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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Making the World Sustainable - Mae-Wan Ho
  • Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 07:19:04 -0600


Making the World Sustainable - Mae-Wan Ho
Biophysics Group, Dept. of Pharmacy, King’s College, Franklin-Wilkins
Bldg.
London SE1 9NN, UK.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MTWS.php
Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 0XR, UK
E-mail: m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk

Plenary lecture at Food Security in An Energy-Scarce World international
conference, 23-25 June 2005, University College, Dublin, Ireland.

A fuller version with references and figures are posted on ISIS Members’
website. Details here
Abstract

Decades of an "environmental bubble economy" built on the over-exploitation
of natural resources has accelerated global warming, environmental
degradation, depletion of water and oil, and brought falling crop yields,
precipitating a crisis in world food security with no prospects for
improvement under the business as usual scenario.

There is, nevertheless, a wealth of knowledge for making our food system
sustainable that not only can provide food security and health for all, but
can also go a long way towards mitigating global warming by preventing
greenhouse gas emissions and creating new carbon stocks and sinks.

One of the most important obstacles to implementing the existing knowledge
is the dominant economic model of unrestrained, unbalanced growth that has
already failed the reality test. I describe a highly productive integrated
farming system based on maximising internal input to illustrate a theory of
sustainable organic growth as alternative to the dominant model.
Current food production system due for collapse

World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003 as
temperatures soar, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years [1]. The
situation did not improve despite a ‘bumper’ harvest in 2004, which was
just enough to satisfy world consumption. Experts are predicting [2] that
global warming is set to do far worse damage to food production than "even
the gloomiest of previous forecasts." An international team of crop
scientists from China, India, the Philippines and the United States had
already reported that crop yields fall by 10 percent for each deg. C rise
in night-time temperature during the growing season [3].

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in 2001 that
the earth’s average temperature would rise by 1.4 to 5.8 deg. C within
this century [4]. In 2003, a Royal Society conference in London told us
that the IPCC model fails to capture the abrupt nature of climate change,
that it could be happening over a matter of decades or years [5]. In
January 2005, a group based in Oxford University in the UK predicts a
greater temperature rise of 1.9 to 11.5 deg. C when carbon dioxide level in
the atmosphere, currently standing at 379 parts per million, doubles its
pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million sometime within the present
century [6].

The "environmental bubble economy" built on the unsustainable exploitation
of our natural resources is due for collapse [7] said Lester Brown of Earth
Policy Institute. The task of turning our food production system
sustainable must be addressed at "war-time" speed.

He summarised the fallout of the environmental bubble economy succinctly
[8]: "..collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, rising
CO2 levels, eroding soils, rising temperatures, falling water tables,
melting glaciers, deteriorating grasslands, rising seas, rivers that are
running dry, and disappearing species."

In too many of the major food-production regions of the world, such as the
bread baskets of China, India and the United States, conventional farming
practices including heavy irrigation have severely depleted the underground
water [7, 8]. At the same time, world oil production may have passed its
peak [9]; oil price hit a record high of US$58 a barrel on 4 April 2005,
and is expected to top US$100 within two years [10]. This spells looming
disaster for conventional industrial agriculture, which is heavily
dependent on both oil and water.

Our current food production system is a legacy of the high input
agriculture of the green revolution, exacerbated and promoted by
agricultural policies that benefit trans-national agribusiness corporations
at the expense of farmers [11, 12]. Its true costs are becoming all too
clear (see Box 1).

Box 1

True costs of industrial food production system

* 1 000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce one tonne of grain [13]
* 10 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our dinner
table [14, 15]
* Up to 1 000 energy units are used for every energy unit of processed
food [16]
* 17% of the total energy use in the United States goes into food
production & distribution, accounting for more than 20% of all transport
within the country; this excludes energy used in import and export [17]
* 12.5 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food
transported per thousand air-miles [18, 19]
* Current EU and WTO agricultural policies maximise food miles
resulting in scandalous "food swaps" [20, 21]
* Up to 25% of CO2, 60% of CH4 and 60% of N2O in the world come from
current agriculture [22]
* US$318 billion of taxpayer’s money was spent to subsidize
agriculture in OECD countries in 2002, while more than 2 billion
subsistence farmers in developing countries tried to survive on $2 a day
[11, 23]
* Nearly 90% of the agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big
farmers growing food for export; while 500 family farms close down every
week in the US [11]
* Subsidized surplus food dumped on developing countries creates
poverty, hunger and homelessness on massive scales [11]

