Systems Thinking and The Food Race
by Benjamin ShenderOne of the most basic concepts of the New Tribal Revolution is the realization of the Food Race. Essentially the Food Race is the name Daniel Quinn gave to the observation that every year civilization grows more food, which is inevitably followed by civilization being made of more people. In order to feed this excess of people we then grow more, which in turn causes an increase in the population. Daniel Quinn called this an “experiment run 10,000 times,” which might actually be an understatement. But suffice it to say that we’ve tried this quite a few times now with no variation on the result.
Systems Thinking is a way to model real world situations by showing the interactions of various factors with each other over time. This is my Systems Thinking Model of the Food Race:
This model is actually one of the “archetypes” as identified at SystemsThinking.org. Specifically this is the model of what happens when a proposed solution to a problem actually causes an unintentional worsening of the problem by interfering with the ultimate solution of the problem, one that comes by allowing the system to reach equilibrium by itself.
A few basic notes are in order I believe. Keeping it simple, the interaction of two items is considered to occur in the direction the arrow points. If the letter next to the arrow point is an “O” when the first goes up the other goes down and vice versa. If the letter next to the arrow point is an “S,” then when one goes up the other goes up, and when it goes down so does the other one. They stand for “opposite” and “same,” if that makes it easier. When the word “delay” is written next to one of the arrows it indicates that the interaction in question takes longer to occur than the other interactions in the system.
To walk you through the Food Race, we have a problem “Insufficient Food.” The system would naturally solve this problem by itself, as there is more insufficient food there are more fewer people, after a short delay, which in turn would cause less insufficient food. However, we instead chose to grow more food as our solution, which would cause less insufficient food as well. But, grow more as an unintended side effect: more people. Which causes less fewer people (i.e. more people) which in turn makes more insufficient food canceling out the benefit it causes and encouraging the growth of more food. Since our growth of more food is limited by the amount of resources that are available, eventually grow more will no longer be an option. Which means that after a short delay there will be more fewer people, until there is no more insufficient food. At which point an equilibrium would have been reached.
The model is sound. But talking about “more fewer people” and “less insufficient food” needs help…
Or is that part of the presentation humor? (it is kinda fun to say…)
Comment by JCamasto — 17 November 2005 @ 2:00 AM
Yeah, Mike and I were laughing about that earlier…
(above minorly edited for clarity.)
Comment by Devin — 17 November 2005 @ 4:47 AM
Hey, I’ve been reading The Art of Systems Thinking by Joseph O’Connor and Ian McDermott for a class… I could actually understand their diagrams pretty well, I found. Instead of the O and S, they use - and +, and they have lil’ diagrams to explain each loop (a different picture for reinforcing, balancing, etc. loops).
I think they call this one “addiction”.
Quite the funny article
Comment by WackyMorningDJ — 17 November 2005 @ 5:40 AM
this is all very simplistic and malthusian
there is plenty of food for everyone, the problem is control over distribution (and wealthy western meat-eaters in general).
Comment by ilsott — 17 November 2005 @ 11:26 AM
Hey ilsott,
Check out this essay:
http://anthropik.com/2005/04/the-opposite-of-malthus/
Malthus actually had things completely backwards. And it’s not just that there’s plenty of food for everyone, it’s that the amount of that “plenty” keeps increasing and increasing and increasing.
Roxy
Comment by Raku — 17 November 2005 @ 12:27 PM
We never said that the problem was feeding the hungry. Of course there’s enough food to feed everyone–if there weren’t, “everyone” wouldn’t be here. What are they all made of if not food, fairy dust and happy thoughts?
The “distribution problem” you’re referrng to is intrinsic to any agricultural mode of production. You can’t justify the massive negative marginal returns of agricultural production without an elite like that. So, there is no solution to the “distribution problem,” as it is a necessary consequence of agricultural production.
