I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Solution for 1):
Produce nitrogen fertilizer from the ammonia in human urine, rather than from natural gas. Other essential plant nutrients will be recovered from human crap, which will be carefully collected and sold by the barrel.
Solution for 2):
Switch to electric farm machinery. Just plug them straight into a solar/nuclear driven grid like the big electric equipment used in mining. Eventually, the whole process will be supervised by computers and worked by robots. This will make food even cheaper.
Crops will also be engineered to produce their own natural herbicides (as some plants already do). Where pests cannot be controlled with their natural predators and close robotic monitoring, they will be eliminated with ordinary petroleum-based pesticides derived from non-conventional or synthesized oil.
Multi-story hydroponic facilities may also be a good way to increase yields per unit of land surface area.
"Solution for 3):
Tiny weeder robots with robust recognition capabilities will patrol the fields, injecting micro-quantities of herbicides into weeds. "
Alternative to solution 2 : Use horses. Yes it means more labour (so what? you won't have a job in the stock market), but it also means more horse manure (as fertiliser) and a horse can replicate itself every year (which you can sell or trade or eat). Also, horses can reach places machinery can't, and they eat grass which humans can't (not even the rich grass, but the crappy stuff the cows leave behind, so you graze them together, it is good for the land to crossgraze, and good for the animals).
Alternative to solution 3 : Use your hands you lazy bum! _________________ We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas.
I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do. -- John Seymour.
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 7:45 am Post subject: Re: Post-Carbon Farming Problem Solved
JohnDenver wrote:
Crops will also be engineered to produce their own natural herbicides (as some plants already do). Where pests cannot be controlled with their natural predators and close robotic monitoring, they will be eliminated with ordinary petroleum-based pesticides derived from non-conventional or synthesized oil.
just a little note on "natural herbicides". Plants protect themselves by making themeselves too toxic for the insects to eat. This toxin is just as bad for humans, but because its in small quantities, we don't suffer. Increasing a plants natural herbicide will make it just as toxic as spraying it with chemicals (and we won't be able to wash it off).
Also; ever since I read about preons and mad cow disease, I'm really apprehensive about genetic engineering and tampering with mother nature. Just because it sounds like a safe idea, doesn't mean it is
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:03 am Post subject: Re: Post-Carbon Farming Problem Solved
FoxV wrote:
JohnDenver wrote:
Crops will also be engineered to produce their own natural herbicides (as some plants already do). Where pests cannot be controlled with their natural predators and close robotic monitoring, they will be eliminated with ordinary petroleum-based pesticides derived from non-conventional or synthesized oil.
just a little note on "natural herbicides". Plants protect themselves by making themeselves too toxic for the insects to eat.
FoxV, I'm talking about herbicides, not pesticides. Natural herbicides retard the growth of neighboring plants. They don't kill insects.
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:04 am Post subject: Goumi, Siberian Pea Shrub, Legumes, False Indigo
Alternative to Prob #1:
These are all plants that supposedly boost production of other nearby plants due to their n-fixing abilities. Have to admit I don't know how it works, but I am trying it in my garden plan. The first 2 are attractive food-producing shrubs and will be interplanted with my other berry bushes. Otherwise I plant to interplant legumes and false indigo with my regular veggie garden.
There's a more comprehensive list of n-fixers in the book Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway.
Joined: Apr 21, 2004 Posts: 508 Location: Republic of Texas
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:47 am Post subject:
1. Crop rotation and fallowing
2. Farm grown biodiesel/no-till/draft animals
3. Crop rotation helps control weeds and bugs. There's hoes for what's left. Live with the bugs, they have to make a living too. _________________ The road goes on forever and the party never ends - REK
Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 892 Location: San Francisco, California
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:36 am Post subject:
I think part of JohnDenver's goal here is to maximize the sustainable efficiency of each unit of land used for food production. The automation of farm labor increases the yield per land unit, as explained here by Cash and Razoxanne.
Not necessarily. There are hand farming methods which equal or exceed the yield of automated systems.
