Agriculture: ending the world as we know it

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#1

This is an article I wrote to make the case that agriculture, and therefore civilization, is unsustainable. I think it should be of interest to many here. The original title was “Agriculture: the beginning and end of civilization.” But I figured the new one might be more attention-getting. :o

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/newzephyr/august-september2010/html/aug10-20.htm

P.S. The Canyon Country Zephyr is a smallish, now online, paper out of southern Utah. It’s publisher, Jim Stiles, has been putting it out for over twenty years. Google “brave new west” for the trailer for a documentary about his paper and his efforts to save the land in that part of the country.

[EDIT] Updated the link.

#2

And now a French translation, thanks to Misko!

http://kinoodoodaym.blogspot.com/2010/08/lagriculture-la-fin-du-monde-tel-que.html

or here…

http://anarchieverte.ch40s.net/2010/08/17/agriculture-la-fin-du-monde-que-nous-connaissons/

#3

Interesting article. However link #23 is broken (I wanted to read that source). The cited article #15 from 1995 about soil erosion is referenced in an article from 2007, which is a more recent paper with similar results. It even mentiones lifespans of civilizations in the abstract! The link is http://www.pnas.org/content/104/33/13268.abstract (I also have access to the PDF)

Quote: “The data compiled here demonstrate this problem is not just ancient history. A direct implication of the imbalance between agricultural soil loss and erosion under both native vegetation and geologic time is that, given time, continued soil loss will become a critical problem for global agricultural production under conventional upland farming practices. With little new land that could be brought under sustained cultivation (55) and a projected increase in global population to >10 billion later this century, the issue of long-term agricultural sustainability will become increasingly pressing, although maintaining soil health and agricultural productivity additionally requires preventing nutrient depletion. Yet if agricultural erosion rates remain far beyond rates of soil production, global society will eventually be compelled to either adopt agricultural methods that sustain the soil or face increasing competition over a shrinking agricultural land base.”

#4

Aurora,

Yeah, unfortunately those last few links got messed up in the publishing/lay-out process. You can see them all clearly though by downloading the PDF version. There are links to that at the top and bottom of each page. Anyway, link #23 is this:

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html

And thanks for that additional reference!

P.S Here are the last few links as they should appear:

[21] http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/thirty/index.html
[22] http://trackerofplants.com/
[23] http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
[24] http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/2008/01/noble-or-savage-both-part-1/

#5

Thanks for the link. If you (or anyone else) is interested in quotes from scientific magazines like the one I mentioned, PM me and maybe I have access and can provide some data from it 8)

#6

Thanks Aurora. I may take you up on that. :slight_smile: