Turns out those old-fashioned ways of farming were actually pretty smart

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/news/turns-out-those-old-fashioned-ways-of-farming-were-actually-pretty-smart/

?w=470&h=264
This worked better in the olden days when fish hung out here too.

Remember those things humans did for thousands of years to feed themselves before we came up with all kinds of newfangled methods? We might want to go back to doing those old-school things.

The United Nations recently formed the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a 115-country group that’s trying to bring down skyrocketing rates of species extinction. During meetings in Turkey this week, the group is discussing a strategy that it thinks could help protect biodiversity: a return to indigenous systems of farming and managing land.

One example of a traditional farming technique that the group hopes to resuscitate: the ancient Chinese practice of rearing fish in rice paddies. Adding fish to a paddy helps manage insect pests without the need for pesticides, provides natural fertilizer for the crop, feeds birds and other wildlife, and produces a sustainable meat supply for farming families.


Other examples mentioned by the group include fishing restrictions imposed by Pacific Island communities and traditional crop rotations practiced everywhere from Tanzania to Thailand.

[niyad]

1. took them long enough

[Geoff R. Casavant]

2. No doubt they were right for their time, and worth exploring again, but that's only half the story.

The big problem though, is that conventional methods alone cannot produce enough food to feed seven billion plus people. I recall reading that without modern farming innovations and crop improvements, the world can produce enough food to sustain about four billion people.

[ffr]

5. Yup!

We've been living on borrowed time since the 1950's.

[BrotherIvan]

10. The question no one wants to answer

What will happen when the world can no longer support the population? Are we willing to do anything about it before widespread suffering happens? We keep whistling past the graveyard on this one.

[LouisvilleDem]

11. I'll answer it

When the world can no longer produce enough food to feed its population, the people who have the least amount of money to buy whatever food is available will die. Given that those people are the ones with the highest birth rates, the result is a brutal but sustainable situation. I've never understood why people think lack of food is the problem that will do us in.

[NickB79]

20. Nations are not isolated islands in a global economy

The developing nations that would be the ones bearing the brunt of mass starvations from food shortages are also ones many countries around the world are coming to rely upon for natural resources to maintain developed nation economies, as their natural resource bases are depleted.

Let's say a mass famine whipped across much of Africa. Such a famine would likely cause political upheaval, revolutions, bloody civil wars. As such, countries with deep interests in that part of the world (US, Europe, China, Russia, etc) would start taking sides to make sure the winners would give them the most favorable terms for continuing resource extraction.

What exactly do you think would happen if the world's superpowers got into a pissing match over resources vital to their economies and national security? What if the very intervention by foreign nations caused another terrorist organization to spring forth and start striking targets around the globe?

A new Cold War could very well emerge as poor nations fall and rich nations fight over their bones. And cold wars don't necessarily stay cold forever.

Even without resource wars or terrorism breaking out, the loss of disposable income across the planet as food prices skyrocketed, even in the rich nations, could bring about another recession and/or depression in said rich nations. And once again, this has a tendency to create social and political tension, to the point of civil unrest, riots, and revolutions.

Food shortages won't drive humanity to extinction, but it stands a good shot at driving much of the civilized world back to a state of near-anarchy (think Somalia).

[LouisvilleDem]

22. Exactly

And because nations are not isolated islands in a global economy this statement of yours is impossible:

Let's say a mass famine whipped across much of Africa.

The days of famine "whipping" across much of anywhere are long gone. Yes, crop failures occur in certain areas of the world, but all that means is that more food than usual gets imported from else where. Yes, sometimes large numbers of people die when this happens, but to put it bluntly, they will not be people that are valuable to the first world. The corporations that are extracting the resources you are referring to will make sure that miners (as well as bought off politicians and any anyone else they need to get the job done) that are delivering those resources are well fed. In short, corporations do not want the situation that you describe to happen, and they have enough money to ensure that it does not happen on a large scale.

[truebluegreen]

13. The only thing farming innovations and crop improvements have ever done

is lead to more population growth. Which require more farming innovations and crop improvements. I for one would rather not take millions of species with us when we go, but it seems to be baked in the cake.

FWIW, I heard about a study recently by a fish biologist (no idea what that has to do with anything) that put the planet's maximum sustainable population at...700 million.

[DeSwiss]

3. K&R

[ffr]

4. The main problem however, is that it's hard work and...

wouldn't sustain the world's current population. The only way to subsidize the exploding human population is with industrialized petroleum based agriculture. Which we all know is a dead end that'll end badly for a lot of us.

But the premise of the article is correct. Sustainable agriculture is the future.