Benefits of sustainable food production systems for everyone

Getting our food production sustainable is the most urgent task for
humanity; it is also the key to delivering health, mitigating global
warming and saving the planet from destructive exploitation. As Gustav
Best, Senior Energy Coordinator of FAO pointed out [22], agriculture is
impacted by climate change, it contributes a great deal of greenhouse gases
directly, but properly done, it goes a long way towards mitigating climate
change.

The benefits of sustainable food systems are becoming evident [24] (see Box
2). There are major opportunities to reduce energy use, to make our food
system much more energy efficient, and even to extract energy through
converting agricultural wastes into rich fertilizers to increase
productivity, that at the same time, reduces greenhouse gas emissions while
increasing carbon stocks and sinks.

Box 2

Some benefits of sustainable food production systems

* 2- to 7-fold energy saving on switching to low-input/organic
agriculture [17, 25]
* 5 to 15% global fossil fuel emissions offset by sequestration of
carbon in organically managed soil [26]
* 5.3 to 7.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission disappear with every
tonne of nitrogen fertilizer phased out [27]
* Up to 258 tonnes of carbon per hectare can be stored in tropical
agro-forests [28], which in addition, sequester 6 tonnes of carbon per
hectare per year [29]
* Biogas digesters provide energy and turn agricultural wastes into
rich fertilizers for zero-input, zero-emission farms [30]
* 625 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions prevented each year
in Nepal through harvesting biogas from agricultural wastes [31]
* 2- to 3-fold increase in crop yield using compost in Ethiopia,
outperforming chemical fertilizers [32]
* Organic farming in the US yields comparable or better than
conventional industrial farming [33, 34], especially in times of drought
[35]
* Organic farms in Europe support more birds, butterflies, beetles,
bats, and wild flowers than conventional farms [36]
* Organic foods contain more vitamins, minerals and other
micronutrients, and more antioxidants than conventionally produced foods
[37-40]
* 1 000 or more community-supported farms across US and Canada bring
$36m income per year directly to the farms [41]
* £50-78m go directly into the pocket of farmers trading in some 200
established local farmers’ markets in the UK [41]
* Buying food in local farmers’ market generates twice as much for
the local economy than buying food in supermarkets chains [42]
* Money spent with a local supplier is worth four times as much as
money spent with non-local supplier [43]

Dominant model unsustainable

There is a wealth of existing knowledge that could provide food security
and health for all and significantly mitigate global warming.
Unfortunately, our elected representatives are overwhelmingly committed to
the neo-liberal economic model that created the bubble-economy in the first
place. They lack the wisdom and the political will to make the structural
and policy change required for implementing the knowledge. That is why the
Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and the Independent Science Panel
(ISP) have launched a Sustainable World Global Initiative to create an
opportunity for scientists across the disciplines to join forces with all
sectors of civil society in a bid to make our food system sustainable [44].
We aim to produce a comprehensive report at the end of the year that will
lay out the existing knowledge base as well as the socioeconomic and
political policy and structural changes needed to implement sustainable
food systems for all. The launch conference takes place in UK Parliament 14
July 2005 (http://www.indsp.org/SustainableWorld2ndAnnouncement.php).

The dominant economic model glorifies competitiveness and unlimited growth
involving the most dissipative and destructive exploitation of the
earth’s natural resources that have laid waste to agricultural land and
impoverished billions.

A study for the International Food Policy Research Institute reveals that
each year, 10 million hectares of cropland worldwide are abandoned due to
soil erosion, and another 10 million hectares are critically damaged by
salination as a result of irrigation and/or improper drainage methods. This
amounts to more than 1.3 percent of total cropland lost annually; and
replacing lost cropland accounts for 60% of the massive deforestation now
taking place worldwide [45]. Clearing forests releases their massive carbon
stocks to the atmosphere, turning important carbon stocks and sinks into
sources. Some estimates have placed the total carbon stock of secondary
tropical forests as high as 418 tonnes of C per hectare including soil
organic carbon, and carbon is sequestered at 5 tonnes C per hectare per
year [46]. Change in land use such as this accounts for 14% of the global
total greenhouse gas emission [4].

