Giant Kelp, Red Laver, Fish Eggs and Popcorn and Olduvai Theory

In the Pacific Northwest, Giant Kelp and Red Laver are two species of edible seaweed that have been used historically as foods by the Native Americans living here. Red laver is eaten in some form or another in practically every culture that has access to it. And seaweed have been used as food all over the world as far back as pre-historic times.

In the pacific Northwest, tribal cultures discovered a delicacy by combining the spawning practises of local fish with the Giant Kelp. Pacific Herring lay their eggs on the Giant kelp leaves and the local tribes would harvest the leaves, dry them and store them for the winter months. The spawn and kelp was normally then boiled and eaten with grease; and was considered a delicacy that had trade value to other tribes.

Red Laver was often pressed into 'cakes' or rolled into 'popcorn' and then dryed- sometimes after a brief fermentation period. Red Laver has also been used by traditional cultures to treat iodine deficiency. And like the Giant kelp can be served by boiling it with grease.

This is interesting information, but most people might fail to see a point in adding this to their brain. There are other things to learn like walkthroughs of HALO and cocktail mixes and Sports statistics and music and movies and celebrity scandals.

But this is practical information on how to live with your landbase. Such adhoc nutritional supplementation can be valuable to smaller agricultural communities. Tribes and homesteads and communes and ecovillages need not rely entirely upon what they grow and raise themselves. The important thing to consider here is the depth of the impact that your supplemental hunting or gathering can have on the landscape. How much do you take from the ecosystem? How much do you give back?

World Population from 10,000 BC to Present

Much has been made of the fact that the modern world population could not be supported on small scale farming or hunting and gathering. This is true. 

Modern agriculture is wonder of technology, logistics, coordination, and overclocking just about every part of the system. Fertilizer allows farmers to avoid resting fields and to grow crops on other wise non arable land. Pesticides allows farmers to grow vast mono-cultures without having them decimated by insects like the potato bug. mechanization allows us to transport food from areas with cheaper labor, better land and longer growing seasons. Refridgeration increases the shelf life and transport time and distance food can be moved. Hormones grow animals faster for slaughter. An on and on and on. We have maximized the efficiency of our food delivery system. And any shift away from that will result in a drop in food production. And much has been made of that.

Much less has been made of the fact that the modern world population cannot be supported on large scale farming without supplemental aid from fossil fuels in the form of pesticides, fertilizers, mechanization, transportation and reduced need for manpower.

Short of discovering a magical new fuel that can be used as fuel, pesticide, and fertilizer; we are not going to be able to support a world population of this size for too much longer.

No species is immune to the laws that govern population size. A species that outstrips their food source will dwindle, often faster than they grew. As the locust swarm swells when it devours the savannah and then dies off en masse once the grass is gone, so to do other species who grow beyond the environments capacity to provide die of en masse until the numbers are low enough that the environment, itself likely now reduced, can support the numbers.

We should not be planning to feed the population we now support, we should be planning to feed the population that will be left when all is said and done. And we should be planning so that we are amongst those few that remain.

This is of course morbid talk, and may be alarmist, and may even be wrong. There are ways that we could prevent catastrophe, perhaps turn a potential mass die off into a gentle slow decline. Working towards this gentle decline is noble work. However this noble work is being actively opposed by those gaining significant short term benefit from the current situtaion.

The gentle decline cannot be achhieved without massive concerted change. On the other hand, small groups could conceivably remove their support of the current paradigm by moving to a small scale agricultural model or another more sustainable option.