Tell me what you need and I’ll tell you what you lack, tell me what you have the most of and I’ll tell you what you take for granted.
The truth is often hard to discern. As hard as we try to figure out what the truth is we find ourselves running up against our egos and our own unwillingness to give up our pet theories. The world is awash in this problem and it has been a problem as long as there have been humans. The world is flat, the world is the center of the universe (though it is to us because of our perspectives), the church is inerrant, I have all of the answers, the scientific view is the only view, the key to understanding everything about us lies in understanding evolution, there is one master race and so on. Today I’d like to focus on a few other cherished assumptions: The world is overcrowded and if we chose to feed the people of the world organically grown food we have to decide which populations of the world to sacrifice to starvation.
The issue of an overcrowded starving world promises, at least in my mind, to be a complicated issue, one that will take some time to explore. As usual I intend to express my theories about this and since theories are like opinions and opinions are like certain parts of our anatomy that everyone has I see no reason to be ashamed.
Naturally I disagree with this notion that we need to starve much of the world population to live organically. But lets look at some facts first: The world population is reaching the seven billion mark. There is only so much dry land of which about one fifth of it is dessert
. Total surface area of the earth is 196.8 million square miles, total land area 57.3 million square miles or about twenty nine percent . 45.84 million square miles are left of which only a portion might be usable for agriculture. Thomas Robert Malthus, a British economist of the late 1700's was the first modern man to say that the world was over crowded. The world population 1650 was around 550 million and climbing and by 1850 the population had soared to 1.1 billion. The population stood at just over six billion in the year 2000 and now in 2011 stands at nearly seven billion almost a one billion increase in only eleven years where it took almost six thousand years to reach one billion(or four billion years if you believe in evolution). It’s estimated that the world population will reach the ten billion mark by 2035 but I believe that this figure will be exceeded if the current trend has a chance to continue unchanged. This population explosion is alarming to many of our planets greatest thinkers who see the need to reduce the population growth to zero by maintaining a two point one percent offspring per woman birth rate (many feel that it would be even better to reduce the population of the planet, the lower the better). Two of the things cited for this astronomical population growth is that people are living much longer healthier lives and that the green revolution has made it possible to provide food to maintain this massive increase. But, current agricultural technologies won’t support this ten billion person population. The worlds food reserves have already dropped from eighteen months to less than thirty days. It doesn’t bode well for our beleaguered planet.
Many feel that our salvation lies in two areas: population control and new technology. The challenge of establishing population control is created by the developing nations whose populations continue to explode.
Many of the developed nation’s native populations are beginning to shrink as a result of their fertility rates dropping below the two point one percent offspring per woman level. Let’s take a brief look at these population trends. I was led to believe that affluence leads to a lower birth rate because people don’t feel the need to have so many children and that poverty forces people to have many children because they die off and only a few survive. I don’t remember where this notion came from but, it seems to be a part of me. I do agree that poverty can be a spur for many in undeveloped countries to have children because they feel that somehow having more children increases the likely hood that some will survive to reproduce. But, some one pointed out that the drop in the birth rate in developed countries, for most of the citizens, doesn’t stem from affluence but, from the fear that a certain life style can’t be maintained if a family has too many children to support. So, they make decisions to undergo voluntary sterilization so that the family can adequately provide for the children they do decide to have. Using the United States as an example: the birth rate in the 1950's soared with the baby boomers because they felt it was possible to adequately support that decision to have children. We were far more affluent then than we are now, we have been steadily losing ground with each passing decade to inflation and taxation. Everybody who has had only one or two kids understands the reason for their decision to stop having children and I’m quite sure that it didn’t have anything to do with the notion that they were just so rich they decided that it wasn’t necessary to have anymore children. The individual tax burden has steadily increased while our valueless severely inflated currency has left us with less to raise a family on. Taxes continue to escalate in these developed countries to where it’s estimated that as much as fifty percent of our gross income goes to pay for all of the known and hidden taxes we are forced to pay. Couple that with the idea that we are forced in many places to build houses we can’t afford (Meriwether county where I live has a fourteen hundred square foot minimum for new houses and a two acre minimum outside of the city limits ) and it’s no wonder that many decide to limit their family size. It looks to me that our politicians found a way to convince us to curb population growth without violence. The implications behind this decline in birth rate could be frightening for those of us who look at the changing demographics and realize that this nation could one day be Islamic by default. We’ll simply vanish creating a vacuum that will be filled by something. If you don’t want your grand children to live in an Islamic country or a country devoid of your current values then you need to have more children and raise them to think like you want them to so they can pass those values onto their children. No body will have to drop bombs on us to accomplish a cultural change in this country and in other developed countries that have experienced this drop in fertility rates which are a result of the increasing poverty.