The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 3 billion people are
malnourished (lacking in calories, protein, iron, iodine and/or vitamins A,
B, C, and D), of which 850 million actually suffer from hunger
(protein-energy malnutrition) [47]. The principal cause of hunger is
poverty. Some 1.08 billion poor people in developing countries live on $1
or less a day; of these, 798 million are chronically hungry.

Continued commitment to the dominant economic model – that has so
glaringly failed the reality test - is perhaps the greatest obstacle to
implementing sustainable food systems. There are already many success
stories from the grassroots, and I shall describe one of them [30] briefly.
It illustrates most concretely an alternative model of sustainable,
balanced growth that I have been elaborating over the past 8 years [48-51],
and presented in its most definitive form recently in collaboration with
ecologist Robert Ulanowicz [52].
Environmental engineer meets Chinese peasant farmers

It may sound like a dream, but it is possible to produce a super-abundance
of food with no fertilizers or pesticides and with little or no greenhouse
gas emission. The key is to treat farm wastes properly to mine the rich
nutrients that can be returned to the farm, to support the production of
fish, crops, livestock and more; get biogas energy as by-product, and
perhaps most importantly, conserve and release pure potable water back to
the aquifers.

Professor George Chan has spent years perfecting the system; and refers to
it as the Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IFWMS) [53]. I just
call it "dream farm" [30].

Chan was born in Mauritius and educated at Imperial College, London
University in the UK, specializing in environmental engineering. He was
director of two important US federal programmes funded by the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Department of Energy in the US Commonwealth of
the Northern Mariana Islands of the North Pacific. On retiring, Chan spent
5 years in China among the Chinese peasants, and confessed he learned just
as much there as he did in University.

He learned from the Chinese peasants a system of farming and living that
inspired him and many others including Gunter Pauli, the founder and
director of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) (www.zeri.org).
Chan has worked with ZERI since, which has taken him to nearly 80 countries
and territories, and contributed to evolving IFWMS into a compelling
alternative to conventional farming.

The integrated farm typically consists of crops, livestock and fishponds.
But the nutrients from farm wastes often spill over into supporting extra
production of algae, chickens, earthworms, silkworms, mushrooms, and other
valuables that bring additional income and benefits for the farmers and the
local communities.
Treating wastes with respect

The secret is in treating wastes to minimize the loss of valuable nutrients
that are used as feed. At the same time, greenhouse gases emitted from farm
wastes are harvested for use as fuel.

Livestock wastes are first digested anaerobically (in the absence of air)
to harvest biogas (mainly methane, CH4). The partially digested wastes are
then treated aerobically (in the presence of air) in shallow basins that
support the growth of green algae. By means of photosynthesis, the algae
produce all the oxygen needed to oxidise the wastes to make them safe for
fish. This increases the fertilizer and feed value in the fishponds without
robbing the fish of dissolved oxygen. All the extra nutrients go to
increase productivity, which is standing carbon stock, preventing carbon
dioxide (CO2) going to the atmosphere. Biogas is used, in turn, as a clean
energy source for cooking. This alone, has been a great boon to women and
children [54], above all, saving them from respiratory diseases caused by
inhaling smoke from burning firewood and cattle dung. It also spares the
women the arduous task of fetching 60 to 70 lb of firewood each week,
creating spare time for studying in the evening or earning more income.
Biogas energy also enables farmers to process their produce for
preservation and added value, reducing spoilage and increasing the overall
benefits.

The system has revolutionized farming of livestock, aquaculture,
horticulture, agro-industry and allied activities in some countries
especially in non-arid tropical and subtropical regions. It has solved most
of the existing economic and ecological problems and provided the means of
production in the form of fuel, fertilizer and feed, increasing
productivity many-fold.

"It can turn all those existing disastrous farming systems, especially in
the poorest countries into economically viable and ecologically balanced
systems that not only alleviate but eradicate poverty." Chan says [55].
Increasing the recycling of nutrients for greater productivity

The ancient practice of combining livestock and crop had helped farmers
almost all over the world. Livestock manure is used as fertilizer, and crop
residues are fed back to the livestock.

Chan points out, however, that most of the manure, when exposed to the
atmosphere, lost up to half its nitrogen as ammonia and nitrogen oxides
before they can be turned into stable nitrate that plants use as
fertilizer. The more recent integration of fish with livestock and crop has
helped to reduce this loss [56].

Adding a second production cycle of fish and generating further nutrients
from fish wastes has enhanced the integration process, and improved the
livelihoods of many small farmers considerably. But too much untreated
wastes dumped directly into the fishpond can rob the fish of oxygen, and
end up killing the fish.

In IFWMS, the anaerobically digested wastes from livestock are treated
aerobically before the nutrients are delivered into the fishponds to
fertilize the natural plankton that feed the fish without depleting oxygen,
thereby increasing fish yield 3- to 4-fold, especially with the polyculture
of many kinds of compatible fish feeding at different trophic levels as
practiced in China, Thailand, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. The fish
produce their own wastes that are converted naturally into nutrients for
crops growing both on the water surface and on dykes surrounding the ponds.

The most significant innovation of IFWMS is thus the two-stage method of
treating wastes. Livestock waste contains very unstable organic matter that
decomposes fast, consuming a lot of oxygen. So for any fish pond, the
quantity of livestock wastes that can be added is limited, as any excess
will deplete the oxygen and affect the fish population adversely, even
killing them.

Chan is critical of "erratic proposals" of experts, both local and foreign,
to spread livestock wastes on land to let them rot away and hope that the
small amount of residual nutrients left after tremendous losses that damage
the environment have taken place.

According to the US Environment Protection Agency, up to 70% of nitrous
oxide, N2O, a powerful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of
280 (i.e., 280 times that of carbon dioxide) comes from conventional
agriculture [57]. Nitrous oxide is formed as an intermediate both in
nitrification – oxidising ammonia (NH3) into nitrate (NO3-) – and
denitrification, reducing nitrate ultimately back to nitrogen gas. Both
processes are carried out by different species of soil bacteria. Animal
manure could be responsible for nearly half of the N2O emission in
agriculture in Europe, according to some estimates; the remainder coming
from inorganic nitrate fertilizer [58]. Thus, anaerobic digestion not only
prevents the loss of nutrients, it could also substantially reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the form of both methane
(harvested as biogas) and nitrous oxide (saved as nutrient).

Chan further dismisses the practice of composting nutrient-rich livestock
wastes [59], for this ends up with a low-quality fertilizer that has lost
ammonia, nitrite (NO) and nitrous oxide. Instead of mixing livestock wastes
with household garbage in the compost, Chan recommends producing
high-protein feeds such as earthworms from the garbage, and using worm
castings and garbage residues as better soil conditioners.

To close the circle, which is very important for sustainable growth,
livestock should be fed crops and processing residues, not wastes from
restaurants and slaughterhouses. Earthworms, silkworms, fungi, insects and
other organisms are also encouraged, as some of them are associated with
producing high value goods such as silk and mushrooms.
Proliferating lifecycles for greater productivity

The aerobic treatment in the shallow basins depends on oxygen produced by
the green alga Chlorella. Chlorella is very prolific and can be harvested
as a high-protein feed for chickens, ducks and geese.

When the effluent from the Chlorella basins reaches the fishpond, little or
no organic matter from the livestock waste will remain, and any residual
organic matter will be instantly oxidized by some of the dissolved oxygen.
The nutrients are now readily available for enhancing the prolific growth
of different kinds of natural plankton that feed the polyculture of 5 to 6
species of compatible fish. No artificial feed is necessary, except locally
grown grass for any herbivorous fish.

The fish waste, naturally treated in the big pond, gives nutrients that are
effectively used by crops growing in the pond water and on the dykes [60].

Fermented rice or other grain, used for producing alcoholic beverages, or
silkworms and their wastes, can also be added to the ponds as further
nutrients, resulting in higher fish and crop productivity, provided the
water quality is not affected.

Trials are taking place with special diffusion pipes carrying compressed
air from biogas-operated pumps to aerate the bottom part of the pond; to
increase plankton and fish yields.

