Dan L wrote:
Billy wrote:
In article ,
Bill who putters wrote:

Along the way we are told that polycultures produce more food per
hectare than monocultures,
a single calorie of energy used to produce 2 calories of food, but
today, 10 calories (of oil) are needed to produce 1 calorie of
food,

a barrel of oil contains 11 years of man labor, and that each of us
goes
through 60 barrels per year, YMMV,
that this isn't the same world that we grew up in, or that the
world's
food crops developed in,
and that the food production per hectare hasn't increased over the
last
25 years, in spite of Monsanto's best efforts.

The most important observation that I found was that over the next
century, many people will be returning to the land, either as
farmers,
laborers, or gardeners. The problem is that these people have no
experience in growing crops. As I see it, that is where we come in.
We
are already advising people, and each other, about how to grow
food.

This is a service that will only become more needed.

So hang in there wrecked gardeners, your planet needs you.

Here is a familiar author for you.

http://thurly.net/09oz

I've not read it yet.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Socie...ed/dp/01430365
56/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289182449&sr=1-1
is a wonderful, wonderful book, a real page turner. Maybe the most
instructive chapter is Chapter 11 that discusses the island of
Hispanola, the two countries within it, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic, and what their respective fates have been.

By and large, though, "Collapse" chronicles the bone head courses to
destruction, be it the Norse not adapting to the environment of
Greenland, as the Inuit did, because of cultural arrogance, or the
religious momentum that lead the inhabitants of Easter Island to
destroy
their environment while awaiting their own "Rapture". What was the
guy,
who cut down the last tree on Easter Island, thinking?

If you are looking for a very good book for over the winter,
"Collapse",
or Diamond's other book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", would be good
choices.

I admit, there is a limit to how much doom and gloom books I can read.
Yes, I recognize the world is collapsing. I will do my best to go
green. I find it now best to focusing on changing my life style. I
find books on self sufficiency, cooking, food preservation and water
management more to my liking.


"Collapse" is actually mildly optimistic. GG&S is much more historical and
not about the future because the forces that Diamond posits as shaping
cultures have been largely overtaken by technology and globalism. I found
his ideas on the origins of domesticated species and the influence of such
on subsequent development on the societies that did the domesticating to be
very powerful and thought provoking. Neither need to be read from cover to
cover in sequence so if you feel like dipping into a certain topic you can.

David

David