Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[dhondt <dhondt@eircom.net>]

It is now almost certain that mankind has had developed civilizations for at least 45 thousand years. And some of the skills and technologies of these long gone civilizations can not even be reproduced today. It is simply erroneous to think that we are now at the apex in all that mankind has ever been. A lot has been lost and forgotten. We are not able for instance to reproduce the stone work of Machu Pichu or to build a Cheops pyramid.

None of these highly developed previous civilizations was ever able to avert collapse even if many must have realized what was necessary to do so.  (in this case Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed) I am absolutely certain that it will be exactly the same this time and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Long ago when I was at school we had discussions that mankind was in a speeding train on it's way to an enormous abyss. I have been thinking for a long time that we are past that stage and that we are now on our way at free fall speed to the hard rocks at the bottom.
We don't know how long it will take to get there but elementary physics tells us the impact will be much worse the longer it takes. My great fear is that it might indeed take another 25 years before that happens for there will not much left by then from which to rebuild.

John

On 02/08/15 03:06, herb farmer wrote:

55BD7B18.6000905@lobo.net" type="cite">
I'm including one paragraph from this that deals with food production. The whole thing is well worth analysis & debate.

Review: A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-05-18/review-user%E2%80%99s-guide-crisis-civilization-nafeez-mosaddeq-ahmed


"Perhaps the most compelling support for Ahmed’s optimism (and again returning to the example of food) is a 2007 study on the potential of organic farming methods, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan. A common fear among gloom-and-doom prognosticators has long been that as industrial agriculture collapses under its own stupendous weight, we’ll experience a worldwide famine of untold severity. But this extensive study shows that in addition to ameliorating environmental harm, organic, low-input integrated farming systems using little or no pesticides are also quite capable of supporting current and projected populations. They could increase global food production by as much as half, to 4381 kilocalories per person per day, which Ahmed calculates could easily sustain an estimated population peak of 10 to 11 billion people by 2100."

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