Apart from growing vine-type crops on the edges of the pond and letting
them climb on trellises over the dykes and over the water, some countries
grow aquatic vegetables floating on the water surfaces in lakes and rivers.
Others grow grains, fruits and flowers on bamboo or long-lasting
polyurethane floats over nearly half the surface of the fishpond water
without interfering with the polyculture in the pond itself. Such aquaponic
cultures have increased the crop yields by using half of the millions of
hectares of fishponds and lakes in China. All this is possible because of
the excess nutrients created from the integrated farming systems.

Planting patterns have also improved. For example, rice is now transplanted
into modules of 12 identical floats, one every week, and just left to grow
in the pond without having to irrigate or fertilize separately, or to do
any weeding, while it takes 12 weeks to mature. On the 13th week, the rice
is harvested and the seedlings transplanted again to start a new cycle. It
is possible to have 4 rice crops yearly in the warmer parts of the country,
with almost total elimination of the back breaking work previously
required.

Another example is hydroponic cultures of fruits and vegetables in a series
of pipes. The final effluent from the hydroponic cultures is polished in
earthen drains where plants such as Lemna, Azolla, Pistia and water
hyacinth remove all traces of nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate and
potassium before the purified water is released back into the aquifer.

The sludge from the anaerobic digester, the algae, crop and processing
residues are put into plastic bags, sterilized in steam produced by biogas
energy, and then injected with spores for culturing high-priced mushrooms.

The mushroom enzymes break down the ligno-cellulose to release the
nutrients and enrich the residues, making them more digestible and more
palatable for livestock. The remaining fibrous residues also can still be
used for culturing earthworms, which provide special protein feed for
chickens. The final residues, including the worm casting, are composted and
used for conditioning and aerating the soil.
Sustainable development & human capital

There has been a widespread misconception that the only alternative to the
dominant model of infinite, unsustainable growth is to have no growth at
all. I have heard some critics refer to sustainable development as a
contradiction in terms. IFWMS, however, is a marvellous demonstration that
sustainable development is possible. It also shows that the carrying
capacity of a piece of land is far from constant; instead it depends on the
mode of production, on how the use of the land is organised. Productivity
can vary three- to four-fold or more simply by maximising internal input,
and in the process, creating more jobs, supporting more people.

The argument for population control has been somewhat over-stated by Lester
Brown [7, 8] and in several contributions to the present conference
predicting massive starvation and population crash as oil runs out. I like
the idea of "human capital" to counter that argument, if only to restore a
sense of balance that it isn’t population number as such, but the glaring
inequality of consumption and dissipation by the few rich in the richest
countries that’s responsible for the current crises. The way Cuba coped
with the sudden absence of fossil fuel, fertilizer and pesticides by
implementing organic agriculture across the nation is a case in point [61].
There was no population crash; although there was indeed hardship for a
while. It also released creative energies, which brought solutions and many
accompanying ecological and social benefits.

For the past 50 years, the world has opted overwhelmingly for an industrial
food system that aspired to substitute machines and fossil fuel for human
labour, towards agriculture without farmers. This has swept people off the
land and into poverty and suicide. One of the most urgent tasks ahead is to
re-integrate people into the ecosystem. Human labour is intelligent energy,
applied precisely and with ingenuity, which is worth much more than appears
from the bald accounting in Joules or any other energy unit. This is an
important area for future research.
Sustainable development is possible

Let me clarify my main message with a few diagrams. The dominant model of
infinite unsustainable growth is represented in Figure 1. The system grows
relentlessly, swallowing up the earth’s resources without end, laying
waste to everything in its path, like a hurricane. There is no closed cycle
to hold resources within, to build up stable organised structures.

Figure 1. The dominant economic model of infinite unsustainable growth that
swallows up the earth’s resources and exports massive amounts of wastes
and entropy

In contrast, a sustainable system is like an organism [48-52], it closes
the cycle to store as much as possible of the resources inside the system,
and minimise waste (see Figure 2). Closing the cycle creates at the same
time a stable, autonomous structure that is self-maintaining, self-renewing
and self-sufficient.

