-Press cuttings: fish-farming [distinguishing luxury e.g. trout/ from ordinary, as in Middle Ages; and sewage version/ and sea farming]
- Defending sheep and cows because of their unique digestive systems. [It occurs to me to wonder about geese!]
- Reducing saturated fat content of meat, 1976
- Pirie head of Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden 'since 1947'. Written on viruses, biochemistry, food production, biochemical engineering
- Rather high-and-mighty tone is somewhat worrying, in sections with titles like 'irrational obstacles to acceptance' of some shitty food, [cp. e.g. high productivity rice in Vietnam, tasting of water; and C P Snow on countries which, he asserted, can't feed themselves] and notes [see below] in which Erasmus Darwin seems definitely fixed on as the first person to think of using other insects to attack pests, or in which he blithely assumes women aren't attracted into the wonderful world of science because of discrimination. [My notes record similar attitude of Bernard Lovell]. Joke: imagine the contrast with the sort of food presumably enjoyed by Pirie
- Also determined on weights and measures [likes currency symbol to follow, not precede]. And word coinages: e.g. p 196 on trophology and trophologist.
- Contents:
NOTES ON QUANTITIES
1 THE GROWTH OF POPULATION PRESSURE
The Increase in World Population/ The Hygienic Revolution/ Crowding, Famine and Malnutrition
2 CAPABILITIES OF CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE
The Area Farmed/ Irrigation and Drainage/ Fertilizers/ The Introduction and Improvement of Plants/ The Control of Pests and Predators
3 FOOD: WHENCE? HOW MUCH? AND WHAT TYPE?
Charity and Trade/ The Methods Used to Gauge Food Needs/ Energy Requirements/ Obesity/ Carbohydrates/ Minerals and Vitamins/ Proteins
4 NEW POSSIBILITIES IN AGRICULTURE
The Efficient Use of Sunlight/ Protein From the Market Garden/ Novel Food Proteins from Plants
5 FOOD FROM FRESH AND SALT WATER
The Potentialities of Fresh Water Plants and Animals/ Marine Plants/ Marine Fish/ Marine Animals Other Than Fish
6 THE CONVERTERS
Domestic Animals/ Wild Animals/ The Lower Plants/ Synthesis
7 THE ACCEPTANCE OF NEW FOODS
Domestic Animals/ Wild Animals/ The Lower Plants/ Synthesis
8 IMPLEMENTING THE POSSIBILITIES
Why Act?/ Who Should Act?/ The Organization of Change
NOTES [9 pages]
INDEX [6 pages]
- p 18: survival curves by age in years
- p 24: 'Sir Hugh Myddleton in 1613 brought into London the best water supply that a European city had had for more than a thousand years...' .. related to Sir John Lawes whose work in the nineteenth century did as much as that of anyone else to feed the people produced by the work of Myddleton and those inspired by him... 1854 outbreak of cholera in Broad Street, London...'
- p 25 etc: cleaning, quarantine, water supplies, obsession with 'germs' at the beginning of this century, Adam Smith assumed only half would reach wage-earning age, 1772 Fumifugium of John Evelyn, Malthus who argued on most sides of most questions, FAO...
- p 31: 'justly famous lecture [1898] .. foretelling world food shortage.. by Sir William Crookes [on nitrogen fixing] .. area under wheat in.. Russia and Poland was 36 M acres.. but consumption of bread 30% less than is required to keep the population in health...'
- p 58: introduction and improvement: banana, groundnut, potato, soya, sugar. And maize; 5000 years ago one inch ears only...
- p 61: .. crop plants have been called 'dung heap super weeds'.. chosen from plants that grew exuberantly around middens and other sites rich in plant nutrients.. In the wild state, evolution favours varieties that survive in adverse conditions. Under domestication, this capacity is of no importance..'
- p 83: Obesity: glutton as term of abuse; in Milton's Areopagitica; Dryden on the first physicians, who he thinks were caused by indulgence, and hunting: 'By chace our long-liv'd fathers earn't their food/ Toil strung their nerves, and purify'd their blood.'
- p 13: Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, against fruit and vegetables; Shelley and Gandhi in defence of vegetable and water diet
- p 34: cut and burn; various names for it
- p 79: James Lind's experiment on sailors and scurvy
- p 99: malnutrition; children without enough protein
- p 107: Hookworms and other worms and their biomass; .1 M tons of worms
- p 128: Water hyacinth ecological problem; lake Kariba's weeds...
- p 131: In Mexico before the conquest vegetables were grown in chinampas or floating gardens.. 'hydroponics'
- p 132 Algae as food; clear blue algae used in Mexico, Chad, Venezuela
- p 142: Folly of whaling by 'practical' men
- p 148: wild animals and food. Six animals predominate.. all domesticated 4,000 years ago and some still earlier. Wild cattle more resistant to tsetse fly, and also give more meat! [Is this source of biltong?]
- p 163: 'Natural foods'.. foods that have lost their 'goodness'.
- p 165: Semitic rejection of pig perhaps because nomadic invaders unfamiliar with it? Fruit condemned in 12th century by the medical faculty [sic] of Salerno.. probably because it was in season in summer when food poisoning is most common in a hot country..'
- p 187: Critique of education, notably lack of scientists in developing countries
- p 193: 1952 'abomination' of intra-uterine device by doctors
- p 195: 'Quanats of Iran' an ancient underground irrigation system; total length 170,000 miles
- p 196: Erasmus Darwin 'recognized the possibility of using one organism to control another.'
- p 197: John Wilkins of the Royal Society; advocate of space travel, designer of symbolic language, and estimator of layout of Noah's ark to include his estimate of total animals/ birds [100 and 200 respectively].
- p 198: coinage of word 'protein' by Berzelius
- p 199: dock leaves and serotonin antagonist?
- p 201: '.. WHO.. 'If you educate men you educate individuals, if you educate women you educate a nation.' Women, sensibly, are not going to take enthusiastically to scientific education if they are discriminated against afterwards...'
- p 201: Senator Bilbo got $4M for Federal Research Laboratory by sleight of hand [a drafting mistake] for Mississippi in 1920s