From the start, this 'surprising' chapter title:
“Back to the Land Is Bad for the Land.”
A nice catchy meme designed to travel like a virus and stick in people's heads, whether they think about it much or not. An early sign that this treatise might be more about book sales and propaganda than effective science and care for humanities future. I propose that this book is founded on outdated research and a high bias for technocratic growth.
McAfee quotes Jeffery Jacob’s outdated 1997 book, 'New Pioneers' :
“ “There were simply never enough homesteaders”
A weakness of degree, not solution-fit, and makes a further uninformed claim:
“To get the same harvest, homesteaders use more land, water, and fertilizer than do “factory farmers.”
Since then scientists have made exponential progress in research in soil fertility supporting eco-agriculture and regenerative farming practices such as no-till and integrated grazing which result in zero fertilizer inputs year over year as the life of the soil burgeons, less water and less land to produce much deeper and varied nutrition.
He goes on to make outrageous claims of the green efficiency of modern cities and the assumed damage rural life does to the environment:
“City folk live in high-density, energy-efficient apartments and condos”
I’m not sure what city folk he is talking about but the landlord of the apartment I’m living in just installed double-pane windows after several years of decidedly inefficient electric heating driving utility bills over $350 even in our mild California winters. I’ve heard this type of bill is typical.
Furthermore, anyone with eyes and ears can tell that cities require huge amounts of energy to function. This government energy data shows the more urbanized states consuming 10 to 100 times the energy of rural states. If the power goes out in rural areas, some folks hardly notice, perhaps putting a few extra logs on the fire or lighting a candle or two. In a city, when the power goes out, traffic snarls, people’s apartments grow cold and over an extended period of time, the streets typically become unsafe with looting.
Here’s McAfee’s continued claim for the higher density of city living:
“{City folk} travel only short distances for work and errands, and frequently use public transportation. “
Well, the freeways near my suburban Cupertino are packed with folks driving into the city 50+ miles away. Many spend 90 minutes or more commuting within the bay area. Very few families raise their kids in the big city where they work due to crime, health and traffic safety issues. The mass transit system is one of the poorest in major metropolitan areas here and, most who can, avoid it for a variety of reasons. This claim for the SF Bay area, which is similar to many other American cities, is patently false.
Finally McAfee makes the broad claim that contrary to the advantages of city living:
“None of these things is true of country living.”
This may be true for rural communities of single family homes and conventional mechanized farms and ranches, but there are new/old alternatives like ecovillages, co/op housing, permaculture gardens, regenerative farms and ranches, and eco-agriculture based farms, that have much lower energy consumption/person with much higher production of nutritional foods and products/person. If we are to live on one planet sustainably instead of our current 1 1/2, we will need to become mindful about our personal and community consumption/production ratios and realize we can become more efficient and ultimately successful only by working together with each other and with nature.
For more information, please check out the fact-filled Living Planet Report instead of McAfee’s misguided technocratic treatise. I welcome the author to explore some of these resources and write another book!
Source: McAfee, Andrew. More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We
Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next (pp.
91-92). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