At any rate, calling it Malthusian requires one to ignore the argument itself and jump straight to the pigeon-holing. This is, as Roxy pointed out, the opposite of Malthus.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 November 2005 @ 12:48 PM
I usually take for granted that you had to edit your work for clarity.
ilsott, just so you know, the name of Malthus is mud here.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 17 November 2005 @ 1:20 PM
I think your “system� is a reification and over simplifies our problem in such a way as to hide the possibility of a solution. This could also be said of the “Food Race� concept. If the major problem is too many humans you are correct in stating the system will solve it.
If instead we see the problem as being unable to maintain a sustainable human population with a healthy standard of living while also maintaining the life supporting ability of this planet in a sustainable state, it is not likely that this “system� will get us there.
This “system� reaches a steady state by keeping at least some humans hungry. The more egalitarian the distribution of food is in society, the greater number of people will be hungry and the larger the steady state population will be. Due to the biological nature of humans to avoid hunger and death they are likely to destroy whatever resources remain after the collapse. For the same reason struggle and the maintenance or creation of hierarchies is likely. If a die-off creates a situation where there are temporarily enough resources to go around, the “system� will bring us back to the same situation. With luck it may be a solution for mother nature, but not for humanity.
The system is a reification because it hides within the box labeled “more people� the factors that Malthus wasn’t wrong about. Population still grows in direct proportion to the birth rate and inversely with the death rate. This “system� operates because more food increases the birth rate while hunger increases the death rate. Either could be controlled by other means and prevent constant hunger.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 17 November 2005 @ 4:17 PM
Ok, I’m sure that your point is both insightful and illuminating. However, I have no idea what it is. I’m just diagramming the food race, there is no social-political commentary, nor do I at any time offer a solution. All I did was show why our “solution� doesn’t work and mention that our “solution� is ultimately self-defeating in that it cannot be maintained indefinitely. And then it fails the typical correction factors will take hold. I.E. population will stay proportional to food availability, but there will be less food. There is nothing moral, emotional, or any comment as to “preferable occurrences� here. I simply diagramed the way it stands now. No judgment has been made nor solution proffered. It’s a simple diagram because it’s a simple system. Food goes in, people come out. Now “quality of life,� and other consumption factors, can also cause fluctuations in what the exact proportion between food and people is, but there still is one. You might notice no mention of quality of life, which is why you said over simplification? This is because it’s already taken into account. Quality of life effects how much “insufficient food� there is directly. Adding it in a second time over complicates a simple relationship. Now, it would be possible to make a second systems thinking diagram that deals with insufficient food, quality of life, waste, etc. But that was not my goal. Increasing the quality of life in third world countries to decrease population is an oft repeated solution by politicians trying to look progressive and benevolent. A solution that has no possibility of being a physical reality so long as civilization stands and we have access to finite resources. No one mentions it, but that “solution� flies in the face of the same laws of physics that allow you to walk and make water run down hill. Yes, this diagram works based on the two factors birth rate and death rate: because those are the factors that population is based on. Controlling birthrate, to my knowledge, has only been accomplished by China. And that might actually be better categorized as increasing the death rate really. The children are still being born, but they get killed early on. And yes, we can choose not to grow more food, which would mean that the system would stabilize as per the above model. I’m treating like it is real, because it is. That’s what systems thinking models are supposed to be: a diagram of the way something actually works based on real world observations. There is no hypothesis, nor preconceived notion of the way it should work. This is the way it works. The bottom circle is how all animal populations work, the top is added on special for civilization because we control our food supply. So…what are you trying to say?
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 17 November 2005 @ 5:10 PM
Benjamin: I was not trying to critique your Systems Thinking model as a method. I guess I wasn’t very clear. I am questioning whether the concept of Food Race you are modeling is an accurate real world description. I guess my disagreement is actually with Daniel Quinn.
To say that more food causes more people obscures the fact that for 10,000 years the human birthrate has been, with minor variations, higher than the death rate. More food will result in more people only if the birthrate remains above the death rate.
Also obscured is the fact that in the real world the only way this Food Race model can obtain stability is with perpetual hunger.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 18 November 2005 @ 11:52 AM
Hey –
No… the Food Race does not obscure the fact that birth rates have exceeded death rates for the last 10,000 years. Rather, it explains it.
