Fishes and Loaves

I have just finished a book about growing food and the development of empires and the collapses of empires in relationship to food supply.   Civilizations developed and modern cities could be organized because of three things that happened around food growing.  History repeated itself time after time and  it looks like we are in the change over period right about now. The authors of  Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas have written a very readable story with the title  EMPIRES OF FOOD.


The first important thing that is necessary for a good food surplus is that it is grown by tilling virgin soil.   Tilling virgin soil means constantly clearing forest and moving the crops to unplowed ground.  Crops need the nutrients of good soil.  Nitrogen is the one element that is absolute necessary.   A major break though was discovered by the Haber-Bosch process after WWI.  Too long to explain here but the end results were that nitrogen/fertilizer could be made out of oil.  The world now oils it fields instead of using compost or animal manure. 

Second major item for food is long period of mild weather that produced consist dependable yearly crops.  Climate does change over the decades and although we currently  have experienced little of it in the last fifty years that seems to be changing in the last three or four years. We have all heard the stories about the dust bowl of the last century.  Another period of history that is not mention often is the Little Ice Age of the seventeenth century.  Actually, weather patterns have changed many times over the centuries but  I don't think it is often mention as the cause of people dieing off  because of crop failures. 



The third issue is the specialist farmer.  This farmer has the oranges groves of Florida or Brazil, the corn fields of Kansas or raises the rice in the Himalayas of India, that extra produce is stored for lean years or transported to the markets around the world.

The success of these three working together has produced the current population growth, the variety that we have available at our local food market. "But none of these factors were sustainable in the long term.  Virgin land loses it potency, climates change, and the specialized farms are, by nature, vulnerable to misfortune. "

The authors explore man going from the hunter-gather to the modern day Slow Food Movement.  They discuss the health of man eating different grains and vegetables, beer, wine and tea and the effects on culture and explain that a just a half degree temperature drop in spring, shrinks the growing season by ten days. Surprisely,  there is one culture that has survived over the centuries doing food production in a manner that works and it is on Bali 

They conclude the book with holding up a mirror to our lifestyle and offer some options for a safe passage to the changes that are about to happen again in history.