Energy, Food Production, & Population

Modes of Food Production Universally based on hunting & fishing, as well as the collection or gathering of wild plants Hunter/gatherers  migratory bands that follow food sources Agricultural people  permanent settlements with a variety of agriculture methods

Agricultural People Rainfall agriculture  utilizes naturally occurring showers as a source of moisture Irrigation agriculture  depends on artificially constructed dams & ditches to bring water to the fields Raised-field systems  combine aspects of rainfall & irrigation techniques

Agriculture Issues Replenishing the nutrients taken from the soil Slash-burn  requires large amounts of land in fallow awaiting the regrowth of vegetation suitable for burning Mixed farming  uses animal manure for fertilizer

Industrial era  soil fertility depends primarily on chemical fertilizers

Environmental Influence Items of a food production technology interact with factors present in a particular environment Problem of disposing of industrial wastes, pollutants, & other biologically, significant by-products

Law of Diminishing Returns Upper limit on energy production sets an upper limit on the number of human beings who can live in that environment (environment’s carrying capacity) People must work to limit the expansion of their production efforts

Expansion, Intensification, & Technological Change Intensification  an increase in input (worker effort increase & technology is constant) without increasing the area of food production Expansion  increase in area of production, while input per square kilometer remains the same

If intensification is sustained, sooner or later production will collapse and fall to zero

Hunter-gatherer Population is low in relation to the resources they exploit

Slash-Burn System Crops planted in small gardens Efficient method of meeting calorie needs Feed more people than hunters & live in permanent homes Problem of forest regeneration Limited availability of meat

Irrigation Agriculture Yields more calories than other preindustrial modes of food production Puts in far more labor than the average hunter-gatherer Opt for intensifying their effort to increase their output

Energy and Pastoral Nomadism Can move their herds over long distances and take advantage of the best pasture Must obtain grain supplements to their diet Meat  small part of diet Not adequate to support dense populations

Grain usually obtained through trade Dominated by more powerful states Tend to be decentralized and to lack their own state institutions, cannot exert political pressure upon the governments to which they are dependent

Industrial Food Systems Amount of indirect labor exceeds the amount of direct labor Higher dosages of chemical fertilizers & pesticides Myth of more leisure time

Population Issues & Food Infanticide  Consistently higher for one gender, than the other  Very controversial Disease  Most of the great lethal epidemic diseases primarily associated with dense urbanized populations

Population pressure predisposes families & societies to intensify the food productive efforts in order to lessen the need to use unacceptable methods of population control Population pressure introduces an element of instability into all human ecosystems