Farm sustainably Philosophy 2021 We need food. To survive. And it takes around 2200 calories a day. The plants that captures the suns energy and transform the sun rays into an edible form can grow on 11 % of the earth surface. This translates into roughly 1,5 billion hectares of land for food. Dividing it by 8 billion people World Population Clock: 7.8 Billion People (2020) - Worldometer (worldometers.info), Arable land (hectares per person) | Data (worldbank.org) leaves us with about 0,17 hectares of land to grow per human being which is very close to the areal limit of 0,14 hectares calculated are needed to sustain a human being.

Fossil fuel threw dust in our eyes during the green revolution that was anything but green. What oil and the mechanized agriculture did was, besides freeing people bound to cultivate the earth to do other less productive things, was to squeeze out more food per hectare of land through the use of fossil fuel driven fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and tractors and we literally came to eat fossil fuel.

Add to this an decreasing diversity with decreasing resilience and we will have a lot of food for thought but probably less on the plate in the future unless of course we start accepting limits, using renewables throughout the production of food, with organic fertilisers and pesticides and cultivate the life-supporting ecosystems and their biodiversity! References and quotes Next encouragement