We may have more technological toys to play with but, we aren’t wealthier for having them. In fact it’s my opinion that these are things that keep us distracted from the real issues. It’s through these things and our educational systems where we are bombarded with this idea that we are living in an overcrowded world. The real issue may be that we are being dupes to a segment of our society that has an agenda that may be contrary to the one that is built in to our nature; the need to thrive and multiply. And certainly we seem to be willingly following their lead. We are inundated with images of poverty stricken starving nations that are full of teeming masses unable to support themselves due to overpopulation and other causes and that we are somehow responsible for this dilemma because we have so much that we greedily take away from the rest of the world. This all looks to be true on the surface of things but, is it? Could it be possible that we haven’t contributed anything to the world for what we got from it? I believe we did indeed provide a benefit for what we received but, this is a whole different issue.
So, how many people can the world actually support? The February 2011National Geographic states that if we took all seven billion of us and put us shoulder to shoulder in one place that we would only fill a five hundred square mile area. Plenty of land left over isn’t there? So there doesn’t really seem to be a space problem only a food problem; how do we feed even more than we have?
Soil fertility has been plummeting through the advancing centuries and especially the most recent decades. Our European ancestors that first waded ashore here found a land where the average depth of top soil was above twenty four inches. That great covering of fertile soil has dwindled to just a few inches in most places. Where did all of that great soil go? In my opinion you have to look in the bottom of the ocean to find it. Our current farming practices loosens and destroys the vital elements that create the matrix that holds our top soils in place exposing it to erosion by wind and especially rain. It only took our ancestors four hundred years to destroy what took thousands or billions of years to make. So I ask a few questions here: Do we have to farm that way? If we can feed seven billion people on the depleted soils we now farm how many could we feed if there were a better way of farming?
Anybody who gardens or farms using conventional methods knows just how energy intensive this style of farming is. The recommendations are to turn the ground over year after year to aerate the soil, to bring the nutrients up to the surface for our shallow rooted crops to take advantage of and to make it easy for those preferred crops to spread their roots out. But, as pointed out earlier, this plowing or tilling the ground exposes the soil to erosion but, it also makes it just as easy for those plants we don’t want to take advantage of our efforts; also necessitating the use of mechanical or chemical weed control. The first form of weed control is energy intensive requiring our physical labor or the use of machinery. The second form of weed control exposes us to chemicals that may be harmful to us in the long run. Then there is the problem of pest control. Pests often find things to eat the same way we do; they see it. It’s easy when we have vast tracts of land planted in just one crop. There’s no way to hide it and we are vastly outnumbered by our insect antagonists. There is always the option of walking out into the field and simply eliminating pests by hand but, this really doesn’t work. Anybody knows, who has tried to garden without using chemicals, that it’s only a matter of time before the bugs overwhelm any physical effort on our part to control them. Many of us will turn to chemical means to eliminate the pest problem. There is a third type of weed and pest control that comes through technology: GMO’s.
This is a budding technology that is finding increasing support by a public influenced by those who have control of that technology. This GMO situation is becoming so prevalent that even the heirloom seed industry is finding it hard to weed out the GMO’s in seed they have to procure from outside sources
. It’s one thing to eat an apple that you can wash a chemical off of (maybe) that the body knows how to digest and assimilate but, what about an apple that has been genetically modified so that nothing but a human is willing to eat it? Are you sure you want to eat something that not even a bug wants? Or how about a GMO that has natural herbicidal plant genes spliced into it? Will our bodies really know what to do with it? If we evolved slowly over billions of years what chance does your body have to suddenly evolve a strategy to deal with this new challenge? Slim to none for you or for your kids for perhaps thousands of generations. And if we were created then there is little chance that our bodies will ever find a way to deal with these new challenges without direct modifications of our bodies own biological systems. We’re being told that we have to decide whether we want to eat at all or starve; that the only solution to our dilemma can be found in GMO’s. Do you remember Mad Cow Disease? That was caused by feeding animal by products, such as blood, to animals that are vegetarians. Sure, it only looks like a few individuals died from that disease but, how do we know how many have been adversely harmed by this tainted meat in ways that we haven’t been able to ascertain yet? Remember, the decision to feed these animals that way was decided by people who were supposed to know better than we do but, in the end nature showed us the folly of this practice. Do you want to be the natural example of what happens to an organism that eats a GMO that the body has no idea of what to do with? I’m only asking the questions because I really don’t have an answer except to point out the colossal blunders foisted upon us by people who go against the natural system. This ranges from introduction of foreign species into areas where there are no natural controls them to feeding animals things they aren’t supposed to eat. If man is so smart that he can find a way to allow his population to dominate the earth in only a few thousand years why can’t he find a way to work with nature instead of trying to bend it to his will? How was it possible for the earth to build up that great store of top soil in the first place? How do we cooperate with nature?
