Rethinking Lifestyle

The ruins of ancient civilizations, the structures these civilizations built, are magnificent. I’m thinking of the pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon in Greece, the Colosseum in Rome, the rock-hewn churches in Ethiopia, or the Great Wall of China. Some of us have seen some of them. Truly impressive! What those ancients were able to construct with only human labour is truly amazing.

How was it possible for the agriculture sector of those civilizations to support the labour needed to, not only build the Colosseum, ancient temples and pyramids, but also to support the necessary cities with their builders and architects, merchants and traders, poets and artists. These ancient stone structures were not built with hardened steel tools, nor were those hewn stones, some weighing 600 tonnes, moved with diesel powered hydraulic machines.

In most cases it’s unlikely that the labour was voluntary. Most labour was probably slave labour, and the life of those slaves was probably miserable. Nevertheless, whether slave or voluntary, in order to work, the workmen need to be strong and to be strong they need to be well fed. That food needs to come from somewhere.

What percentage of the population of those ancient civilizations were farmers? It would be interesting to know, but I doubt that anyone knows because we all are too far removed from that situation. Nevertheless if we assume that 50% of the population was primarily engaged in farming. Then for every person farming, there is one person freed from food production so he/she could devote his/her energy to building pyramids, creating poetry, lounging in extravagant luxury, making war, etc. If that were the case we could say the ratio of energy in versus energy out within that agricultural system was 1:2. Of course the agricultural sector may have been more efficient and freed up two, three, or more people to apply their energy to other things than to produce food, to give energy efficiencies of 1:3, 1:4 or even greater.

The point here is that the only way labour can be freed up to build these edifices is if agriculture is efficient. The very fact that these edifices were possible points to significant efficiency. From an energy point of view, this system was sustainable.

Fast forward to Canada in 1931. According to statistics Canada, 1 in 3 Canadians were part of the farming population at that time. It would seem not much has changed. The main change in farming practice from antiquity to 1931 was that horses were used to do the field work. But, if a farmer chose then to use horses, he also had to grow and harvest feed for the horses and keep them in good health through the winter when there was no work of the horses. The farmer would weigh the energy cost of maintaining the horses verus the energy they contribute to key operations. From the energy point of view, this system too is sustainable.

Fast forward again to 2016. Stats Canada tells us that only one in 58 Canadians is part of the farming population. That’s a huge change. Does that mean that we are now that much more efficient than they were in earlier times? Yes and no. The numbers above refer only to human efficiency – in 2016 one Canadian farmer can support seventeen times as many people as a farmer could support in 1931. And why is that? It is because farmers today have access to oil, and the energy pent up in oil.

Darrin Qualman of the National Farmers Union calculates that it takes 13 calories of energy to put one calorie of food onto the typical North American dinner plate. This includes not only the fossil energy used by the farmer, but all the energy used by the processors, transporters merchants and consumers. In terms of total energy-in versus total energy-out, we are now less efficient than previous generations.

This is not sustainable. Our current food system is built on a house of cards, as is true of any such system. It will collapse. One would think that humans, sufficiently ingenious to build pyramids and manage visits to the moon would also find ways of living that would result in a stable, sustainable society. I’m sure it’s possible. But this will require enlightened political leadership and a voting public supporting policy supporting sustainability.