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  • From: rrandall1 <rrandall1@houston.rr.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point
  • Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 14:56:14 -0500

Hi Jerome,

I don't want to be too negative, but the excellent Cuba film you site says fairly clearly that Havana is producing maybe 50% of its food, with smaller towns at 80-90%.

Sometime in the next year, we are supposed to to figure out as part of the planning effots what's possible for the Houston area's 4 million where we already have 150 or so community gardens and an infrastructure to teach gardening and orcharding for the 1% who want to learn. People are getting increasingly nervous about peak global food.

I expect to look at reclaiming the streets and parking lots, and using tree trimmings for biomass since their 3-d biomass per hectare is far above the typical mulch crops. We may need to look at roofs and density. Ideas and informational resources are welcome.

Bob Randall


On Friday, May 19, 2006, at 08:57 AM, Jerome Rigot wrote:

Hi Marjory,

Your conclusions are not very optimistic.

But I am wondering how real they are, as it seems to me that they are
not really taking into account the adaptability of humans and the
power of community. If we look at the Cuba example, when peak oil
(due to the loss of Soviet oil) suddenly fell upon the island in
1990, people not only survived, but thrived (check
http://www.communitysolution.org/ for additional info and for the video).

Havana is a large city, probably over 1 million people, and according
to your conclusions, it should not have been able to sustain the
people inhabiting the city. But they were sustained, and one way
people were able to survive was by developing community gardens,
square-foot gardens, container gardens, roofs gardens, etc... all
over the city, creating a local urban agriculture and local urban economy.

So, would this be impossible to happen in Texas?

Jerome

At 09:08 AM 5/19/2006, you wrote:
A small group here in Central Texas did some analysis on what would it take
to grow enough food locally for the existing 1 million population that is in
Travis County. You know the 'lets all start a victory garden' scenario?
The Jeavons bio-intneisve method of food production was assumed along with a
vegetarian diet. From the bio-intensive method, 40 beds per person are
needed which amount to 4,000 sq.ft. We assumed each household could garden
800 sq.ft. at home (actually a bit optimistic and would require cutting down
a lot of trees, but close to real), and all available park land, other
public lands, greenbelts, vacant land, and exisitng ag land was converted to
bio-intensive gardens (not potlitically possible but the resources are
there). Well, there wasn't enough land, so then it was scaled it down to
each person only having the 12 bio-intensive growing beds (in bio-intensive
12 beds are for actively growing and the remining 28 are for compost and
fertility crops). The assumption being that the compost crops could come
from somewhere else - that is not really very realixstic, but worth looking
at. We still had only about half of the acreage we would need.

Then we looked at the other big requirements - compost, experience, water,
and seeds. In Austin, we actually compost the biosolids from public waste
and make what is known as dillo-dirt. We have several other large
composting companies in the area which produce large quantities of compost.
The 'soils' in this area are typically rock, caliche, and clay - so compost
is essential. Adding together all of the commercial compost production, and
some assumptions about exisitng home composters, we have less than 1% of the
minimum required for the most resource consrving method of food production
known.

Central Texas is the meeting place of 5 very different bio-regions and our
weather patterns reflect that diversity and are extremely challenging. I've
spoken with many of the local farmers who produce for market and the
consensus is that it takes at least 10 years to be able to consistantly
bring to market - or to consistantly be able to provide for yourself. (From
my limitied 3 years of working with to grow my own food I will testify to
every minute of the ten years being necessary.) So there is the problem of
a long apprenticship and a question of having enough experienced people to
teach.

Although we get approximately 34" of annual rainfall, it comes at irregular
times. The experience of those who are working towards complete off-grid
living have found that at least 35,000 gallons of storage are needed for a
family of four (for thier drinking, hygene, and food production needs). A
six month drought is common here. Although people in the city may be able
to rely on the public system for thier needs, this does demonstrate the high
dependancy on that public system functioning properly for food production.

And finally seeds. The conclusion we reached was that if the descent was
slow enough, then seed production could keep up with demand. But a sudden
increase in demand could wipe out available seeds in a very short time.

We don't have any hard statistics on the locally grown food in our area, but
from surveys of farmers markets, the consensus of what we know is it is much
less than 0.1% of what is needed. Overall, it will not be possible to
sustain the 1+ million people here. It would take massive amount of
cooperative work and education to provide a spartan, survival diet for a
redcuced population. And, these efforts need to have been started years
ago.

I believe this situation is very similar to most of the US and many of the
'developed' countires of the world. An unpleasant combination of too many
people and too few resources, which even the immense creativity of
permaculture and other methods will not be able to offset.

Marjory
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