Cliff 's Blog :: FOOD and WAR

“Maslow's Needs” recognises eight levels of need for man: hunger and thirst; security and protection; sense of belonging and love; self-esteem and recognition of status; need to know and aesthetic needs; self-actualisation and transcendence.

So how did we get into our present state?

Food Gathering was overtaken by Farming, which began in about 5000 BC:

Wheat based in Europe and the Middle East
Rice and millet based in the Far East
Amaranth in Mexicamerica
Quinoa in Andean Americas

Initially the land was 'owned' by the community. The excess crops were brought to the community and seeds were stored over the winter.

Then we have the first 'con trick', a few people established themselves as experts in explaining how to get the rains to fall or why the crops had failed and what they needed you to do, namely present offerings to them, the priests and deity.

Then the priests / druids needed someone to blame when they got it wrong, so they invented God or Gods (the more the merrier), who needed to be propitiated. Some gods needed human and animal sacrifices as well as food and gold, needless-to-say it was specifically the religious professionals who enjoyed these offerings. Many also promised a better life when you died, if you..... gave them more riches and buildings and paintings. (And they never actually had to deliver anything, just promises!!)

Over hundreds and thousands of years inevitably their temples became bigger and bigger, including ziggurats and pyramids; cathedrals; shrines; mosques; temples.

But this was all based on farming and as the populations increased, each community needed to safeguard their land, and the priests their income. In times of crisis power is easily stolen from the many by the few, for the promise of security.

The strongest in the community built an army to defend the crops and the people, for his share of their crops and this was blessed by the priests. Every tribe / religion wanted the lands, crops, chattels, cattle and women belonging to their neighbours. The priest was often the creator or controller of these armies, in which case he delegated the religion element to a 'super-priest' and thus retained overall control of the religion.

From then on it was a battle between the priests and the kings and lords to show how much wealth they each had – wealth provided by the work of the serfs and slaves or stolen from someone who wasn't strong enough to defend their people, their crops and their gold.

Wealth was demonstrated by the size of the religious buildings versus the size of the castles and palaces. Nowadays the God is 'Money' so we see huge buildings (huge cathedrals to the god of money) in the financial centres of every country.

Eventually all the wild animals for eating where hunted and entire species destroyed, so farmers had to learn to breed tame meat for food for the community.

Are wars always caused by food? If you reject all concepts of beliefs as being unprovable, then all religious wars and all other wars have also been simple straight-forward state organised theft for example Germany with Lebensraum, Russia into Georgia, Iraq into Kuwait, China into Tibet (water),

The Byzantine Empire had to keep expanding in order to feed its people, but they failed and in so doing stripped and destroyed the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia, turning it into the present-day deserts of Jordan, Iraq, Iran, parts of Pakistan.

Collapse of the Roman Empire can be shown as a collapse of food:

A measure of Egyptian Wheat increased from 0.5 denarius in 200 AD, to 10,000 Denarius by 338 AD (proportionately from 0.5p to £100, in just over a hundred years)
In 300 AD one gold Solidus cost 4,000 silver coins by 400AD the cost had risen to 180 million silver coins, an increase of 45000 times
The currency had totally collapsed; the army could not be fed or paid
In 200 AD there were 500,000 troops in the Roman Army, when the estimated total world population was only 200 million
The Roman Empire stripped the land of all the wheat and barley and destroyed the land, leaving desert, salt debased ground, goats and shrubs, in Italy and in all the surrounding lands of Southern Europe, Syria and North Africa.

(Interestingly Emperor Constantine gave in to the Christians in about 313 AD; also the first Council of Nicene was held in 325 AD. So much for “Render unto Caesar those things which are his; render unto God those things which are God's.”)

The Roman Empire expired in about 400 AD.

As the crisis gathered, the response was to …. carry on doing what they had always done only more so. Higher pyramids, bigger Easter Island heads, more power to the kings and the high priests, bigger armies, more wars, with more taxes and harder work, squeezing the last drops from nature and humanity. Finally they were overwhelmed by collapse and disaster.

We need to cut to the heart of the matter – FOOD and WATER.

In the end people will have to eat artificial foods, because there won't be enough land to provide the food necessary if grown the traditional way.

This process may take a hundred years, (many children born today will live to see it.) The World population:

200 AD 200 Million;
1500 AD 400 Million; (1300 years to double)
1825 AD One Billion; (325 years 2.5 times, 260 years to double)
1925 AD Two Billion; (100 years to double)
2000 AD Six Billion; (75 years to treble. that is 50 years to double)
2050 Between Ten and Twelve Billion: (50 years to double) [Now adjusted because of reduced fertility rates to Nine to Ten Billion]
2100 Between Eighteen and Twenty Billion. (50 years to double) [Now adjusted to say Fourteen to Fifteen billion]

That's almost three times the current total world population, three times the amount of food, three times the amount of water, three times the buildings, three times the number of vehicles!!

The UK won't escape, we will have to take our share of the increase. Therefore we are looking at a population of 120 Million by 2100, in less than a hundred years.

The stages along the way will include:

food riots by starving people;
more wars to grab land or in particular water;
convoys to protect ships and aircraft from piracy or theft
a greater reliance on what we can all grow locally
a change in the natural diet for ourselves and our hobby animals (less meat, less food discarded)

PLUS:

Conservation and recovery of soil from land run-off;
land reclamation from rivers and sea;
re-soiling tired farmland;
comprehensive recycling of all organic matter;
tree plantations to protect land;
removal of top soil before new buildings or other constructions are commenced;

What else comes to mind:

rock crushers and macerators
a different way for dealing with flooding
a different way for dealing with refuse for landfill

AND we'll cope. It may be a bit of a surprise and it may need some ingenuity but we'll do it. And as we've seen from the last fifty years it will all seem a natural evolution.

Adjustments based on The Economist report 31st October 2009.

Based in part on the information included in “ A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. 088784-706-4, Anansi.”

Posted to:

Future Britain