How much agricultural land and how many workers laboring in agriculture does it take to support large modern cities?
How much agricultural land and how many workers laboring in agriculture does it take to support large modern cities?
Just curious, figure someone on here will know
Edit: Thank you all for the great answers.
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idk. Back in the day it was like .6 acres per person or something but I have no idea what crops that involved, what quality of land.
It's very complicated bc you have to take in to account soil quality, what kind of inputs like fertilizer and nutrients you've got, what crops you're growing.
I can say it's not as much as it was before the mid 20th century ag revolution, now that we can make nitrogen fertilizers and engineer high-yield crops and have a better understanding of genetics and disease and also harvester combines. harvest combines are really cool. Scythes are cool too but not compared to combines.
In modern time, we trade some space efficiency for automation efficiency, especially in the United States. Midwest USA agricultural production as an example, can feed ~1 acre per person, meat production included, and requires moderate energy input, and very little labor. But it's very possible to shrink that to ~0.1 acre per person, if you're willing to put more labor and capital investment into it, as well as changing people's diets. It just kind of depends on what you out of food production.
That's really cool. I wish I knew more about it. I'm currently trying to convince people that the solution to wolf-reintroduction controversies is to feed all the ranchers to the wolves and un-fence America.
I've wondered if a reimbursement programme would placate interests. Basically, state insurance on livestock lost to wolves, with a requirement of a wildlife official confirming it was a wolf responsible. Throw in a pre-requirement of suitable fencing, with a tax incentive for the installation costs. My guess is that a given state or province would seldom need to ever actually payout to ranchers.
They do get reimbursed. Ranchers are notorious for defrauding the government for cows "killed by predators". Ranchers are some of the worst scum on earth. Their industry is only viable due to massive government subsidy. They brutalize the environment. They dominate politics in many parts of the west and they're the worst reactionary scum you can imagine. I do not mean "Feed the ranchers to the wolves" metaphorically.
fair enough, but do we want to give the wolves a penchant for eating people?
Shouldn't be a problem with ranchers.
death rides a pale harvester combine