Re: [GBlist] soy products - A related book

["Robert Jordan" <rjordan91@charter.net>]

I am currently reading The Green History of the World: The Collapse of the
Great Civilizations by Clive Ponting.  It tells of the change from the
hunter-gatherer to agriculture.  The change, in the view of historians, was
that as population increased, it was no longer possible for groups to
migrate to a new area when the food in one area had been collected.  A small
area was more productive, but required a lot more work.

So agriculture was not an improvement as the diet was not as varied and it
took much more effort.  As populations grew, people had to farm more
marginal lands.  Irrigation eventually caused salinization of the soil.  So
the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, Central and South
America failed in large part because of problems with the environment. North
Africa was great wheat fields for the Romans.  The cleared land allowed all
of the topsoil to blow away and now there is only desert.

To me it seems that we are in the same cycle.  We are searching for
solutions to all the people in the world to feed and turning to chemicals,
genetics and whatever else.  The alternative is to reduce population size,
but then the political and economic repercussions would be horrendous.

Interestingly, Ponting says that Europe was very backwards compared to the
rest of the world in the 1500's.  They were only able to race ahead because
the New World opened up to them and colonization brought them great wealth.
The rest of the world was bounded by other settled areas and had no where to
expand.  Now that we have inhabited a very resource wealthy continent for
only say 2 or 3 hundred years, what is the prognosis for the future when
there is no new  source of resources?

Bob Jordan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter" <pelliott@xtra.co.nz>
To: "greenbuilding" <greenbuilding@crest.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: [GBlist] soy products


> 25/06/02 09:42:49, Corwyn <corwyn@midcoast.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >On Monday, June 24, 2002, at 12:51 , mrjones maxine&ralph wrote:
> >
> >> Topher, are you saying there is no erosion of earth in the natural
> >> state and
> >> that it only began with modern farming?
> >
> Erosion is a natural part of the releasing of nutrients into the topsoil
(c horizon).
> Anyway, I'm not sure that soil is the big problem.
> It's fairly easily replaced with organic matter, given that you mean the
topsoil layer.
> The problem as I see it is the nutrients within the b horizon, under the
topsoil, which give us many of the nutrients for growing.
> We are stripping these nutrients at a far greater rate than they are
accreting through windblown matter, river washed matter or
> uplifted via tectonic plate movement to be eroded from mountains.
>
> Also in a natural state the output is generally no greater than the input,
giving a stable system.
> Any farming system has much more output than input and the deficit is
often made up by using fertilisers to help extract nutrients
> from the b horizon.
> In an organic system farmers must input as much as they output.
> This of course is a problem when the output is exported - we don't import
organic matter (bio-mass) to replenish organic systems,
> hence a common reason for anti-globalism - it strips primary producing
countries, replaces bio-mass with plastic toys often.
>
> So, to tie it back to greenbuilding, even sustainable forestry is not
cool, neither is straw and especially not mudbrick, given
> that clays are the best nutrient sources of any soil profile.
>
> Maybe we can only hope to rape and pillage the environment in a sensitive
and prudent way.
> That is, to not encourage one country comprising of less than 10% of the
worlds population in using almost half of the world's
> resources.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
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>
>



______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________