[ExI] farm country, was: RE: kiwis keeping it real

[spike at rainier66.com]

Subject: Re: [ExI] kiwis keeping it real

 

 

>…There are high rise gardens in some places - a whole building devoted to vegetable crops.  You can put those in big cities and the food is close by and often can cut out the middle man….bill w

 

Ja, the problem with such a notion is the energy balance.  It is as I fear: many modern people don’t really see the scale required to raise crops commercially.  It is something that cannot be done economically in a building, which is why it isn’t done that way now.  High rise gardens are there for high-value specialty stuff, rather than food crops.

 

But I can offer help.  If you have time and the inclination, travel to a big farming area such as the central valley in California, rent a car, drive from Sacramento down 99 or Interstate 5, take any one of the county roads anywhere you want.  Great motorcycle roads out there.  You can ride for hour after hour after hour and see nothing but food crops, either side of the road as far as the eye can see.  You can ride so long and see so many farms, it almost feels like there is some cosmic trick some supernatural joker has pulled: you are on a giant treadmill, with the same scenery going by over and over.

 

Failing that, go into Google, search California, hit Maps.  Go to satellite view, notice that huge green streak going north and south.  That’s the central valley.  Now zoom in.  In, in, in, until you see a road somewhere, pretty much anywhere in farm country, go to street view.  Some of those street view photos are made when the trees are bare, but some are taken during harvest season, so you can get a pretty good feel for how much land is under cultivation: it’s huge.  It’s one of the really cool features of our world today: you can learn so much without leaving your home.  The internet brings it to you.  Going there is better, but Google street view is also a good way to learn of the vast scale of it all.  

 

Another educational drive, or failing that Google street view: the wheat fields of eastern Oregon and eastern Washington.  Go out there in farm country (you need to get out away from the interstate to see it.)  It does something to one’s head to be there, to ride on a pleasant late-spring day, hour after hour, seeing the wheat fields blowing in the breeze, creating what looks like shimmering green sea out there, or as the song goes, the amber waves of grain.  When you see that, you wonder how in the hell could one species possibly devour all that food?  Well, we do. 

 

Lesson: it takes a looootta lotta sunlight to feed this many proles.  There are no viable factory food alternatives anywhere on the horizon.

 

spike

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