Carrying Capacity - land and people
All good political issues have long term consequences to consider.
One interesting one is immigration and another is population. The strongest pro-immigration movement wants to make the some maybe 10 million illegal immigrants into legal citizens. Their cause is full of pride - "Look at all the good work immigrants do for our economy."
If we were just talking 10 million people, once, end of story, sure, let'em all in, at least all the hard working ones who want to be law abiding citizens, but there's not just 10 million after all. Maybe 10 million now, but how many more would like their shot at coming here?
I read that the U.S./Mexican border was the most desperate border in the world between economic opportunity. Obviously at present, there'd be a huge potential influx if we opened the border completely, even if they'd say "we'll just come for jobs", and would like to move back if economic conditions were good "back home".
Well, we're a country of immigrants, and I accept despite being born here, my ancestral "155 year " isn't necessarily a long time for a place, and perhaps someday someone will tell me "go home", meaning "Norway" where my great-great grandfather came from with a suviving subset of his 12 children. And that history actually offers my point - Norway has limited farmable land and yet when times of success come, people celebrate by large familes and populations rise just as easily as wildlife population when a new source of food appears. That is to say "Migration" and "Unsustainable resources" combine create population problems.
Well, my main thoughts are that the U.S. might already be "overcapacity" give our consumption now using unsustainable fossil fuel, so more people now might "help" our economy, but make it harder to transition our economy when things turn sour. I don't quite have faith in this argument because we're already so far outside a sustainable economy, but it does hold some meaning.
Consider for instance "food productivity". In the past farms couldn't devote as much land to food production because they needed pastures to raise grass and hay for their horses. Using horses to "power" a farm is either more or less "land-efficient" to trying to grow fuel-crops for running tractors, but whatever is attempted, a more closed-loop farming approach would have much less NET food produced than current farms which use external inputs and crop sales income to pay for the inputs.
It seems an impossible problem for farmers (1) Large debt to purchase farms and interest payments to cover (2) High input costs for seed, fertilizers, and fuel (3) High risks of crop destruction due to weather factors (4) Low market prices for crops grown.
An interesting story is the President's "vision" two years ago to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars. Any plan for people on the moon or mars for an extended period would require very complex recycling loops for generating food, and oxygen and energy. On the moon the costs to get materials there are so high that it makes sense to invest in expensive systems that can recycle the best, while on earth we can be "dishonest" with our economics and discount the real costs of living by hidden costs in nonrenewable energy.
It is hard to imagine what a "sustainable farm" might look like. I imagine just like NASA experimenting with recycling systems for astronauts, the government might set up farms with potentially high startup costs, but which can tests what "throughput" you can get for sustainable farming. i.e. How much food can a farm produce without using any fossil fuels? How many people can it feed? What crops are needed to sustain a local population? What are the most land-efficient "fuels" that can power such a farm?
It seems like the Wind Turbines are pretty compatible with farming, and even if high start up costs. It would seem wind could generate more energy than is needed by farms, so income could be made from selling wind electricity. Although I don't know how much energy use on a farm can be converted to electrical sources.
From what I've read in general it seems like farm production of any sort best relies on "coproducts" - having a primary product PLUS other useful products which are easily generated in parallel, possibly via previous waste materials.
Well, whatever local "recycling" and efficiency that can be done, there's really no "closed loop" as long as nutrients are being sold off for food and fuel. Energy must be expended to replenish those extractions, and currently thats done by fertilizer inputs created or at least extracted with fossil fuels.
It would seem serious farming methods must do better to close the nutrient loop by say buying sewage treated materials back for fertilizers. I have no idea of the energy efficiency, but thinking back to the astronauts, that's what's needed. It is extravagant to move large amounts of materials hundreds of miles, but the loops must be closed somehow if we are to survive past our fossil fuel era.
It is just scary to try to imagine how much we are dependent upon cheap energy to run our complex civilizations, and it seems no stretch to imagine everything falling apart when we are no longer able to extract cheap energy as we have.
That goes back to population issues, and how much food can we grow for ourselves using local resources? How much land per person do we need?
I have admiration for the farmers of the past and present, even those who might be now judged to be depending on inputs they will someday have to abandon.
Subsidies of farming products now are a HUGE investment. I just wish the government might fund even 1% of the total into experimental farms whose purpose is to make "Energy self-sustaining farms". It seems like this is at least as much of a problem as our current transportation demands for oil.
Mission to Mars? How about mission 2100? How will we feed ourselves in 2100?!
Both questions excite the imagination and I'm hoping the second one would not only be CHEAPER, but infinitely more practical!
