

15. Errata, clarifications

Much of the information was off the top of my head, and needs a point of clarification.

With 20" of rain, 5,000 s.f / person is required (4,000 is growing space, 1,000 is paths, etc.)
With 10" of rain ~10,000 s.f. / person is required - 1/2 with crop, half sloped to divert rainwater to the crop.
2,000 calories per day for 365 days is 730,000 calories


Crops for one person in 4,000 s.f growing space:

2,400 s.f. "carbon & calorie crops" grains, fava beans, sunflowers, filbers, raisins.
e.g. Quinoa yield 13 lbs / 100 s.f. @ 1500 Cal / lb = 468,000 Cal + 936 lbs dry biomass for compost

1,200 s.f. "high-calorie root crops" potatoes, burdock, sweet potatoes, garlic, parsnips, salsify
e.g. Sweet Potatoes yield 164 lbs / 100 s.f. @ 375 cal /lb = 738,000 Cal

400 s.f. "vegetable and cash crops" salad crops, etc., mixed to provide non-caloric nutrition
e.g. cabbage yield 191 lbs / 100 s.f. @ 98 cal / lb = 74,982 cal

Total caloric yield = 1,280,000 or 3,500 a day from a 5,000 s.f. plot @ 20" of rain a year, with yields from 'intermediate' soils and skills. Even bad soils would be 'intermediate' after a few years of this method. Actual caloric yields would vary, as several species in each category should be grown, yields and caloric content should be similar.

None of this is to say that I think that population growth shouldn't be controlled by education and opportunities to work. Living at the limit of available resources is much less comfortable than living well beneath it. The 5 Billion hectare of agricultural land is from the Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) link. It includes 1.5 Bn Ha under permanent crops and arable land. This would support 15 billion people. There are also 3.5 Bn Ha of permanent pastures, at least some of which could be converted tp cropland. Total agricultural lands represent 37% of the world's land area.

Again, the point i'd like to make is that we humans have more than enough resources to survive.

I think I'm in the minority on DU, in that i believe in free markets. I beleive the failure of modern capitalism & even market socialism is the particular concepts of ownership we have, and a failure to recognize the commons. Specifically, I think that natural resources can not be legitimately owned, but must be 'rented' from the rest of us. There are variety of good reasons for this view, a few include: "No one created it, no one can own it.", "Search back long enough, and all titles are based on theft", "It was a gift of "

Attempting to assign access to natural resources by government fiat would result in inequities as well: who gets their 40 acres in lower manhattan, and who gets theirs in eastern Wyoming? Renting them from the rest of us allows market forces to work in assigning the best uses to the best lands, while limiting income from those lands to actual productivity (as the location value was paid in rent).

Similar economic forces would work for the allocation of groundwater, surface water, atmospheric pollution, fishing rights, timber rights, drilling rights, mining rights, broadcast rights, airway rights, and orbit rights.

A glaring example of the effects of not doing this is shown by water rights out west. Hereditary (allodial) water rights given to farmers allow them to grow lettuce and other water-intensive crops in the middle of a desert, when millions of folks downstream need (and are willing to pay) for water. The farmers then stop farming, and make small (sometimes large) fortunes leasing their water rights to downstream users, profiting not off of their labor and investment, but rather off of a government license.

Another examples would be (you'll like this NNadir) coal plants 'grandfathered' into pollution rules. The correct procedure would be to auction the right to pollute out, preferably at the world level. A maximum output of CO2 could established, and companies would have to bid on permits. This way the revenue goes the general welfare, rather than to historical polluters, as it does in current tradeable permit schemes.

[hankthecrank]

16. Farm land going going gone

With out some help farm land is being changed into Mac-mansions and to fast food parking lots. Some land needs to be changed to allow growth. But I worry

Also farm land is not just putting seed in and waiting while it rains.
Nature is good at taking advantage of a food source. Its better to rotate crops and plant things with some diversity.
Man is good at missing the whole pattern some times.
The more diversity the better.
Insects take more food than we do.

We can't just turn the whole planet into parking lots and not leave some wild areas. You need places to go to find answers.

Also we need to keep old seed stock around. In case of some problems not seen at the time. Kind of like Ireland and the potatoes famine.

[dcfirefighter]

17. land value tax & zoning

My two favorites for mitigating sprawl. Make people pay for their locations, which 1) returns the financial benefits of transportation networks, schools, public safety, parks and other public goods to the public. 2) makes it expensive to hold urban sites out of production for speculative gain 3) encourages building to highest & best use (and zoning limits) 4) causes cities to grow up (to zoning limits) rather than out 5) lowers the cost of housing 6) untaxes productive (and job providing) activities like construction 7) doesn't tax productive (and job providing) activities.
split rate property tax

Zoning should allow relatively high densities (I like 4-6 storeys) so, among other things, greenspace and agricultural lands can be quite close to the population center for a given population. My ideal car free city urban plan.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/norway_seed_ban.php">Svalbard, Norway Seed Bank

[Dogmudgeon]

19. I read over the posts again

My own back-of-the-envelope math and "rant" follow -- actually, I agree with much of what you wrote, I just think the disease will progress much faster than your proposed cure can be implemented. (Although I will address this to you, it should be read as a general explanation, not a specific rebuttal.)

