C. Forstater,
THe issue is not worth discussing but it seems that occasionally
it needs discussing. There are practices, other than *TYPICAL* modern
agricultural practices that can be demonstrated more productive (usualy
just in absolute calories) given, as you said, certain conditions. That
is practically meaningless. For example it may be that the Western United
States could produce more meat grazing buffalo than cattle. That does not
mean that primitive methods produced more meat. That means that modern
agriculture is simply, because of tastes, grazing a less productive
animal. The fact remains that when you compare cattle to cattle or
buffalo to buffalo, modern methods produce more. Furthermore the
limitations put on these studies are almost always in terms of
"sustainability", the measure of which is necessarily guess work. I have
seen studies that cite topsoil erosion in the heartland as proof that
modern agricultural methods are less sustainable, disregarding both the
fact that farmers for decades payed no attention to erosion and that now
that they do no-till agriculture is taking hold and vastly limiting
topsoil erosion. These studies also disregard the fact that humans do
strange things (from an ecological standpoint) like ship their waste out
to sea or bury it in one place, thereby interrupting the nitrogen cycle
that normally re-fertilizes the land. That is not the fault of modern
agriculture but the fault of people who have the very reasonable idea that
they don't want raw sewage dumped all over the place, but see, at the
moment, no economic need to make a large composting effort to resupply
they nitrogen cycle. For that matter, another difference is that we don't
live in the forest. That means two things. First it mean that the land
doesn't get re-fertilized as much. It also means that there is not as
much standing biomass from which to harvest and give the *appearance* of
greater efficiency. Aquaculture may not seems very productive compared to
fishing a spot nobody has fished for a few years, but after a while the
truth comes out.
Of course the main point is that primitive agriculture takes
man-hours that could be better spent creating industrial goods. It also
demands conditions that stymie development of an industrial economy (no
roads, cities, things like that). Finally, when comparing the
agricultural output of a primitive society to that of a modern society, it
must be kept in mind that you are comparing 50 to 90% of the output of one
society to maybe 5% of the output of the other, if that. Therefore, as I
said, the comparison is farcical.
peace
