Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.94.961005082908.8197A-100000@rccsun> Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 08:42:48 +0700 From: Richard Tinsley <mailto:tinsley@AIT.AC.TH> Subject: Re: Sustainability To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
As far as I can tell your analysis is correct although I hate the term traditional society. In todays contact with the decline death rates the subsistance agricultural societies to the extent they actually exist are not sustainable. While they involved no capital inputs and meet that half of the sustainability desire, they are not environmentally sound as they result in considerable environmental damage from erosion, and are continuing to move into ever more marginal lands. Perhaps the best example is the how African women must continue to venture further and further in search of a days wood supply. The manual operation makes it necessary to burn the maize stubble just before the rains come really exposing the land to erosion.I am inclined to beleive the population pressure has long exceeded the capacity of the globe to sustain itself in the purest terms of sustainability. I thus look as sustainable agriculture as an optimization of the needs for agricultural products and the need to minimize environmental damage. In this context the most sustainable systems are the big dry landers of Eastern Colorado. Very little fertilizer and other chemicals and a stubble mulch program that brings erosion to with tolerable limits.
There was a fairly good discussion of this on Sustag-l a few months ago to which I contributed a 10 page lecture on sustainable agriculture from a 3rd world perspective. You are welcome to it, but it is too big to issue to the total group.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Dick Tinsley
------------------------------------------- Dick Tinsley, Professor, Agricultural Systems Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) PO 4 Pathumthani 12120, Thailand Phone: +66-2-524-5459 Fax: +66-2-524-6200 Email: mailto:tinsley@ait.ac.th
On Fri, 4 Oct 1996, Ruth Moench wrote:
> I have a question that was argued in a class I attended Wednesday. Were
> traditional societies truly sustainable or were the negative
> environmental effects negligable because of the small size of the
> societies, thus making the use of those technologies on a large scale not
> any more effective than what we currently have? With the introduction of
> "modern medicine" and other development projects increasing the life
> expectancy in Third World countries, will these cultures truly be able to
> sustain themselves with an increased population?
>
> Ruth Moench
>