From the inventor of the Internet....

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

"The first example of public gloom and doom is the notion that the U.S. is running out of arable land. Vice President Al Gore said, "We are losing fifty acres of farmland every hour." Let's take him at his word for a moment. That is 430,000 acres per year, and at that rate, over the course of a hundred years, all the farmland in the United States will disappear. But Gore does not mention that we had 44 million acres of farmland in the 1930s and we still have 44 million today. And thanks to vastly increased productivity, that amount of land is more than sufficient to feed our population and a significant portion of the globe. The U.S. currently gives away enough food to provide every hungry person in the world with 2,500 British thermal units per day. (Around the world, mass starvation occurs only where governments withhold food as an instrument of political intimidation.)" http://www.sightings.com/politics5/facts_p.htm"

tee hee

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), October 18, 1999

Answers

The assumption in the quote is that we have not increased our erosion of farmland recently -- i.e. that it's the same now as it has been for a century.

Maybe true and this is just environmentalist rhetoric, but it could also be that urban sprawl has increased in the last few decades. We could also be displacing farmers from good land to more marginal land (wetlands, erosion prone lands) but still keeping the same total number of acres.

Be suspicious of both sides. The people who argue that we haven't and can't exceed the Earth's carrying capacity are also playing fast and loose with the facts. And somehow I doubt that simple technical cleverness means we will *never* hit a limit to growth, even if we haven't yet.

If we keep adding 1 billion people a decade, we'll find out soon.

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.junk), October 18, 1999.


Here's how both of these things can be true. (We are losing farmland at a rate of 50 acres an hour, and we still have the same amount of farmland we had in 1930):

Suitable soil is nearly flat, deep and rich, in an area of adequate natural rainfall.

When a farmer slowly ruins a piece of suitable productive soil through the erosion and chemical poisoning of conventional farming methods, it eventually produces less than it costs to plant, cultivate and harvest. So the land is abandoned (usually scrub trees grow back up on it - and in a couple of thousand years it will be productive again if left alone)

Meanwhile, less suitable areas are brought into production by clearing sloping forestlands or plowing up rolling prairies. These non-flat areas of poorer soil require more chemicals erode even faster that suitable farmland.

The WHOLE of the Eastern US. used to FORESTED!

Conventional methods of growing food cause soil erosion, and chemical run off into our rivers (which eventually deplete the land and pollute the sea). In addition we grow the food in the country, then ship the food to the cities, where people urinate and defecate into the toilet which feeds into the sewer systems. All that lost nutrient load further depletes the soil and pollutes the sea...

Well , if you can't see where this will eventually lead us, then you really are clueless....

Berry

-- Berry Picker (BerryPicking@yahoo.com), October 18, 1999.

I wish to God I could accredit/remember where I found this factoid:

All of the "great" European Forests are less than 400 years old. If the black plague hadn't happened, the entire of Europe would be a parking lot.

Amazing to contemplate.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 18, 1999.


When Bill and Al (EArth In the Balance) get through siezing farms under their swell executive orders there will be even less farmland.On second thought it might be fun to watch them milk cows, and plough. tee hee.

-- Betty Alice (Barn266@aol.com), October 18, 1999.

Whoops! meant plow.

-- Betty Alice. (Barn266@aol.com), October 18, 1999.


and Mother Earth will see to it that another plague slows the destruction of Herself

-- cull (people@are.cancer), October 18, 1999.

I have driven from Cleveland, Ohio to Pensacola, Florida to Atlanta Georgia on interstate highways. That is a long distance. Did you know that the vast majority of that milage was through Forests. Mile after mile of TREES. Many more acres covered by trees then my farms or cities.

-- Mr. Pinochle (pinochledd@aol.com), October 18, 1999.

Lisa,

Of course great forests are less than 400 years old. How many species of tree do you know having a life span of more than 400 years?

The black plague prevented Europe from being a huge parking lot? Sounds like a bit of hyperbola to me.

regards,

gene

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), October 18, 1999.


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