[bhikkhu]

6. I read a study which disagreed - that Asian traditional methods had the highest yield

per hectare of any method, and were fully sustainable (having been practiced in some areas for hundreds of years on the same plot). I don't think anyone could argue that its not hard work, and that the labor-intensive aspect of it is inherent, but out-producing industrial agriculture is possible, in theory.

Of course, I hate to say things like that without back-up, but a quick search didn't lead me to the original information...

[LouisvilleDem]

12. If that were true

I would ask why farmers switched in the first place. Farmers don't voluntarily reduce their yields simply to appear 'modern'.

[truebluegreen]

14. Real farmers don't, but mechanized corporations do--Better Living Through Chemistry!

An integrated organic farm produces more, and better food per acre than a factory farm with less petroleum, fewer pesticides and less water. Labor costs are higher though. And there is a period of 3-4 years during change-over when yields will be less, and less predictable (see comment below about banks).

Farmers got sucked into the maw of chemical fertilizers and pesticides--always more!--after WWII. I guess the armament industry needed something to do with all those nitrates. Now, chemical farming is "normal" and banks are loathe to give operating loans to farmers who use "non-standard" techniques. That may have improved lately but it was certainly the case 10-15 years ago.

[LouisvilleDem]

24. Source?

In integrated organic farm produces more, and better food per acre than a factory farm with less petroleum, fewer pesticides and less water.

What is your source for this claim? Does it come from peer reviewed literature whose results have been replicated by others? I have no doubt that you can find some isolated "study" paid for by the organic food industry (and yes, that is what it has become at this point). However, to claim that there is a method of farming out there that will increase yields while spending less money on materials, but this method remains unused for idealogical reasons flies in the face of reason. Corporations are out to make money, and if a different method of farming will make them more money they will use it. That is precisely why the industry has embraced organic farming to the degree that they have. They have discovered that for a small (but growing) market they can make more money growing organic and charging more to make up for reduced yields.

On edit:

I found this: http://www.nature.com/news/organic-farming-is-rarely-enough-1.10519

"I think organic farming does have a role to play because under some conditions it does perform pretty well," says Verena Seufert, an Earth system scientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and the study’s lead author. But "overall, organic yields are significantly lower than conventional yields", she says.

[pscot]

15. You can't plant a 1000 acres of wheat or corn

using traditional methods. And you can't feed 7 billion people without 1000 acre fields.

[bhikkhu]

16. It is true, but it is labor intensive

You can get a higher production per acre with human labor than with mechanized labor, and you can get a better mix of better quality produce that way as well. Its why China has had such a high population density (even in rural areas) for over a thousand years.

Farmers reduce their yields to save on labor costs and gain a higher net income.

[LouisvilleDem]

23. I've seen no evidence of reduced yields

Your claim that when farmers switched to mechanized farming their yields dropped flies in the face of every graph I've ever seen on the subject. If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be very interested to see it.

[bhikkhu]

25. That's not the claim at all

and I wish there was more comprehension of the argument here. The claim is that old traditional bio-intensive and labor intensive methods produce the largest yield per acre.

The scale of the operations is such that there has never been any direct transition that I can imagine. A mechanized farm is only practical on a scale of thousands of acres. A tradition labor intensive farm is only practical on a scale of tens of acres. Its a whole different type of thing, and a whole different type of economy. A traditional farm is densely populated, and the goal is what you might call "prosperous self sufficience" rather than simple profit. The yield per acre supports a local population which labors there first, then goes to market. The goals are different, the type of market is different, and there is no direct transition without a complete change in how the values are considered.

[bhikkhu]

26. Or - think of it in a different way and it makes more sense

If you were given a few square feet of land, your choice of plants to grow, and unlimited time to care for them, do you think that (after a few trials) you could produce more food for that few feet than a modern farmer does in the same measure of land? Of course you could, and no great expertise would be required. If you have the time to optimize the plant mix, the watering and fertilizing, and make the most of every square inch with a succession of plants throughout a growing season, and give individual attention to your crops, of course you can outproduce, on a small scale, a professional farmer.

Look at "square foot gardening", for instance, which is currently a bit of a fad. It mixes varieties of plants in a way as to optimize the yield of a very small plot of land. It has a very high yield, and is very labor intensive.

Look at traditional practices, which have been very similar at various times and places. Farming, until recently in history, was the occupation of the majority of humans. Mostly it required a great deal of labor, and this was met in most cases by a high birthrate and large family sizes. On the death of the head of family, a common tradition was to divide the farm up between living males. Over time, of course, this often led to very small plots of land being intensely cultivated, in a way similar to "square foot gardening". The result was a very high yield per acre.

