Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Artificial Storage of Calories

In the previous post I was writing about the difference between the nature's version of productivity and the human one. A garden is usually arranged to maximize the labor efforts of people. For example, the beds are straight and scaled to the reach of a person and are arranged so tools and wheelbarrows can be moved throughout. Deer and other browsing animals move over a range and forage for food. They eat what's available and store surplus calories on their body as fat and muscle.

Almost all the work that goes into gardening is involved in arranging it so its human-labor-oriented structure is maintained throughout a season. That arrangement of plants and soil is "unstable" within the natural environment. Having a bunch of the same type of plants in one spot, for example, is an invitation for insects that feed on that plant so over the course of a season it would be necessary to try to control pests. Likewise, almost all the bare dirt in some area will sprout with weeds.

Perhaps a more important aspect of the human-oriented arrangement of plants in a garden or a field is their proximity to agricultural infrastructure, like grain silos or barns that store equipment. While a deer might move over 1000 acres of landscape with only a mouth and body fat to process plant matter into fuel, a farm and a farmer are structured so store all that production in their specialized  infrastructure, which is ultimately designed to facilitate trade with even more concentrated groups of people in cities.

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