Food enables population. Without surplu food, surplus people would never come to exist. Every species, humans included, has a symbiotic relationship with thier food supply. Generally, periods of scarcity (scarcity, not hunger, not famine) lead to reductions in the birth rate and probably slightly raised attrition (the sick, elderly and otherwise infirm may be slightly less able to make due in a period that requires more effort for the same sustanance)
the reason civilizations encounter famine and hunger is precisely because we attempt to make ourselves separate from this natural symbiosis. It is because we take control of food production as if we have the know how to do better than nature herself. Hubris. And in our refusal to ‘allow’ anyone to die, we have caused the greatest concentrations of massive die off(human and otherwise) the world has ever seen. (barring the oxygen holocaust, and perhaps (like, MAYBE) one or two of the other mass extinction events.)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 18 November 2005 @ 12:59 PM
Quoting Roxy
” it’s that the amount of that “plenty” keeps increasing and increasing and increasing.”
bull. it keeps increasing (and being stored to increase market price) for some people and it keeps decreasing for others.
This critique forgets that not all food is eaten. Or eaten directly by humans. A lot of food is just wasted. Meaning there is not a real direct cause-effect in the production of food like this argument suggests.
Just because it’s produced doesn’t necessarily mean it nurishes a body. Just because it nurishes a body doesn’t mean it contributes to population. Just because it contributes to population doesn’t mean that person will require the same food (or receive it in the same way) as it’s predecessor.
People don’t die from “our” (who are we?) “allowing them to die,” but from political forces in the distribution of basic needs.
Quoting Benjamin Shender:
“ilsott, just so you know, the name of Malthus is mud here.”
I can see why, people are probably deathly afraid of being mistaken for him.
ilsott
Comment by ilsott — 18 November 2005 @ 2:14 PM
True. And irrelevant. Waste is essential to the proper operation of the system, because it maintans disparity. It is that disparity that makes the system work. Without it, there would be no incentive to spend ten calories of energy to obtain just one.
That waste also helps counter-balance population growth. It’s one mitigating factor, but not enough to change the underlying forces at work. Being more fastidious about our waste won’t alleviate the problem–it will exacerbate it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 November 2005 @ 3:01 PM
I’m curious if it wouldn’t just make more sense (and say the same thing) if the model looked like:
———>
FOOD PEOPLE
-Mike
Comment by Anonymous — 19 November 2005 @ 1:23 AM
OK… lets try that again….
+
+
(hoping this will show up as the Preview window says it will…)
-Mike
Comment by Anonymous — 19 November 2005 @ 1:30 AM
OK, fine… NEVER MIND
Pretending that all didn’t happen…
If there is a food shortage, people either won’t have as many children, or there won’t be food to support them - population goes down. If there is food, some people might decide to have more children, because they can support them (and so they can have say, more hands working on the farm), and population goes up. It’s simply not possible for the population to increase (or rather, to sustain an increase) when there isn’t enough food.
-Mike
Comment by Anonymous — 19 November 2005 @ 1:33 AM
Mike,
Yeah, it’s simpler but misses out on some of the more subtle nunances of the situation. The full model takes into account the natural balencing act and how our solution interacts with that balencing act. But yes, the equation boils down to there being a direct, negative-feedback relationship regarding food and people. More food more people, less food less people, same food same people. It may seem very simple, but that’s only because it [i]is[/i] very simple.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 19 November 2005 @ 2:05 AM
Every species, humans included, has a symbiotic relationship with their food supply.
LOL — Janene… that was unintentionally funny, I think. I’m trying to imagine the benefit the food gets out of the whole deal. Where does that come in?
I can just see the scene…
Species: Hello good food, pleased to eat you.
Food: Why hello, species, pleased to be eaten.
fin.
Comment by Devin — 19 November 2005 @ 7:28 AM
Hey –
Glad you were amused Devin
But it is true just the same… lions would go extinct without gazelles, but think about it a little — gazelles would also lose out were there no lions.