Figure 2. The sustainable system closes the energy and resource use cycle,
maximising storage and internal input and minimising waste, rather like the
life cycle of an organism that is autonomous and self-sufficient

In many indigenous integrated farming systems, livestock is incorporated to
close the circle (Figure 3), thereby minimizing external input, while
maximising productivity and minimizing wastes exported to the environment.

Figure 3. Integrated farming system that closes the cycle thereby
minimizing input and waste

The elementary integrated farm supports three lifecycles within it, linked
to one another; each lifecycle being autonomous and self-renewing. It has
the potential to grow by incorporating yet more lifecycles (Figure 4). The
more lifecycles incorporated within the system, the greater the
productivity. That is why productivity and biodiversity always go together
[62]. Industrial monoculture, by contrast, is the least energy efficient in
terms of output per unit of input [51], and less productive in absolute
terms despite high external inputs, as documented in recent academic
research [63].

Figure 4. Increasing productivity by incorporating more lifecycles into the
system

Actually the lifecycles are not so neatly separated, they are linked by
many inputs and outputs, so a more accurate representation would look
something like Figure 5 [49, 50, 52].

Figure 5. The many-fold coupled lifecycles in a highly productive
sustainable system

The key to sustainable development is a balanced growth that’s achieved
by closing the overall production cycle, then using the surplus nutrients
and energy to support increasingly more cycles of activities while
maintaining internal balance and nested levels of autonomy, just like a
developing organism [49, 50, 52]. The ‘waste’ from one production
activity is resource for another, so productivity is maximised with the
minimum of input, and little waste is exported into the environment. It is
possible to have sustainable development after all; the alternative to the
dominant model of unlimited, unsustainable growth is balanced growth.

The same principles apply to ecosystems [52] and economic systems [50, 51]
that are of necessity embedded in the ecosystem (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Economic system coupled to and embedded in ecosystem

Deconstructing money and the bubble economy

Economics immediately brings to mind money. The circulation of money in
real world economics is often equated with energy in living systems. I have
argued however, that all money is not equal [50, 51]. The flow of money can
be associated with exchanges of real value or it can be associated with
sheer wastage and dissipation; in the former case, money is more like
energy, in the latter case, it is pure entropy. Because the economic system
depends ultimately on the flow of resources from the ecosystem, entropic
costs can either be incurred in the economic system itself, or in the
ecosystem, but the net result is the same.

Thus, when the cost of valuable (non-renewable) ecosystem resources
consumed or destroyed are not properly taken into account, the entropic
burden falls on the ecosystem. But as the economic system is coupled to and
dependent on input from the ecosystem, the entropic burden exported to the
ecosystem will feedback on the economic system as diminished input, so the
economic system becomes poorer in real terms.

On the other hand, transaction in the financial or money market creates
money that could be completely decoupled from real value, and is pure
entropy produced within the economic system. This artificially increases
purchasing power, leading to over-consumption of ecosystem resources. The
unequal terms of trade, which continues to be imposed by the rich countries
of the North on the poor countries of the South through the World Trade
Organisation, is another important source of entropy. That too,
artificially inflates the purchasing power of the North, resulting in yet
more destructive exploitation of the earth’s ecosystem resources in the
South.

It is of interest that recent research in the New Economics Foundation
shows how money spent with a local supplier is worth four times as much as
money spent with non-local supplier [43], which bears out my analysis. It
lends support to the idea of local currencies and the suggestion for
linking energy with money directly [64]. It also explains why growth in
monetary terms not only fails to bring real benefits to the nation, but end
up impoverishing it in real terms [65, 66].

Lester Brown argues [7] that the economy must be "restructured" at "wartime
speed" by creating an "honest market" that "tells the ecological truth". I
have provided a sustainable growth model that shows why the dominant model
fails, and why telling the ecological truth is so important.
Acknowledgement

I am indebted to FESTA for inviting me to present a lecture at the
conference, Food Security in An Energy-Scarce World, which resulted in the
present paper. It benefited a great deal from the formal presentations as
well as discussions with Richard Douthwaite, Folke Gunther, Colin Hines,
Julian Darley, David Fleming, James Bruges, Bruce Darrell and numerous
others.






  • [Livingontheland] Making the World Sustainable - Mae-Wan Ho, TradingPostPaul, 10/12/2006

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