The continual export of minerals from agricultural land is something I have been aware of for a long time, so I try to do my bit by composting every scrap of organic waste from the kitchen, which is then returned to the vegetable garden. British research has shown that nutrient value of fruit and vegetables has declined compared to the past; suggestive of impoverished soil. At my parent’s farm I’ve never worried about Kangaroos hopping around, because they are born there and die there. Sheep on the other hand, suck the life out of the soil, exporting nutrients stored in their wool, bones and meat. Another case of where we throw away nutrients is the human body. As we grow, our bodies use trace elements, like phosphorous and calcium for bones. But after we die, these nutrients are locked up in a graveyard. It sounds macabre, but recycling the dead should be given some thought. One caution, however, is the contamination of organic waste with heavy metals, which are apparently concentrated in sewerage and large animals – including humans.

Ok, so there are a zillion ways in which we could improve efficiency in the way we utilise all sorts of resources, which basically mean improving nutrient efficiency.

And the motivation for doing so is fair and reasonable – to “help humanity pass the population peak into a managed decline instead of the catastrophic collapse that is the usual fate of species whose populations have outrun their resources.”

But wait, there is something drastically wrong here:

Surely if we were really successful at improving nutrient / resource usage, we would be facilitating population growth and catering for a higher peak population and a bigger crash, and with a greater negative effect on environment, climate change, extinction rates and our ability to recover afterwards.

This is our reality, in the absence of very concerted direct effort to reduce worldwide fertility rates.

Just about all of our technological advances are effectively prolonging the great population crash and increasing its magnitude.

Julian Cribb is very much aware of the population stabilisation / reduction arguments that have been bandied around this forum and indeed around Australia and the world for many years now. What I would really like to see from him – one of our foremost thinkers and writers – is a succinct article on how to address this enormous issue, in the least draconian manner possible, but also in a manner that is truly effective, if this is possible. THIS afterall is where our efforts really need to be concentrated.

The great pity is that every time we see anything written on this huge subject, it is always directed at how we can provide for this enormous and rapidly increasing population, and not how we can deal with the core of the issue – preventing the huge collapse that we can all see coming, by addressing the population issue head-on.

The Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach has a statue:
Some poor devil, poorly equipped for walking; in riding boots, saddle slung over his shoulder, trudging back to the distant homestead from where his horse has carried him before dying under him.
I have empathy with it.
We have used oil for fertilisers, field preparation, transport, and now we see the prospect of its cheap availability deserting us.
Sewage and waste to the rescue! Some of the steps on the journey back are listed in the article. But they are no easy Sunday stroll, quickly accomplished.
Yes, we can re-cycle effluent from feedlots to great advantage, but the end result is more difficult: the nutrients in grain, meat, wool, from Balranald through to Dubbo - are transported to urban centres, generally to be passed through human digestive tracts. The energy costs of capturing, refining, and providing a return from passage for these nutrients from Sydney or Beijing to the agricultural fields is presently prohibitive, even while cheap oil remains available.
We have got ourselves into a fix. Quoting from Duncan Brown's "Nine Laws of Ecological Bloodymindedness" (see his book Feed or Feedback):
"For every action on a complex, interactive, dynamic system, there are unintended and unexpected consequences. In general, the unintended consequences are recognised later than those that are intended."
"For every increment in the agricultural surplus there is a corresponding increment in the volume of urban sewage."
If any species of animal should develop the mental and physical capacity consciously to manage the ecosystem of which it is a part, and proceeds to do so, then the long-term survival of that species will require, as a minimum, that it understands the rate limits of all processes essential to the functioning of that ecosystem and that it operates within those limits"
"If a population continues to grow exponentially it will eventually consume essential resources faster than they can be replenished. The provision of or access to additional resources will extend the 'life' of such resources, and hence the duration of growth of the population, only to a very small extent."

Like Robg I enjoy composting and recycling organic matter - food wastes, plant waste etc - back into the soil that sustains my garden. It gives me a more complete sense of involvement in the cycles of life (isn't that what recreational gardening is about?), and I enjoy the food I grow more. It saves landfill as well, but I couldn't pretend that such recycling is an economically viable way of producing the bulk of the food we produce today - or could it be?

Ludwig, I haven't seen earlier posts on the subject, but I reckon the key to stopping the human population explosion lies in developing the status and autonomy of women, particularly through the education of girls. The population explosion has occurred because technology has developed to allow massively increased life expectancy and survival of infants, as well as preventing mass starvation in otherwise famine prone areas. These are good things, but need to be balanced by people self regulating their fertility, which is already occuring in the first world and amongst the middle classes of places like India. Women need access to contraceptive technologies, the education to understand them, and the autonomy to be able to carry out their choices. Whew! I feel like a feminist, but I think it's common sense, really.

You are right Snout, but unfortunately it is much more complex, especially when considering religious and cultural beliefs and practices, and the ‘snout in the pig-trough’ bias of big business and governments worldwide, who continue to facilitate continuous human expansion.

However, if we had the collective presence of mind, I reckon we could deal with it.

It just staggers me that the presence of mind for dealing with the material or technological side of the demand / supply equation has developed greatly over the last decade or so, but it has almost entirely failed to develop on the ever-increasing demand side of this equation

Snout: I think you're spot on about helping women to help reduce world population growth, although I fear that Ludwig is right about his response to you.

