I think that for some people their stupid button is stuck.

To me, the most novel feature of the current ongoing collapse is the coincidence of huge shocks with apparently different triggers. Who would have thought that an epidemic of bad loans in America, steep ramp of energy prices, and biofuels tightening the link of energy to food prices would coincide, against a backdrop of lower economic firewalls between countries and increasingly intense food limitation of the human population, with almost no scope for growth of the food supply. It’s a wonderland for testing resilience ideas and a global tragedy, all at the same time.

A lot of people worried about bad loans, energy prices and biofuels. I did. It was obvious that there would be a reckoning as credit was extended to less and less reliable borrowers who were dependent on ever rising real estate prices. It was screamingly obvious that biofuels - burning food - was a bad idea in a world in which 1 in 6 people were already food insecure. The interdependency of the world trade system was no secret. The lack of growth in world food supply as developed nations turned inward and squandered their security on fantasies of "alternative agriculture" while agricultural research went unfunded was spoken of often. The only ones who are surprised are specialists who have narrow world views and little curiosity.

For a recent talk I re-analyzed a bunch of information from the Millennium Assessment, to try to figure out if humanity had any chance at all for making it through the next few decades.

If everyone shifts trophic status to roughly herbivore level, and we educate all the world’s women to secondary level, we have a chance.

Whenever someone says "If everyone" you know that they are leaning on the stupid button and that all that follows will be incoherent rubbish.

Humans are not herbivores, they are omnivores. Their digestive systems can't cope with much plant material. To humans the vast majority of such food is just "fiber", it passes through them undigested. It is only energy dense seeds and roots that are starchy enough for humans to digest a significant percentage of the input.

Other animals, especially ruminants, have much better digestive systems. They can thrive on diets that would starve humans to death. And so, it's no surprise that the most productive farming systems are multiple use, growing both crops and livestock, in emulation of more complete ecologies.

The conflict comes from competition at any given trophic level. People, pigs and chickens are all omnivores with essentially the same dietary capabilities. The conflict is lessened because pigs and chickens will gladly eat things that squick people out. Chickens, for example, relish bugs and aren't fastidious about their food. They'll happily dig through dung to get at any grubs or fragments of grain seed it contains. Same for pigs.

This is that same conflict we have with biofuels. Omnivores eat the same foods as are used for ethanol manufacture. Advocates argue that this is temporary and that 2nd generation systems will use cellulose as feedstock.

This is no help since it still competes with animals for food, but this time it is ruminants rather than omnivores. And in practice it will still compete with omnivores since land will be used to grow cellulosic feedstocks rather than grain, or will consume organic matter better left in fields to keep them healthy. There is a small amount of biofuel that can be made from rough materials such as orchard prunings and forestry slash. It's basically wood but can be processed by gasification.

When biofuels are all but eliminated and the productivity of the land is used efficiently in multi-species general farming systems we get the most food for the least cost in land, water and fertility. There is room in the world for people with eating disorders who want to pretend to be herbivores just as there is room for others who want to pretend to be carnivores. The scientific fact that we are omnivores is an is, not an ought, and there is no "If everyone" about it.

If all the world’s women were educated to secondary level, fertility would drop by about 1.7 children per woman. And we can probably feed 9 billion herbivorous people, if we can maintain the crop diversity of the major grain crops high enough to avoid catastrophic disease outbreaks.

This is an unlikely scenario rife with highly questionable assumptions. Education alone is all but irrelevant, but when and where it happens there are a large number of social, cultural and economic changes that sometimes work together to change desires and incentives. Focusing on education conceals more than it reveals. A call for universal education is a call for universal development, but in the real world 1 in 6 people don't even have enough to eat. It's hard to study while starving to death. Besides, consider Utah.

Crop diversity is no panacea against disease. As we have seen with biofuels a comparatively small change in food supply can wreak havoc with the entire food system. The focus instead needs to be on research into better agronomic systems, ones that produces more food using fewer resources, not least land and water. Research about systems to use what is now considered to be bad land - such as the vast acidic lands of S. America and Africa - can in effect create more land and so increase the base resource.

It is worth noting that multi-species general farming systems are not small by definition though that's the image most commonly associated with the principles. They can be large or small so long as the principles are observed. This would bring change to some of the largest operations such as those that use the largest and most modern farm machinery. A giant multi-head combine can process a variety of field crops such as corn, soya and wheat but does them all in the same way. They cut and thresh, sending the grain into a companion wagon while shredding and spreading the leaves and stalks, leaving the field all but prepared to drill the next crop. In a multi-species operation that crop trash is food and should be wind-rowed rather than shredded and spread. The animals, usually cattle, will do the shred and spread operation while growing fat on the forage.

Large or small general farms are more complex. They require more different skills as well as timing and coordination. And since there are more steps in the processes there are more opportunities for failure. This isn't an argument against general farming so much as a set of facts that can give better insights into the nature of the task, and a better appreciation for its difficulty. Good farmers are highly skilled people with the attitudes and work habits of the very best humans whatever their professions.

Having said that it is still true that I have a personal preference for more modest sized operations. In my view the socio-economic and socio-cultural benefits are superior even if the net productivity can be less. Perhaps it can be understood as being something like the smaller banks that didn't suffer as badly in the current financial turmoils though they may not have profited as hugely in boom times. Over time they do well, and are less fragile in bad times.