St Mathew’s Island is a good example of this. Predation maintains a limiting factor on herd animals that helps to prevent them from overshooting thier food supply and crashing. the same can be said of other ecological balancing acts. Top predators are supposed to have slow growth rates, slow reaction speed to changing conditions etc. Biologically, that is true of us. But when we stopped reacting to our prey species circumstances and started directing it, everything went to hell
Janene
Comment by Janene — 19 November 2005 @ 11:02 AM
To say nothing of plants that’ve adapted to rely on the animals that eat them as an essential part of their reproductive strategy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 November 2005 @ 12:03 PM
Good point!
-J
Comment by Janene — 19 November 2005 @ 12:35 PM
More food is not and has not usually been the primary cause of an increase in population. Instead it’s an increased population that causes the drive to find or produce more food. The reverse is only true if the birth/death rate is less than one due to starvation or related causes of death due to insufficient food. It is only in this case that we could say that this number of people wouldn’t exist if there weren’t enough food. To make this true we need to define enough food as just enough to maintain life. In the real world this means persistent hunger. This will be the case at the time of the collapse.
If we define sufficient food as the amount required to prevent hunger, human birth/death ratio tends to remain greater than one. When available food drops it causes hunger, but does not cause the birth/death rate to drop below one. Population increases, food is insufficient, and humans will strive to produce or gather more to overcome hunger. If they are successful population will continue to increase which will cause more hunger.
With sufficient food defined in this way we still have a food race, but the “system� or “nature� doesn’t solve it. When resources are depleted and its impossible to increase the food supply a steady state is reached with birth rate equal to death rate and perpetual hunger.
There are some species whose birth rate, thanks to Mother Nature or their selfish genes, varies with their food supply. Historically and currently the human species is unfortunately not one of them. It is only in circumstances where the death rate due to causes other than hunger controls population that the survivors can avoid hunger with a fixed food supply.
Neither the gods, nature, our genes, nor memes have solved this problem. The solution is to consciously control birth rate by finding a way to overcome the difficult problem of the tragedy of the commons. I don’t see how the collapse or tribes will solve this problem.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 19 November 2005 @ 1:29 PM
Hey Bob –
That is simply not true. Humans do have a biological response to decreasing food supplies — and these responses occur before starvation kicks in. The problem is that you are looking at famine events as examples. Unfortunately, famine events are too short term to have any biological effect. (beyond the obvious miscarriage, or pregnancy death in the heart of a famine)
Are you aware that female athletes frequently stop ovulating when they are in training? A woman with body fat below 20% becomes increasingly susceptible to this. Gradually decreasing body fat levels would be a natural biological response to having to work harder for the same or slightly less food.
A nursing woman is also generally unable to concieve. Now add that to the former instance: a woman that is nursing is going to lose body fat more quickly, as the baby takes lots of her stores. This could lead to the mothers or childs deaths, or it could increase the workload of the group to provide additional calories for nursing mothers, or it could lead to a premature ending of the nursing period — which means that the tribe members are going to have to work a little harder yet to feed the toddlers in the group, further increasing body fat loss.
If populations grow it is ALWAYS because they have more food available… unless you propose that baby humans are grown from hot air and best wishes. That’d be a neat trick, so if you can explain to me how that works, I’d be mighty obliged…
Janene
Comment by Janene — 19 November 2005 @ 2:50 PM
Janene:
Your right my statement was an over-simplification, which made it wrong. What I should have said is that human biological responses don’t reduce the fertility rate rapidly enough to prevent hunger. Hungry populations continue to grow. Stable human populations without hunger may have been the case when life was more dangerous causing the death rate to be higher. Another possibility is that a constantly growing population that causes us to be hungry and devote our effort to finding more food benefits our selfish genes.