I understand your point about the current economic inefficiency and corruption that leads to resource shortages, but I'm unclear on what point you're trying to make in general. Are you mainly trying to lay out support for a Georgist system of economics? Most of us here would, of course, be favorably inclined to some or most of a Georgist agenda, or at least read and reason it over fairly.

Right now, the world is not in a state of famine. Famines are local, such as the one in central Africa, where the famine was created by both tyrants and drought -- which brings us back to your first point.

My own big concern about food production is that within a few years of the post-peak-gas economy -- 2-10 years after Peak Oil -- we will start having shortfalls of agricultural nitrogen, since most all our fertilizer is from the ammonium nitrate generated as a by-product of natural gas formation. Nitrogen-fixing plants (that can take nitrogen from the air and use it to make protein) do exist, but most are legumes, which require correspondingly higher levels of other nutrients (mainly micronutrients).

Assuming the mythical "Peak Oil" point comes in 2010, and Peak Gas in 2020, by 2025 there will not be enough fertilizer to feed the world's peoples, even if a massive composting program is initiated. In 2025, by most accounts, the population of the world will be about 8-9 billion, or probably higher if standards of living keep falling. And since post-peak loss of resources will not be matched by immediate die-offs, we can expect in 2030 to have less than 80% of the fertilizer we have now to feed more than 150% of the population. So a lot of people are going to go hungry very quickly.

This massive composting program will not happen for the simple reason that far less than 5% of the world's population is in a position to compost organic waste. For instance, I live in an apartment complex with some 300 other people. We can not just make compost heaps and rick them at our leisure. Even if the landlord encouraged it -- which would only happen after the first "lean year" -- we would still face the problem of getting the compost to farms, dealing with smell in the first few days of the compost cycle, installing waste-collecting toilets or a waste-collecting sewage system, etc.

Yes, America can make enough compost, and probably pretty quickly, but the logistics are horrendous. Try to build a "poop box" with a bucket in it some time. You will find that it's a major hassle. It can be done, but it's not just a hassle, it's a major change for people. In a crisis, people aren't going to have enough presence of mind to build such a thing, use it and dump it in the compost heap each day, and rick the heap every second or third day. And they won't like the stink, either (especially in the summer!), though the smell of feces and urine is preferable to slow death by starvation.

I'm sure that North America will do much better than will Europe and Asia. Our soils are still in better overall shape, we have less desertification, and our prairies are more fertile than the Asian steppes (which are really just prairies with short grasses). I do not think that famine will kill us off, unless an agricultural disease hits, like in John Christopher's story The Death of Grass. Japan, however, is finished, and will starve unless it is sent food; it relies heavily on fish which are dying off right now.

Looking at similar changes in the American way of life -- and the ways of life of other peoples, as in the "Green Revolution" of 1950-1980 or so -- I'd estimate that it would take at least 15 years to get a full-bore decentralized soil culturing program underway. And that would be fast, unless some way is found for a small number of people to make a vast fortune from it. But keep in mind, this is about processing garbage and human shit.

The time-to-implementation is the real issue. Famine will affect the tyrants first as it destabilizes then kills their political slaves, which is about the only good that will be able to be said of it. The ability to wage war with large armies will be lost next, making mechanized and computerized warfare more likely.

If enough people can be killed as the result of "collateral damage", we will again have a world with sufficient resources. But given the possibilities of hunger and warfare, will the other two horsemen want to stay home?

Hunger is part of the overall sad picture of a civilization that does not know how to use its resources intelligently and does not value human existence. It is not too late to prevent that mass suicide, but we no longer have the luxury of debating political philosophy.

But as soon as survival is taken care of, Henry George should be on the reading list -- we'll collectively have a lot of catching up to do.

--p!

[dcfirefighter]

20. Henry George, more or less

of course.

Why bother composting human wastes when you can get the sludge out of the wastewater treatment plant?

As late as the 60's philly had a 'trash' truck and a 'garbage' truck, no reason these couldn't be returned to service.

Natural gas production will peak later than gas will (has).

Famines will continue in locations, as they have in the past, unless a significant surplus can be grown elsewhere, and profitably (or charitably) transported to areas of need. Changing climate patterns will exacerbate localized famines.

The key to changing food production techniques has two parts as I see it: 1) Industrialized countries need to reduce their agricultural subsidies, allowing both local smallhold farmers in industrialized nations to compete; and allowing farmers in agrarian / pre-industrial nations to develop their own profitable farm systems. 2) Tax & property laws need to be revised so that industrialized country agriculture (and other industries) change their methods from minimizing labor (and maximizing returns capital and natural capital) to minimizing use of natural capital.

