Posted by Peter from "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping":
>> In essence, it's the same set of mistakes made in all of agriculture: increasing production is demanded from the same set of resources year after year.

I stand by this statement.  Certainly systems tend to have some "slop" which can be tightened up to increase productivity without significantly disrupting the system.  But it is quite another thing to mandate that productivity must increase without expanding resources available.

Rice was used as an example...those working on new rice varieties for increased productivity have found that in making the rice "too productive", they actually make it less productive....illustrating our point above.

"However, developing a new rice plant to save half the world from starvation is not all smooth sailing. The scientists at IRRI have encountered many problems in the development of Super Rice. For instance, most current high-yielding rice varieties produce around 100 grains per panicle. The prototype Super Rice, on the other hand, produced 250 to 300 grains per panicle, which was too many. The plant simply couldn't supply enough carbohydrates and nutrients to fill the grains. The breeders overcame the problem by reducing the number of grains back to 200, which still makes Super Rice twice as productive as older plant types."

http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/rice/story.htm

deknow

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