Yup Organic farming can give higher yields than both conventional and GM. (Note the use of the word "can", it doesn't always. That's a little discrepancy we like to call "nature" ) _________________ We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas.
I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do. -- John Seymour.
Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 892 Location: San Francisco, California
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:00 pm Post subject:
Ludi wrote:
Not necessarily. There are hand farming methods which equal or exceed the yield of automated systems.
If this is true, then it refutes the doomer argument that energy inputs enhance carrying capacity, allowing more people to live on the planet than could live without these energy inputs. It means that declining energy does not threaten food production.
If it is false, then energy inputs alleviate overshoot, as I explained here.
I didn't think this was possible but the doomer "declining food production leads to Malthusian catastrophe" argument appears to be false regardless of the effect of energy on food production.
What has happened to me? I've gone from doomer-leaning moderate to cornucopian in a few short months! Pigs fly! Icicles sprout in the netherworld!
I'm still for conservation and peace, nonetheless.
Note on my use of the term, "cornucopian:" I'm just kidding, sort of. If I am one, I define cornucopian as someone who believes that an abundance of energy is a good thing, not someone who believes, fallaciously, that finite resources are actually infinite.
Last edited by johnmarkos on Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:17 pm; edited 2 times in total
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13064 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:10 pm Post subject:
Quote:
If this is true, then it refutes the doomer argument that energy inputs enhance carrying capacity, allowing more people to live on the planet than could live without these energy inputs. It means that declining energy does not threaten food production.
This refutation implies that many people are in a position to rather quickly move to an area where farming can be practiced, which is unlikely, because many, if not most, people live in cities.
It also ignores the fact that overshoot will occur eventually because of some other factor, such as breakdown of biological systems due to too much biota being changed into human mass, which we see with the collapse of fisheries worldwide, destruction of soils, extinction and endangerment of various sizes of flora and fauna, the loss of most of the world's forests, desertification due to agriculture and pastoralism, etc etc ad nauseum.
If this is true, then it refutes the doomer argument that energy inputs enhance carrying capacity, allowing more people to live on the planet than could live without these energy inputs. It means that declining energy does not threaten food production
Not necessarily. Organic or alternative methods of farming don't automatically imply less energy, merely different energy (and possibly even more energy). Think human and horse/oxen power instead of tractor power. Now, one might say that these would be enormously inefficient compared to tractors, and in a sense that is true. However, consider the increasing cost of oil to power tractors vs the almost free energy from a horse (I say almost free, you will need to supplement the horses grass intake with concentrate foods, like oats and beet pulp). Also with a horse or oxen (like mentioned above) you get another animal yearly, and free fertiliser. But with a horse, you can only work for so long, whereas with a tractor you can keep going all day. The idea then is to have more horses and humans to do the job of one tractor. Like I said, not less energy, just different energy. That's just one scenario, there are different methods that may require less energy, like permaculture, but these are usually on a smaller scale. Still, they work. _________________ We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas.
I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do. -- John Seymour.
Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 892 Location: San Francisco, California
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:31 pm Post subject:
Ludi wrote:
This refutation implies that many people are in a position to rather quickly move to an area where farming can be practiced, which is unlikely, because many, if not most, people live in cities.
I suspect that there are hidden energy costs in the hand farming techniques and that it's really just a variation of condition A, in which energy inputs increase yield per productive unit of land.
Quote:
It also ignores the fact that overshoot will occur eventually because of some other factor, such as breakdown of biological systems due to too much biota being changed into human mass, which we see with the collapse of fisheries worldwide, destruction of soils, extinction and endangerment of various sizes of flora and fauna, the loss of most of the world's forests, desertification due to agriculture and pastoralism, etc etc ad nauseum.
The goal of maximizing the yield of each productive land unit is to avoid the environmental devastation you describe. If the land area required to sustain an individual human is lowered and the population is also lowered (using humane means like better education), then humanity can be brought back into ecological surplus, allowing more land to return to its natural function. This transition eliminates ecological debt.
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Organic farming can give higher yields than both conventional and GM. (Note the use of the word "can", it doesn't always. That's a little discrepancy we like to call "nature" 
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