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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] How to Feed 9 Billion People

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  • From: Stephen Sherman <spsherm@msn.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] How to Feed 9 Billion People
  • Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:08:31 -0700

On 11/22/2012 4:41 PM, paul wheaton wrote:
<snip> In the meantime, a study has been completed that shows that Sepp Holzer's techniques will feed 21 billion people without irrigation or fertilizer.

Not to diminish Sepp's work, but I think it is overly simplistic to extrapolate from current conditions and calculate something like this.

It isn't that I doubt the math, or that his methods are a great deal better than current practices. Rather I am concerned that with a tripling of the human population, there will be other effects on the environment which invalidate these calculations. How much cropland would be converted to urban or suburban use? How many other resources or conditions will be altered by the human population increase in ways which hurt the ability to produce food, regardless of the methods.

Keep in mind, nature is a negative feedback system. When something moves to excess (such as human population) "things" arise to reverse that excess. Just because we can't foresee all these "things" does not mean they aren't or won't be happening...




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