One interesting one is immigration and another is population. The strongest pro-immigration movement wants to make the some maybe 10 million illegal immigrants into legal citizens. Their cause is full of pride - "Look at all the good work immigrants do for our economy."
If we were just talking 10 million people, once, end of story, sure, let'em all in, at least all the hard working ones who want to be law abiding citizens, but there's not just 10 million after all. Maybe 10 million now, but how many more would like their shot at coming here?
I read that the U.S./Mexican border was the most desperate border in the world between economic opportunity. Obviously at present, there'd be a huge potential influx if we opened the border completely, even if they'd say "we'll just come for jobs", and would like to move back if economic conditions were good "back home".
Well, we're a country of immigrants, and I accept despite being born here, my ancestral "155 year " isn't necessarily a long time for a place, and perhaps someday someone will tell me "go home", meaning "Norway" where my great-great grandfather came from with a suviving subset of his 12 children. And that history actually offers my point - Norway has limited farmable land and yet when times of success come, people celebrate by large familes and populations rise just as easily as wildlife population when a new source of food appears. That is to say "Migration" and "Unsustainable resources" combine create population problems.
Well, my main thoughts are that the U.S. might already be "overcapacity" give our consumption now using unsustainable fossil fuel, so more people now might "help" our economy, but make it harder to transition our economy when things turn sour. I don't quite have faith in this argument because we're already so far outside a sustainable economy, but it does hold some meaning.
Consider for instance "food productivity". In the past farms couldn't devote as much land to food production because they needed pastures to raise grass and hay for their horses. Using horses to "power" a farm is either more or less "land-efficient" to trying to grow fuel-crops for running tractors, but whatever is attempted, a more closed-loop farming approach would have much less NET food produced than current farms which use external inputs and crop sales income to pay for the inputs.
It seems an impossible problem for farmers (1) Large debt to purchase farms and interest payments to cover (2) High input costs for seed, fertilizers, and fuel (3) High risks of crop destruction due to weather factors (4) Low market prices for crops grown.
An interesting story is the President's "vision" two years ago to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars. Any plan for people on the moon or mars for an extended period would require very complex recycling loops for generating food, and oxygen and energy. On the moon the costs to get materials there are so high that it makes sense to invest in expensive systems that can recycle the best, while on earth we can be "dishonest" with our economics and discount the real costs of living by hidden costs in nonrenewable energy.
It is hard to imagine what a "sustainable farm" might look like. I imagine just like NASA experimenting with recycling systems for astronauts, the government might set up farms with potentially high startup costs, but which can tests what "throughput" you can get for sustainable farming. i.e. How much food can a farm produce without using any fossil fuels? How many people can it feed? What crops are needed to sustain a local population? What are the most land-efficient "fuels" that can power such a farm?
It seems like the Wind Turbines are pretty compatible with farming, and even if high start up costs. It would seem wind could generate more energy than is needed by farms, so income could be made from selling wind electricity. Although I don't know how much energy use on a farm can be converted to electrical sources.
From what I've read in general it seems like farm production of any sort best relies on "coproducts" - having a primary product PLUS other useful products which are easily generated in parallel, possibly via previous waste materials.
Well, whatever local "recycling" and efficiency that can be done, there's really no "closed loop" as long as nutrients are being sold off for food and fuel. Energy must be expended to replenish those extractions, and currently thats done by fertilizer inputs created or at least extracted with fossil fuels.
It would seem serious farming methods must do better to close the nutrient loop by say buying sewage treated materials back for fertilizers. I have no idea of the energy efficiency, but thinking back to the astronauts, that's what's needed. It is extravagant to move large amounts of materials hundreds of miles, but the loops must be closed somehow if we are to survive past our fossil fuel era.
It is just scary to try to imagine how much we are dependent upon cheap energy to run our complex civilizations, and it seems no stretch to imagine everything falling apart when we are no longer able to extract cheap energy as we have.
That goes back to population issues, and how much food can we grow for ourselves using local resources? How much land per person do we need?
I have admiration for the farmers of the past and present, even those who might be now judged to be depending on inputs they will someday have to abandon.
Subsidies of farming products now are a HUGE investment. I just wish the government might fund even 1% of the total into experimental farms whose purpose is to make "Energy self-sustaining farms". It seems like this is at least as much of a problem as our current transportation demands for oil.
Mission to Mars? How about mission 2100? How will we feed ourselves in 2100?!
Both questions excite the imagination and I'm hoping the second one would not only be CHEAPER, but infinitely more practical!
posted by Ares Olympus at 8:24 PM
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