First, we need to abandon this destructive practice of plowing land for crops. We can’t afford to continue this practice if we want to continue to feed those that are already here. There has to be a system that doesn’t require plowing. Certainly we’re smart enough to figure that out? Second, we need to stop burying our valuable organic wastes in one spot and find a way to return it to the land where it came from. Certainly we’re smart enough to figure that one out? The Chinese used a system centuries ago that recycled human excrement back into the soil, how do you think their population was able to grow like it had? What about kitchen, and yard wastes? That technology has existed for a long time. We should be able to figure out how to get nature to cooperate with us in the weed and pest control departments without having to resort to energy or chemical intensive measures.
It looks as if there is a way to do all of this.
Much of this can be accomplished with no till agriculture. It’s not really a new concept but, an older one that seems to have been discarded or overlooked as not feasible. It’s accomplished in much the same way as you do with a flower pot. You add succeeding layers of organic materials, mostly compost, then you plant in the last deep layer of compost like you do in a flower pot. You plant thickly and in blocks instead of rows that discourages weeds and you alternate plants so that the pests have a more difficult time finding its food source. You also can plant your crops at times that helps to offset the natural time table of your pests. I know this one works because I’ve done it. I managed to get my corn planted early enough so the corn matured before the worms had a chance to find their way into the corn. Consequently I was eating fresh corn from my garden earlier than anybody else and it didn’t have bugs in it. I didn’t try a second planting but, may have been able to do that and got a second corn harvest from my garden in that same season. Of course this second harvest would only be possible because of the area of the country that I live in; the summers are longer here. It’s something I’m going to try. Instead of turning the ground over you simply continue to add compost to your garden to the vacant spots created by your harvest. These vacant spots are covered from the compost sources you created from your kitchen and yard wastes. There is always more loose aerated nutrient rich soil for your crops to grow in and that same newly added layer of compost helps to smother out any possible weed seedlings that may have fallen in your recently created short term vacancy. Planting densely not only eliminates places for weeds to grow in but, the dense root structures helps to hold the soil in place helping to eliminate erosion. This erosion fighting ability is enhanced by the solid border you create around your plot and by the raised bed character that you create by not digging down into but, by building up. The dense planting style helps to shelter your dirt from the drying sun and wind and the rich organic material itself is naturally water retentive thus helping to eliminate the need to water more often. In fact the hardest part of this farming practice is the set up phase; once the set up is completed you only need to add material to the vacant spots you create as you harvest. Not only do you fill the blank spot with compost but, you plant a different plant that will grow in that spot during the next seasons so there is never a real vacancy for a weed to take advantage of and planting this way creates a natural crop rotation system. There is very little maintenance required, instead it’s just a steady harvest and replanting procedure to follow. But, this system gives you the advantage of a steady supply of fresh organic produce nearly year around.
I know that there are few people willing to use human excrement as compost because of the fear of disease and this is surely nothing to be taken lightly. My study of this issue says that proper composting will eliminate any threat from harmful pathogens. Surely people who could put man on the moon could find a way to accomplish this if we already don’t have a way to do it? One thing is for sure: you can’t continue to take away without putting back in kind. You can’t have a checking account that you continue to write checks against without making deposits with dollars or you’ll run out of money and may even end up in jail. Our ecosystem is the same way. We need to put back what is removed or we eventually will have an ecosystem that is bankrupt. We’re almost there now. It’s not too late though.