As for producing the food we eat, yes and no. On the yes side, a quarter acre block can easily produce enough fruit and vegetables for a standard family, and then some. It can also produce eggs, honey, etc., plus also oil from sunflowers for example. The problem lies in grain and meat/fish/dairy production. Part of that is our diet (which is richer than ever before) and part of that is the setup of cities which have to move such foods (or anything else for that matter) over long distances to feed themselves. In many ways, I think cities are unsustainable.

On the no side, we ultimately can't make the backyard fruit or vegetable patch self-sustaining as long as we send our sewage elsewhere as that's a net loss of nutrients from the land. We need a more-or-less sealed feedback loop where we don't export or import anything except via nature itself. However, again, I think a large part of the obstacle here is the setup of cities as massive entities connected to the land only via long and artificial links. It would be possible to create housing developments almost as self-contained feedback loops (eg. with blackwater systems that could provide nutrients to local aquaculture), but there's a vested interest against such things. Also, I think a large part of our mindset to do with nutrient waste is our obsession with dirt equalling uncleanliness.

If you haven't already, I would suggest you do some reading on permaculture (eg. Bill Mollison). Also, ABC's Gardening Australia just put out a great little step by step DVD for the average Aussie quarter acre block. There are some really positive possibilities, we just need the will.

Responding to Ludwig's excellent point:
The surest form of contraception is prosperity. Almost all wealthy societies are at or close to ZPG.

The second most effective form of contraception is urbanisation. People in cities have fewer kids that rural folk. Even in relatively poor places, like Mexico City, the birth rate is dropping.

The conversion of sex from primarily a reproductive activity to primarily a recreational activity in western society is, in my view, partly an unconscious biological response to the population question.

To avoid the population 'crash' scenario - which would be horrific for all species including our own - we need to increase the rate at which all societies become affluent, counter-intuitive though it may sound.

The solution is to end global poverty, not only because it is humane to do so, but also because it is about bringing our population into balance with our resources.

Thus, human demand must increase before it can manageably decrease. Recycling nutrients is one of the best ways we can do this, by raising nutritional standards for all, while reducing the environmental costs of doing so.

Your argument makes some sense Julian, but there are just simply not the resources for all of the world’s poor to reach a level of affluence at which their fertility rate drops sufficiently. Nor is there the ability for our environment to absorb the waste products.

Even with the most optimistic improvements in efficient nutrient recycling or resource usage, it sounds like an impossible task.

Then there is the timeline. We just don’t have the time to raise affluence across the third world before the population becomes too big to support. Many people think it is too big to support now, with current levels of affluence.

And perhaps most ominously of all, as previously mentioned on this thread, if we were really amazingly successful in raising standards of living, we would be facilitating high levels of population growth, perhaps at a bit of a reduced rate, until such a time that affluence became high enough for women to choose career paths rather than having large families, and for some of the other factors that lower birthrates to kick in.

By the time all of the world’s population has a standard of living high enough to engender a below-replacement birthrate, the population would be much higher, the average personal footprint on our environment and resource base would be much higher and the combination of the two would simply do us in, well and truly.

Julian, I don’t see any way out of this crisis. I think we destined to suffer an almighty population crash.

As unpalatable as it is, I think that the sooner the crash happens the better, for our species and for all others. It seems that just about anything we do will simply prolong the crash and increase its magnitude.

Oh dear, I wrote in my last post; “However, if we had the collective presence of mind, I reckon we could deal with it.” Mmmmmm, I wonder.

Hell of an issue to come to terms with

Ludwig - at the International Assn of Ag Economists, in Surfers now, I put this question to several top economists. All agree is is within our power to double food production without causing complete env devastatation. The main obstacle at the moment, they say, is the low price of food which is inhibiting the takeup of new technologies that would increase yields. There's something in this. As food prices rise, output will increase.
And, my observation, the drop in the birthrate starts to cut in at a per capita income around $US2000-3000, which is about where countries like Malaysia and Russia are today. So a society doesn't have to be super rich to slow or stop reproduction. The UN forecasts of mid-century population have been dropping for a decade or so, which suggests a general slowdown is happening.

That sounds positive Julian. But it does prompt a few more questions;

Can we both double food production and vastly increase ethanol / biodiesel production in lieu of peak oil? What will this lead to in terms of land-clearing and extinction rates?

How do the economics and practicalities look when we consider the rising price of oil, and the dependence of practically all crops other than those of subsistence farmers on oil for ploughing, seeding, fertilising, harvesting, and transporting produce?

What does it mean for many peoples who are battling to make ends meet now if food prices rise? Ok, there might be a benefit in terms of the implementation of more efficient technologies, but this would only come after price rises that, even if very moderate, would have devastating effects in many places. Prices rise as demand increases with respect to supply or as essential ingredients become more expensive. Either way, people are going to suffer big time in the first instance.

It seems to be a case of just allowing market forces to dictate the situation. Which basically means that things have to become pretty grim before significant change occurs.

I think you might be right in theory, but in practice I feel that it will, as is almost always the case, be too little too late. The tide of change seems to lag far behind both the time that we need the change to happen and the necessary magnitude.

Gee, I am not normally a hopeless pessimist. But by crikey, this time the issue seems too hard to put on an optimistic face