Look also at modern experiments on optimizing self-sufficiency, such as the "you can feed your family on 1/4 acre" thing. It can be done, there have been several studies, both practical and theoretical, and they all demonstrate higher yields per acre than modern mechanized agriculture. (or 1/10th of an acre - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NCmTJkZy0rM )

I don't mean to be overly argumentative, but I thought this was all common knowledge.

Again, modern agriculture optimizes profits, not yield.

[LouisvilleDem]

27. Sorry

I was looking for something a little more scientific than a YouTube clip.

[bhikkhu]

29. I suspect that you don't actually care at all, but here's a few anyway:

An article detailing a study from 2009: http://energyfarms.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/farm-scale-study-results-from-2009-field-season/

A website explaining one contemporary method: http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html

Here's a run-down of the SCI organic system, which allows smallholders to outproduce industrial farms ( yield per acre, or course): http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html . If you actually have any interest in the subject, that article has numerous references to follow up on.

[LouisvilleDem]

34. Thank you

I'll take a look.

[kristopher]

30. You seriously can't follow a well reasoned argument without an outside reference?

If you think there are facts within the reasoning that are suspect, then sure, asking for a reference is legitimate.

But a refusal to address a polite attempt at reasoned discourse in the way you did is simply wrong.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

7. Sustainable agriculture is the future . . .

. . . for those who make it through the great die-off. Start brushing up on those old-time skills, and teach others.

[The2ndWheel]

9. Unless sustainable agriculture doesn't exist

We want it to. We hope it does.

[jeff47]

8. If the only factor was pesticide use and species extinction, then that might be a good argument

But there's also the problem of yield. Modern farming produces more food per acre. We're past the point where "old-fashioned" farming can feed every person on the planet.

[bhikkhu]

17. Again, that's just not true

"old fashioned" farming can produce higher yields, and more sustained yields, and with a higher quality standard, but it requires more labor. Labor is expensive. Farmers don't farm for maximum yield, they farm for maximum profit. Reducing labor costs with machinery allows the greatest profit, but not the greatest yield.

This is a good over-view of traditional methods (in China) http://www.academia.edu/1500404/Sustainable_Traditional_Agriculture_in_the_Tai_Lake_Region_of_China

One of the fundamental things is the mixed use of the land, where there would be one or two primary crops where yields were comparable to current numbers, but then the same farm would raise animals for meat and fertilizer, and other crops in the margins, and tree crops mixed in. The amount of labor was very high, but the net yield from the land and the large variety of products was higher.

[jeff47]

18. You are talking about rice. One crop.

There are other crops.

And rice only grows in certain climates. You can't grow rice in Iowa. There isn't enough rice-growing land to feed everyone with just rice.

Corn, wheat, soybeans and other common US crops grow to a much higher density with modern farming.

[bhikkhu]

19. Bio-intensive, labor intensive agriculture produces 2-6 times the yield of industrial ag

and the key is its not about one crop. I know the thing you're talking about, but I'm taking about and described a whole different approach. Its been done by the Chinese as a traditional multi-crop practice, and by the Mayans, the Greeks, and a large number of small-scale farmers currently.

One basic write-up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture

The important point is that is produces more calories per acre than modern industrial agriculture. I'm not a modern convert or anything, but I'm fond of facts, and this is one that I learned ages ago in college studying old Chinese agricultural models, and its been confirmed more recently by a variety of new work.

There are things that modern industrial agriculture does well, but producing the maximum yield per acre is not one of them. Profit is more the goal, and that weighs costs versus production. A lot of potential production is ignored to avoid labor costs.

[jeff47]

21. No, the papers do not say that.

They say that they produce more crop per energy consumed and water consumed. Not yield per acre on an industrial scale. On a non-industrial scale, they're getting a higher yield, but the "conventional" garden is not treated as an industrial farm treats it's fields.

Your claiming there's a massive labor cost, but there really isn't. Some countries like China would turn to additional labor to get the job done, because they have so damn many people. We're talking about a place that built the three-gorges dam by moving concrete in wheelbarrows.

But if you want to do the same thing in the US, you'd still use mechanization, and that would keep the labor down. For example, your deep digging would be accomplished by a bulldozer or front-end loader. Plant complementary crops? Really not hard to build a plow that plants more than one seed in adjacent, close rows. Yes those costs more than only dragging a 'regular' plow behind a tractor, but it's not nearly the enormous cost you portray.

