>A question:  without agriculture, what would we eat?  The human race has
>exploded beyond the capability of this planet to support it without modern
>agricultural practices.  In our age, urban sprawl has claimed both pristine
>winderness and agricultural land - to the point that only intensive farming
>practices produce suffient food to supply the population.  The answer is not
>to condemn agriculture, but to take personal responsibility for slowing
>population growth.


Despite urban sprawl, the fact is that the vast majority of the land in the
world is still unpopulated with humans.  If you were an alien from outer
space and just landed anywhere at random on any of the Earth's land mass
(close your eyes and throw a dart), odds are you would be nowhere near any
people.  The vast majority of the land of the world is unpopulated or is
very, very lightly populated.  The entire world population of humans could
fit into ten square miles.

Also, the only thing--the ONLY thing--that has ever been shown to be an
effective means of population control is the high-tech industrialized
lifestyle.  The only thing that's ever--EVER--been shown to get most people
to voluntarily limit how many children they have is wealth, such as we
experience in North America, most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, etc.
(We are all fabulously wealthy compared to the great bulk of humanity
throughout history.)  The only other thing that seems very effective is, in
fact, a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, since hunter/gatherer women do not have
children as quickly as agriculturalist children, for purely biological
reasons that have little or nothing to do with choice.

The claim that "only intensive farming" can provide enough food for the
world seems like one that needs very serious questioning, and I'd like to
see a LOT more support for it.  Intensive modern agricultural production is
DEVASTATING to the environment.  Range-fed meats and gathered foods and
more sensible and renewable agricultural practices, which also drop cereal
grains, may well be within the realm of possibility, IF people start
demanding it.

I don't think it's responsible to assume that agriculture represents the
only possible answer, not without more research.  And even if so,
"agriculture" can be changed.  Throughout most of human history,
"agriculture" has been synonymous with cereal grains, but it doesn't have
to be.

 -=-=-

Once in a while you get shown the light/
 In the strangest of places if you look at it right   ---Robert Hunter

http://www.syndicomm.com/esmay