Notes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 190

in industrialized countries. Meat demand is expected to double by 2020 in
developing countries to 190 million tonnes per year, and increase by one quarter
in industrialized countries to 120 million tonnes.
7 On average, intensive livestock fed a diet of grain and silage produce only
1 megajoule of meat for every 3 megajoules of grain eaten. There is another
problem. As we eat more meat, so cereals are increasingly diverted for livestock
feed, and those in food poverty stay in poverty. Today, 72 per cent of all cereals
consumed in industrialized countries is for livestock feed. In developing
countries, the pattern is inverted, with 74 per cent of all cereal still being directly
consumed by humans. On the livestock revolution, see Delgado et al, 1999;
Rosegrant et al, 1997. See also White, 2000; Seidl, 2000.
8 I would like to acknowledge Linda Hasselstrom for her fine essay
'Addicted to Work' (1997), in which the idea of converting human history to
generations is developed. My estimates are slightly different from hers, as I use
the dates of 7 million years before present (BP) for human divergence from apes,
12,000 BP for the start of agriculture, and a figure of 20 years for the average
generation length. For more, see Diamond, 1997.
9 For more on collective action in agriculture, and the effects of modern
agriculture, see Balfour, 1943; Huxley, 1960; Palmer, 1976; Picardi and Siefert,
1976; Jodha, 1990; Ostrom, 1990; Bromley, 1992; Pretty, 1995, 1998; Berkes
and Folke, 1998; Kothari et al, 1998. For a comprehensive review of how social
systems have developed management practices based on ecological knowledge
for dealing with the dynamics of local ecosystems, see Berkes and Folke (eds),
1998. Petr Kropotkin was one of the first writers to give collective action
prominence in his 1898 topic Mutual Aid . He drew attention to the 'immense
importance which the mutual-support instincts, inherited by mankind for its extremely long evolution,
play even now in our modern society, which is supposed to rest on the principle “every one for himself,
and the State for all”' (pxv). Kropotkin drew upon the history of guilds and unions
in many countries, including craft guilds of mediaeval cities, brotherhood groups
of Scandinavia, artéls and druzhestva of Russia, amhari of Georgia, communes of
France, and the Geburschaflen of Germany. 'Organizations came into existence wherever
a group of people - fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants, builders or settled craftsmen - came
together for a common pursuit' (p171).
10 Cato, M P (1979) in Hooper, W D (ed) (revised Ash, H B) Di Agri
Cultura . Marcus Porcius Cato, On Agriculture , and Marcus Terentius Varro, On
Agriculture , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
11 See Li Wenhua (2000), Agro-Ecological Farming Systems in China. For a classic
text on Chinese agriculture, see F H King (1991) Farmers of Forty Centuries . Here
he introduces the idea of permanent agriculture. For a review of history of
innovation in China, see Temple (1986) China: Land of Discovery and Invention.
12 The dates of births and deaths for these four are: Francis Bacon (1561-
1626), Galileo Galilei (1524-1642), René Descartes (1596-1650) and Isaac
Newton (1642-1727). Though the Enlightenment provided the boost for
modern science's disconnection, it is important to note that it has not affected
all sciences in the same way. There is great diversity within scientific disciplines.