In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 08:17:30 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:
I would really like to see a credible estimate of two things:

- The cost efficiency of wide scale permaculture, that is what would
food cost compared to conventional agriculture a) on the market
today b) taking into account long term costs of pollution etc, which
almost never figure in our 'costs'.

- Whether it can really be sustainable in a closed system. The best
examples that I have seen still use considerable external inputs.
The answer is to this is in part tied up with how you define the
system's boundaries but the dedicated are claiming that boundary is
and ought to be at the property boundary - in which case I wonder if
it is possible.

David

Rick wrote:
here is a synopsis of a recent study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0425140114.htm

There are, of course, others out there. Bottom line from my reading
is that organic and permaculture methods fall behind on grain
production, but do better with other crops. It seems likely that for
the forseeable future many farming methods will be required to sustain
a growing population at affordable prices while minimizing damage to
the eco system.



It's a shame that the paper is paywalled. To me the core question is not
the relative yields but the productivity in relation to inputs and wider
costs, the review doesn't mention whether this is covered in the paper.

The measurement of yield by itself is not that useful, one can have very
high yields that are quite unsustainable.

One critic wailed that for the underfed of the world a drop in yield as
described would be catastrophic. This is such a simplified and narrow view
that conveniently dismisses the issue in one sweep. If the chance of
catastrophe is to be a major evaluation criterion then there are many other
possible catastrophes, such as soil destruction or conventional fertiliser
becoming prohibitively expensive, that need to be considered when choosing a
long term system of food production. And of course there are many
non-catastrophe consequences and issues to consider. To collapse the
evaluation down to only yield is inadequate to say the least.

The desire to simplify the world and the future into neat sound bites (that
miss the point or tell half-truths) is very powerful in some quarters.


David

Last night, I was listening to William Moseley, a development and
human-environment geographer with particular expertise in political
ecology, tropical agriculture, environment and development policy,
livelihood security, and West Africa and Southern Africa.
http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20130408-Mon1900.mp3
http://www.macalester.edu/academics/.../billmoseley/a
rticles/
One of his observations was that the food riots in Africa in 2008
weren't caused by lack of food, but by the price of the food. Local
farmers get pushed off the land, and then the land is leased to
countries like China who come in farm the land, and then send the crop
back to China to feed Chinese. The other whammy that farmers around the
world have to live with is government subsidized crops. Many of our
crops in the U.S. are tax-payer subsidized (so much for "free markets")
and sold on the world market at below the cost of production. This in
turn ruins corn farmers in Mexico, rice growers in Haiti, and wheat
farmers in Africa, and the result is a dependency on the food producing
countries. In any event, IMHO, this is the path that Monsanto and others
are taking us down, i.e. they will control the seed.

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg