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"In fact, and horrifyingly, it’s likely that, as a result of environmental disaster, rural life in many parts of the world will collapse before urban life does,
by progne 3y ago
"In fact, and horrifyingly, it’s likely that, as a result of environmental disaster, rural life in many parts of the world will collapse before urban life does, as suggested by a highly disturbing recent paper in Nature, showing how and where the “human climate niche” is likely to shrink. If anything, we are likely to become more reliant on long-distance transport to deliver our food – a prospect no one, myself included, relishes."
Having moved from an urban to a rural area, I disagree. There is far more food produced per person in rural areas. Although I'm in high desert, there's probably a surplus of calories created here even with non-producers like me included. We are relatively protected from starvation in a disaster because of this and the often very very short transportation lines from yard to table. Someone that already has a rabbit hutch or chicken coop or vegetable garden can scale up quickly. And out here you can live off of small game if you can shoot or trap, as the natives did for thousands of years.
But we're highly dependent on gasoline. I'd have a 22 mile round trip walk to a mini-mart without it. It would take a serious amount of cooperation and adaptation to maintain here without it. I'm not sure if it's sustainable for someone like me.
In the event of disaster I would rather be surrounded by a lower density of desperate, starving people.
- jvanderbot 3y agoIn the event of environmental disaster, those surplus calories would disappear. He's referring to the resilience of the supply chain vs the resilience of local food production when a "Big Disaster" hits. A truly major drought would decimate local vegetable gardens and rabbit populations alike.
- curiousllama 3y agoThat paper you mention mostly highlights subsistence farmers - folks who definitionally don't have excess calories. More generally, urban folks are more resilient because they're more flexible - as long as you're importing food, you're not reliant on one locale; you can always import as long as one place hasn't collapsed.
- mips_r4300i 3y agoWhile I can't speak for an ideal subsistence farmer might act, out here in rural USA it would be very unusual for anyone growing crops to not store food and grow more than they strictly need. Canning, freezing and other forms of long term food storage are vital, otherwise you have 50lbs of okra for a month and 0lbd the rest of the year. Once you have those processes down, it's not hard at all to scale up even 50% and can a few more tomatoes. There is all sorts of informal barter for veggies and meats here, and the excess gets sold at farmers markets. The urban folks do have slight end of chain distribution advantages. The imported food is consolidated at the grocery store or wherever. The price will be high, but you can pick new sources as they are available. The city folks will be reliant on diesel for production transportation of the food. While the rural folks rely on diesel for production of food and for buying the rest of the goods they need.
- actionfromafar 3y agoDo they use fossil fertilizer?