The trick here is in what we mean by “more food�. In your example you must mean more than absolutely necessary for survival since without more food an additional baby could not be conceived or fed. I meant more than enough to prevent hunger. The “Food Race� is turned on its head if you consider “more food� to be more than necessary to prevent hunger. In this case hungry people can and do grow babies increasing their population, which requires even more food to overcome hunger. In this case population increases before more food (more than is necessary to prevent hunger) is available
Comment by Bob Harrison — 19 November 2005 @ 7:29 PM
I would consider “sufficient food” ~2000 Calories per day. Obviously it’s slightly different for people who are active all day and growing and with higher metabloisms (and the reverse), but it usually hovers around that.
Bob - I think the “more people” counts as a sustained population increase. If the population grows during a hunger/starvation period, the population will fall again, since there isn’t enough food to eat. People will die (or be severely malnourished) from starvation. I’m going out on a limb here, but… Say you have a population that is often short of food. In the first generation there is a reasonable amount of food, and people go hungry sometimes. Maybe the population increases. Now there are more people, and not that much more food. Generation two has more hungry periods. If you keep going like this, gradually the biological response is going to kick in and not allow you to have any kids, because you are so malnourished. I think that sort of population is resting on an artificial bubble (I would say that we’re resting on a bubble as well, although one that’s lasted for a particularly long time. The current bubble is based on industrial petro-culture).
-Mike
Comment by WackyMorningDJ — 20 November 2005 @ 1:46 AM
Hey Bob –
hmmm… we are obviously not communicating well on this one. In order to explain what I am trying to express to you, let me create a ‘idealized’ community. (By idealized, I mean simplified enough to use as a model, not ‘perfect’)
Imagine a community of thirty individuals, 12 adult men, 13 adult women, 5 young children. Of those, there are four ‘mating pairs’. Obviously, each of these pairs has a ‘young’ child, so let’s say that two of the couple have a child that is still breast feeding. The other three children are between 4 and ‘adulthood’ (at 12)
In order to provide themselves with food, the group goes out hunting (as a group, shy the most elderly and the nursing women and children) twice a week. Additionally, the women aspecially and the men somewhat, engage in foraging, for a couple hours, on a daily basis… both for food to munch as you walk (fruits and berries) and for food for ‘meals’ (although hunter gatherers seems to ‘eat’ a lot of the time, rather than actually making ‘meals’ but this is simplified).
This is thier normal life, when food is plentiful and life is easy. In the course of our first year it is possible that two women will become pregnant. That’s a pretty fast growth rate, yes? Let’s say that they both do.
By year two, all of the child-bearing-age women have suckling children. So that right there will prevent any further births until almost 1 year AFTER the first child is weaned. To grossly oversimplify, let’s say the first two sucklings were 1 year old. So in year two we have (2) two year olds and (2) infants. Year three we have (2) three year olds and (2) 1 year olds. Year four we have (2) four year olds (that are in the process of weaning) and (2) two year olds.
So lets say in year four, a drought hits.In response to the drought, the community must now put together the ‘hunting party’ every second day in order to get enough meat. They must also spend 3-4 hours per day foraging for the same amount of forage.
What does this mean from a systemic perspective? Fiirst, each community member (on the average) is expending an extra 200 calories a day to acquirethe same food. This does not mean hunger, but it does mean a slow reduction in body fat. If they want to collect more food to offset that fat loss, they can, but it is a non-linear equation… for each extra hour they get X more calories, but they also spend Y more energy. The difference between the two is the increased calories.
It is unlikely that they will ever spend ‘enough’ time to completely offset the increased difficulty of food collection — particularily because they are not ‘hungry’. Likely, they would not expend ANY effort on increasing thier food intake unless and until their persoanl fat stores are nearing depletion (because this is when they would start to feel hungry.)
Now, what is the time frame on this? A typical population probably has an average body fat ratio of 18-22% for men, 24-28% for women. Increased activity without a corresponding increase in food intake (and possibly a slight decline) will probably take off 1-2% of body fat per month (in fact, perhaps much more… but nonetheless) The women that are still breastfeeding will lose fat stores more quickly — so the group will probably defer additional calories to them in response — increasing the fat loss for others in the group.