You are arguing that farmers would make 2-6 times more money with much less than a 2-6x larger labor cost in an industrialized environment. Yet they just aren't doing it. Even the "organic" farmers who would get the greatest benefit, since they can't use chemical fertilizers. That might be a sign that it isn't quite what you portray.

[pscot]

28. You need to spend a summer on a working farm

It would clarify your ideas of "labor intensive", and what it takes to produce a high yield, or any yield at all. It's easy to talk about highly diversified farming, but if you're doing a lot of different things, it may prove difficult to do any of them very well. Disclaimer; I'm not a farmer, but I was raised in farm country during a time when one small farmer after another was selling up to developers, mainly because the kids couldn't wait to get away from the daily grind of farm life.

[kristopher]

31. Have you ever worked in the terraced paddies of China?

Or Japan?
Or Thailand?

It appears to me you aren't including the full range of what constitutes 'agriculture' in your sampling.

[pscot]

32. I'm sure I'd remember if I had

I was just trying to make the point that farming is difficult and chancy endeavor, which is part of the reason diversified family farms have become a novelty. I would also note that we seldom get at the full range of possibilities in any conversation. Only god's frame of reference is universal and Moses is the last person to have seen him.

[kristopher]

33. How do you think the responses to bhikkhu's posts here

....would score (1<10) on a scale measuring a willingness for polite discussion?

There was no need to consult the occult because valid considerations were offered in good form. They were promptly rejected out of hand with a spirit I can only characterize as disappointing.

I think we are better than that and I know you are because I see you do much better on a routine basis. I don't mean to be a scold, and if you'll take the time to reread the thread and tell me you think I'm wrong I'll apologize.*

That will be midday tomorrow though, as I'm headed for bed in a few minutes.

[pscot]

35. There was some pushback

to Bhikku's comments, but it didn't seem all that rough. Part of it was, inevitably, a defense of current ag practice. Part was a reaction to what seems like an idealized view of what's practicable. I live in a semi-rural area where a number of people are trying to establish themselves through small scale sustainable farming, such that for 2 or 3 months of the year one can buy small quantities of local beets or turnips at $4 a pound, or Italian prunes at $3.50. The more successful ones monocrop; a winery, a few local beef producers who fatten steers bred elsewhere and custom cut. I doubt that most of it approaches sustainability. We are surrounded by Puget Sound, but there are no longer any fish to speak of and the shellfish are tainted.

I agree with Bhikku that a change to a sustainable way of life would be highly desireable, but population continues to increase. The CO2 we spew into the air continues to increase. Your frequent posts document the efforts to move in a new direction, and yet at ground, nothing changes. We're like dieters, who keep gaining weight despite our best efforts to get it under control. We'll keep on until we're forced to change, and when we do change it won't be according to some plan, but in our usual ad hoc manner, determined by the exigenies of our situation. I admire your optimism, and Bhikkus's. I envy it. I wish I could share it.

[kristopher]

36. The dieting analogy is a good one

I think the difference between us could largely be that I recently spent years in an academic setting under the tutelage of a world class expert specifically studying the nature of a transition away from carbon. Consequently my view is highly structured and when a new piece of information comes in, I might have a deeper appreciation of its degree of relevance to the problem than is typical for most participants here.

I can understand pessimism and worry - in fact I share all the worry and some of the pessimism. However I see a great deal of room for optimism also. This is a massive piece of infrastructure we are tackling, and changing the direction of the inertia is consequently a massive undertaking. My pessimism crawls our from under the bed and rears its head anytime I read of attempts at addressing the problem through political cooperation. The opposition began organizing after the '92 Earth Summit and by the time Kyoto was ratified at the UN that opposition had put in place the machinery to largely thwart further coordinated political action.

But the war isn't only being fought on the political front; there is also an economic battle underway and there we are winning hands down. We haven't achieved victory yet, but the entrenched global energy system is now starting to crumble. They may be able to engage in a stalling action, but the outcome is inevitable given the dynamics on the table.

The change may therefore still be far slower than those who see the need for it yesterday are comfortable with. But what I see of our position is self-reinforcing cycle where every retrenchment of the fossil industry leads to an expansion of market position for renewables and distributed energy systems. At some point a critical mass of new economic winners will be achieved and the political wall that the fossil/nuclear industry giants have erected will crumble. After that, all bets are off as to the pace of change possible for the transition.

We are seeing a sample of that right now with the investment by China in solar. That single economic shift moved us 20 years ahead on global solar deployment.

To paraphrase a quip from the religious community*, the greatest trick the entrenched energy powers ever played was convincing the public that a renewable system can't replace them.


*The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he doesn't exist.

I'm a pastafarian, btw.