Hypothetical question - if Britain were to return (for whatever reason) to people having to live off the land, how many people do you think the UK could support?
in the UK we have 62m people and 18.4m Ha of USEABLE agricultural land
=0.29Ha per person (0.7acres) doesnt sound too bad??
well 0.086ha is moor, 0.12Ha is grass (neither of which is able to feed us without the help of that environmental criminal the ruminant) were well over half that per person allocation.....
0.07ha is arable and 0.03ha is veg land
(source: National beef association)
without being patronising... I dont know how many of you have seen 0.29ha, its an area 50mX60m not much!
I have just stumbled upon this thread...
As a farmer (who delights in bushcraft) this type of debate intrests me immensley...
i thought these figures may help disscussion:
in the UK we have 62m people and 18.4m Ha of USEABLE agricultural land
=0.29Ha per person (0.7acres) doesnt sound too bad??
well 0.086ha is moor, 0.12Ha is grass (neither of which is able to feed us without the help of that environmental criminal the ruminant) were well over half that per person allocation.....
0.07ha is arable and 0.03ha is veg land
(source: National beef association)
without being patronising... I dont know how many of you have seen 0.29ha, its an area 50mX60m not much!
This also doesnt account for the fact that a large part of the population are not even aware that milk come from cows and vegetables grow in soil etc etc
Also some of the reasons we are not self sufficient (I dont know if we could achieve 100% or not):
-polotics, the government pays some farmers NOT to produce food??? if you can work that one out let me know. and the department of agriculture (defra) has decided its 'safer' to import as much as possible despite rising drought world wide.
-Organics plays a huge part, thought it was good for the environment? think again. this decreases UK output increasing imports and also results in less well regulated countries scrambling for our buisness, cutting down rainforest and using huge amounts of chemicals.
In my opinion the answer to securing food supplies (and to some extent controling global warming) lies in two solutions: either limit population size (how? and vastly unpopular I would imagine!) or
GM (I am still undecided on the GM thing). GM has recieved alot of bad press but I think theres alot more to it than what they publish in the daily mail. there are of course issues such as the monopoly held by Monsanto to sort out aswell as cross contamination issues.
Im a bit off topic now, I apologise, in answer to the question, probably not the current population without drastic changes ie GM
Anyway I hope this is of interest, None of this is intended to be antagonistic sorry for babaling on
MK
Also interesting to note that sales of organic food in the UK has dropped since a report stated that organic food has no health/nutritional benefit over standard grown food.
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3292the UK had to provide for itself from its own resources, it could support a population of only 17 million 43 million less than its latest official population figure* according to research by a UK pressure group.
Survival in the UK on your own away from a group and long term is zero in the sense that you would die of starvation and I don't care how good your 'survival' skills are; you would starve to death over a period of time.
A good thread, this...This whole 'I can live off the land' is blown out of proportion... (lots of good remarks clipped)....
Hypothetical question - if Britain were to return (for whatever reason) to people having to live off the land, how many people do you think the UK could support?
How has this become 99% of the population has died off?
The chances of that scenario are very minute Rik, but if that was the case, the "Survivors" would have quite a lot of food to scavange.
The climate is getting more challenging, but I feel the UK is extremely well placed to do well, so far we are seeing increased temperatures and rain fall, what could be better for growing things? while in other parts of the world, heavily relied on for world food, drought, heat, fires even desertification.
Hypothetical, but what food would that be?