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Re: The Limits To Growth
In article <56d2l3$k1q@agate.berkeley.edu>,
atanu@are.Berkeley.EDU (Atanu Dey) wrote:
>Bruce Scott TOK (bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de) wrote:
>: Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
>
>: [argument with set of figures leaving out 1995 omitted]
>
>: : As an aside, I will note that the majority of agricultural land in the
>: : world is farmed with low-tech inefficient methods. Expantion of the use
of
>: : modern agriculture, new species, and good infrastructure, can more than
>: : double world food production. All without an additional acre being
farmed,
>: : though, in the US at least, agricultural land usage has been on the
decline
>: : for many years. Perhaps you have some statistics here?
>
>: You are welcome to calculate the increase of the crude oil drawdown rate
>: if the rest of the world farms the way the US does.
>
Define "efficiency" please? Is using heavily subsidized oil and
water to increase yields "efficient?" As Arnold Pacey points out in _The
Culture of Technology_, from the yield/hectare standpoint capital-intensive
farming is more "efficient," but from the energy input/yield standpoint,
low-tech, labor intensive farming is more efficient, many times more, in fact.
There are no grounds for choosing either as a measure of efficiency,
efficiency is a social or ideological value, not a scientific one.
(Of course, the above does not take into account the massive subsidies the oil
industry gets. If you look in _Federal Energy Subsidies: 1992_, put out by the
EIA of the US Energy Dept., you'll find that the oil indusrty as a whole has
paid no net taxes every year since WWI, when the drilling credits were
passed, according to a CBO study cited in the aforementioned tome.)
Mike
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