Macrobiotic Life

Few interesting informations around the agricultural topic.

But before them, let me show you one eye-opening fact:
In the place of 1 combain-harvester, you would need 120-300 people (using no oil powered machinery), fully engaged from the beginning of harvest season till Christmas.
The combain is probably the number one invention that caused a rapid human multiplication and massive shift from agricultural occupations.

John Michael Greer posted at his blog:

The productive potential of intensive gardening, especially under emergency conditions, should not be underestimated. A team of researchers at pioneering organic-gardening group Ecology Action found, on the basis of extensive tests, that it’s possible to feed one person year round on a spare but adequate vegetarian diet off less than 1000 square feet of intensively gardened soil. (The details are in David Duhon’s book, listed in the resource section.) In the more troubled parts of the future ahead of us, some of us may have to do just that; a great many more of us will need to be able to garden in order to pad out potential irregularities in a food supply that’s desperately vulnerable, over the short term, to fluctuations in the price and availability of fertilizer feedstocks and fossil fuels. The victory gardens of past wars are likely to be a useful template for the survival gardens of the deindustrial future.

I have read reaction to this theory from one very experienced farmer and he thinks, that the statement is right, but only if you are talking about the supplemental food production (vegetables, herbs). For the full scale food sustainability, read this:

Oldfarmecmac wrote:

… If it should become necessary,any reasonably accomplished gardener living in the more temperate parts of the US where the soil is decent and rainfall is adequate can produce most or all of the food necessary for herself and her immediate family,given enough land and sufficient time.The amount of land needed might be as little as one quarter to one half acre per person in the deep south where double cropping and even triple cropping may be practical,but such high yields are very much the exception rather than the rule,and can only be accomplished by very proficient farmers devoting very long hours to very small acreages.Chinese and Korean subsistence farmers in thier best farming areas are known to obtain even higher yields on a regular basis,but they are the 6 under par pros and work more or less continually at feeding themselves.You will need several times as much land in less favored areas.Our personal rough last ditch plan on our place here in the Blue Ridge mountians is two acres or so per person in field crops and fruit trees,which will provide us a little excess production for use as chicken feed and for sale,as well as a stored carry over safety cushion.
The more land you have, the more options you have in terms of varieties,crop rotations, fallow periods,cover crops, field manures,etc.More land also means that you can use less labor intensive techniques and get the same yields with fewer hours of labor.This will probably be a critical consideration for most people.In our case we will need to spend considerable amounts of time gathering firewood and other chores not directly related to food production. …

Oldfarmecmac:

…It is extremely unlikely that you can support yourself in Maine on a half acre.your twenty acres would probably be enough for a family of four or five if at least ten acres are reasonably level,cleared land with good soil.
You simply cannot believe how many things will go wrong until you are on the land and you need huge safety margins to protect yourself.

There are many relative truths these days.
But many of them seems to be relative, because things are very complex – and their real logic is hard to find.
We are lost in believing many things that dig grave to our own children – and we even pursue them with great zest, as many others around do.
It’s hard to see the simple logic, but it’s hard only because we are not learnt so – because we are overwhelmed with thousands of unuseful informations.
Unuseful from the context of sustainability – of the ecosystem, which is our living environment and us.
Sustainability of our human health.
Sustainability is the key word to everything we do.
But the meaning is lost in times of the cheap abundant energy.
Many stupid undoable things are happening every hour, which we can understand in a minute, after we imagine world without cheap fossil fuels – many things are clear and we know what is needed to do, we are becoming effective in each moment – and at the end of the hard day, we are somehow internally happy, satisfied with ourself – something we are striving so hard to find in present society.