Many question whether giving up grains - key to the Paleo approach - will not work because then we will not be able to feed the 7 billion going on 8 billion people in the world.
This is the wrong question - because our increase in population from 2 billion in 1900 to nearly 7 billion today has taken place entirely because we have used the leverage of OIL to beat back nature as we grew more grains.
When the full effects of Peak Oil arrive - we will not be able to farm and have a food system that can feed anyone. For we only know today how to use the system that we have.
So let's look back and see what was possible before oil.
In 1800 - the peak of Muscle Agriculture, we could just feed 1 billion. But then of course we knew how to farm. Who knows how to farm today? A few know how to use our system and its tools but who knows how to grow a lot of food without them?
What about distribution? We have a distribution system today that relies entirely on cheap oil. We take it for granted that food travels thousands of miles. Food never travelled before except once. Rome! Can food travel without cheap oil?
We have been here before.
Rome in 300 AD had nearly a million people. It was not fed locally. North Africa was the Prairies of the Classic World. Grain was grown by armies of slaves and then shipped in the classic equivalent of "tankers" to Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber and then barged up the river to Rome.
So when the system failed after the sack in 410 - Rome could not feed itself from the hinterland - as it had done in 300 BC. The result? The population fell to 30,000 on 500AD. The result is that the Empire collapsed in local subsistence. People had no choice. Cities all over the empire were abandoned.
No city can have a population of more than about 30-40,000 in a muscle world. Transport is just too difficult.
London was the first city to breach this in about 1800 - the reason were canals and the agricultural revolution that brought in new forms of rotation and machinery. People really knew how to grow food then. Do you? Who do you know can grow food?
Feed 7 billion? We can't now. There are a billion who starve. That is as many people who were on the planet in 1800.
Last point. All agricultural systems todate have collapsed because of their success. Populations grow too large and the strain on the environment becames too great.
Where are the Gardens of Babylon now? Where is the farmland that supported the Mayans? Where indeed is the topsoil of North Africa? The answer to that is that it filled in the harbour at Ephesus 1,000 miles north east.
What will the gardens of California look like in 30 years? How will the plains grow wheat after the acquifer runs dry? All this is completely predictable. We too have hit the limits. The limits of the energy system that we rely on and more important, the limits on water and topsoil. Water is the final arbitier and most high population places are at the limit now. We are losing our topsoil and its health too. This cannot be replaced quickly or easily.
So for me, the real question is how are we going to feed anybody if we continue to use the existing model?
My second question is one about knowledge. Who knows how to grow food today? Less than 3% of the population. And those that do are using a Lego Kit. They only know how to farm using the recipe.
So when the shit hits the fan, are we ready enough?
Where is the seed to come from? From Monsanto? Where is the saved seed?
How will people deal with pests and weeds? Back to peasant farming?
I think that the opportunity that presents itself is to learn how to grow food in a new way - where we work with nature. Where the need for all that work is reduced. Where we use network principles to get scale. Where we start with the local system and then work out to the larger system.
I will offer up some ideas soon about that.
For I think we stand at the edge of a paradigm shift not a progression.
Here is my context - that we are back at the same place that we found ourselves when our success in hunting meant that we had outrun the resource. When we had to find a new way of getting our food or die.
The future cannot be about trying harder - the planet cannot take that.
Our population is directly linked to our use of oil to make the grain model work.
We have to find a network and natural way of working with nature. That will of course change everything as it did when we learned to dominate her.
More later:-