The second point is, of course, very georgist. However, tax & property laws that favor the use of land and capital over labor are one of the main reasons that organic, biointensive farming can and does outperform industrialized petrochemical agriculture ON A PER AREA basis. (Modern industrial agriculture outperforms organic farming on a PER FARM LABOR basis ).

[Dogmudgeon]

22. Ahh ... the sweet aroma of Philly trash ...

Yep, I remember them, though some areas didn't have them. I'm not sure of why we had two of them, though. I never learned as a kid, and hadn't given it a thought until you re-awakened the memory.

Using collected wastewater has potential, but I've been under the impression that it usually contains too much chlorine and antiseptic chemicals from household products. It might be worth checking on, and I've been known to be wrong before. :)

I don't doubt that biointensive farming can outperform petro-ag, and could even do it on a per-labor basis. The main problem I forsee is in adopting it fast enough. I think there is too much inertia and way too much advantage enjoyed by factory farming. Georgist principles could enhance its adoption -- encouraging a relatively unregulated marketplace (I think coliform bacteria testing would be a good idea) in a "new" technology -- but for the interia. And that's going to be one of the things that kill us.

--p!

[dcfirefighter]

24. I know the Blue Plains water treatment facility in DC

Sells it's biosolids to farmers (apparently 90% of them at least)
http://www.dcwasa.com/education/biosolids_recycling.cfm

I don't know about the relative efficacy of wastewater treatment v composting. Obviously composting has advantage if you're willing to do it yourself . . . but if you have to regularly collect materials from households . . . I don't know.

It may be cheaper and more effective to simply issue kitchen garbage disposals to every house, and perhaps industrial macerators to every restaurant.

One of the problems is that it's so damn cheap to use a landfill.

[Boomer]

21. Compost piles do not stink

Not if they are properly maintained.

Same goes for humanure compost as well. You don't just dump raw waste into a bin and walk away -- each deposit should be covered with an absorbent cover of some kind, like sawdust.

This prevents any odor from forming.

[Dogmudgeon]

23. Mainly right

Compost heaps do stink to high heaven for the first day or two, though there may be a way around that. It's also possible that the stink comes from poor technique, but in a large population suddenly converted to an agricultural lifestyle, that can be expected. (And many of the farmers in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania may just be lackadaisical!) But I think most of us would trade the occasional whiff of rotting waste for our 2000-3000 calories of food a day.

With increased use and skill, smell problems would be minimized.

I don't know of anyone who has tried the Humanure system, but there are at least two commercial products that work by the same principle (the old Clivus Multrum was the first one I saw) and they can smell, too, though the smell is usually pretty controllable, and the one I saw had an air-exhaust vent for that purpose.

Again, they're not terrible, but their sudden adoption would require a learning curve reinforced by pungent odors.

These are good ideas, though, and will probably be adopted in time. But that's my main concern -- I don't think we'll be able to make the change fast enough without a very tough government program, on an emergency footing. In reference to DCFirefighter's message above, strong-arming people into not using antiseptic cleansers, and taking the waste from the municipal waste plants, might be a good way to reduce the the need for both government force and diligence in composting.

--p!

[Boomer]

25. Composting will be only one of many problems

>> But that's my main concern -- I don't think we'll be able to make the change fast enough... <<

My partner and I began to develop an organic garden the first year we moved into a house with a back yard. It's small, but it already had well-established flower beds and a garden shed, so we weren't starting from scratch.

But it's STILL taken us five years to learn the basics of how to compost, how to construct raised beds and build up the soil, to learn what plants do well in one location versus another and how to repell insects, and then there's learning how to rotate crops.

All this, and we're still losing certain crops depending on weather conditions or new waves of insects, or what have you. And we're nowhere near the yields we would need to survive a serious food shortage. That will require another year or two's effort to double or triple the amount of ground used and assumes that we can simply buy the vast majority of top soil needed for that expansion.

In dozens of posts on DU I read these optimistic assessments about how we can increase food production on a local level and NOWHERE is there any recognition of the very long learning curve for gardening, much less the length of time it takes to condition residential soil to be productive. This is knowledge and skill which has been LOST among the vast majority of Americans.

The WWII generation could grow a Victory garden because most of them had gardens already or knew how to work one. That is no longer the case. Most kids I meet wouldn't know a fresh turnip from a beet and haven't the foggiest notion how you would grow one, even if they were willing to eat it.

Gardening takes substantial time and effort, especially in the first few years. We're one of the few (if not the only) residents on our entire block who has taken the effort to create a functional vegetable garden. On strolls through the back alleys of our larger neighborhood, we'll see one or two gardens that are obviously being maintained by someone of our grandparents generation, but none by young families with children.

In the event of food shortages or outright famine, there will be no quick solution. And hungry and starving people do not patiently till the soil and build up seed stores in anticipation of eating the crops a few years down the road. Unfortunately, neither do well-fed complacent people who are used to having food handed to them in a paper bag.

Catch-22.