And lastly there is something that I haven’t covered completely: fertilizers. Composted manures (human including) are nutrient dense by nature. It puts back the same nutrients that were remove in the first place. But, if you want to add something back that is removed from the soil by rain then you can use a foliar spray consisting of sea water or sea salt. Where do you think all of that salinity in the ocean came from in the first place? It was washed from the soil by the rain then ran off into the oceans by way of our rivers and streams and then was concentrated by the natural evaporation process powered by our sun. There is a natural resistance to this idea of using sea minerals as a fertilizer in some of the higher institutions of learning because of the fear of a build up of salt in the soil. This isn’t a problem because the concentration of salt is so dilute that the build up never occurs. Also, you’re not digging down into the dirt and your watering cycles are so reduced that there is little danger that any salts already present in the soil will ever have a chance to accumulate on the surface. It just can’t happen. There is virtually no danger of poisoning your ground as long as you follow the guidelines. The advantage to using sea salt is that it contains almost every vital element needed by your plants and is directly absorbed by the leaf and stem structure of the plant itself. Ever heard of or used Miracle Grow? Miracle Grow is sprayed directly on the plants also. the difference between sea salt and Miracle Grow? Sea salt is vastly cheaper to use. You can fertilize for as little as six dollars per acre per application. If you have to apply it twice a season that’s only twelve dollars per year per acre and you’re not using just a few harsh chemicals that don’t contain everything that a plant needs. There’s plenty of sea water and sea salt to go around. Many ships use desalinization equipment to provide fresh water that comes form areas of the ocean that aren’t polluted. The by product of making fresh water from sea water is sea salt; a concentrated fertilizer that is easy to ship. The whole ocean isn’t polluted because the ocean has a way of creating a chemical balance naturally. The sea water and salt only need to be harvested away from the sources of pollution. The harmful pollutants chemically combine with other elements and precipitate out and settle to the bottom.
The drawback to this idea of no till agriculture is simple: not everybody is going to want to grow their own stuff. Many of us are just happy to spend our life doing whatever we have picked for a profession that specifically didn’t include playing around in the dirt. So let them enjoy themselves doing whatever it is they like to do. Those of us who love working with nature can still produce the bounty that is needed to support those who are the engineers, builders and maintainers of our other systems. Nothing changes in that department. The only thing that changes is we cease to rape our planet at the expense of future generations. This farming practice should be able to be developed so that every nation, every people can take advantage of it. This system holds the potential to eliminate starvation in parts of the world that currently don’t have the energy and economic resources that we have that allow us to currently rape our land. A peasant that uses this system can easily provide for their family and others without the grueling physical labor or the expensive machinery and chemicals foisted onto us by our system of people who have a vested interest in maintaining things the way they are. It also eliminates the unknown dangers lurking in GMO’s, if there are any. Another drawback is the fact that this type of farming doesn’t lend itself to large scale planting and harvesting techniques currently in practice. Planting and harvesting using this system is currently a hands on experience. Oh well, I’m sure that with our growing computer capabilities that this is only a short term problem. Maybe the equipment and programs could be developed that would show us how to modify this system to lend itself to mechanical planting and harvesting? I’ve got faith. That way the giant food conglomerates can continue to monopolize our food production processes and continue to provide us with the nutritionally bankrupt garbage they foist off on the world as nutrition. They have a way of taking something packed full of natural wholesome nutrition and destroying it while managing to generate huge profits at the expense of the health of the people. Anybody remember the movie Super Size Me? While much of that movie centered around a certain company, it was really about the food INDUSTRY as a whole and what they create. The movie didn’t do any good to change the system except for some of the individuals who permanently modified their eating habits after watching the movie. The giant food companies are even busier finding ways to separate us from our money while providing poison to us. There will never be anything better for us than the fresh mature food straight from the healthy plant it grew on. Any kind of processing only removes the natural wholesome nutrition found in freshly harvested organic food and this nutrition found in fresh food is a major consideration when it comes to making decisions about how much food is really needed to provide good nutrition. This problem of adequate nutrition in food is why the food industry finds it necessary to fortify their garbage with cheap chemical nutrients that the body is barely able to do anything with because the food industry is fully aware of what they do to the food before it reaches your mouth. Here’s an example of this fortification with chemical nutrients:
Notice the list of vitamins and minerals? Now look to the list of ingredients at the bottom. See what is used to fortify the product? They are all chemicals. This cereal would be almost completely devoid of nutrition without these chemicals. The question you might be tempted to ask: is there anything really nutritious about this food? The first column next to the list of vitamins shows the percentage of nutrients without milk and the column next to that shows the nutrients with milk added.
Katrael.
Endnotes:
1: World Book Encyclopedia 2002 Standard Edition
2: World Book Encyclopedia 2002 Standard Edition
3: World Book Encyclopedia 2002 Standard Edition
4: Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company’s 2010 seed catalog.