So, worst case scenario, it takes 8 months for the two women of child bearing age to reach a point where the become inable to concieve a child… and to possibly miscarry if early in the pregnancy. So IF one of them got pregnant immediately at the start of this drought she probably will be physcially able to carry the child to term. That’s a lot of ifs.
On the other hand, if the drought started at any time before the last child was weaned, this time frame will be much shorter as her stored body fat levels would have been low already when she weaned.
Now, none of what I have said so far has any intent involved. What happens when you add human awareness? Most H-G groups had various techniques for prevent and aborting pregnancies. They also had cultural adaptations of infanticide. (We may not like that, but it works for them) A woman in an egalitarian community, with complete control over her own body and choices, may well choose not to have more children if she knows that food is harder to come by this year. Its not a big stretch of the imagination — and it is consistent with cultural materialsim. A woman in this situation is well within the bounds of her material reality to abort a child that will be difficult to carry to term and suckle for the following four years…
This is what I am trying to get at… hunger ONLY occurs in populations that already exceed thier carrying capacity. In the wild, there is ALWAYS more food… it just takes MORE WORK to get it. (and this is where cultural definitions of food come into play. there is more food in ‘civilized’ countries as well - we just don’t recognize it as food, so we starve…)
This seems intuitively true. But there is a big catch and one that always gets overlooked. In a chronically starving populatin there are two dicotomous variations on how the sequence plays out (more than two is quite possible, but I’m not going to worry about that here). The first is the way we (as Americans) assume it plays out: food resources gradually grow scarce, individuals gradually get too little to eat and this plays out until people start to die, or until the food supply is rectified.
I suspect, that in reality — in cases where starvation and birth happens simultaneously — that sufficeint food is punctuated by short term insufficient food. In other words, a community may have ‘enough’ food this week, but next week there is a shortage and everyone goes without, or at starvation-level intake. Then another shipment of grain arrives and everyone eats half way decently until that runs out…
The human body is very adapt at dealing with short term shortages like this. And note that in these scenarios there is no ‘differential equation’ at work. when ther is more food, there is not greater caloric expenditure. So all of that ‘extra’ food gets converted to body fat. (Note, another adaptabilty factor… if the human body is put through cycles like this, it is possible for the metabolism to drop so low that even 1000 calories a day will lead to body fat storage. In the process, the overall health of the individual is sacrificed. But it still keeps them alive and with elevated fat levels.)
Anyway, enough for now…
Janene
Comment by Janene — 20 November 2005 @ 11:17 AM
Does population keep growing and growing as a result of increasing food supply?
Maybe it does in undeveloped countries but it ternds to level off in developed countries.
http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educators/Human_Population/Population_Growth/Population_Growth.htm
Check out this graph.
Just pointing out an exception to the rule.
Comment by Peter — 24 November 2005 @ 3:11 PM
Hey Peter –
There are alwasy going to be secondary and tertiary (etc) correlations in any dynamic system.
Matt (Ghost) over at Ishcon presents an apt analogy: imagine a box filled with balls. If the balls are tiny you can fit many more balls — and add aditional balls — much more easily than if the balls are large, and the amount of disused space with tiny balls is much less than the disused space in the box with large balls.
The same is true of population and footprint.
In the first world, it costs roughly a million dollars to bear and raise a child. And there is little recompse (economically) for a family later in life. (Particularly in view of our notions of retirement communities and nursing homes)
In the third world, not only is the cost minimal, but the return on investment quickly becomes an issue because children become an income source for a family once they hit 8-12 years old.
The problem with this, is that the first world requires the third world to be this way in order to function. If we were to ‘even the playing field’, somehow (and this is a big ’somehow’), then all civilizations would have the same tiny footprint and increased population growth (compared to the first world) while making that footprint only infintesmily (sp?) larger than current third world footprints. There’s just too many damn people
Janene
Comment by Janene — 25 November 2005 @ 11:07 AM
“There’s just too many damn people”
Testify, sistah!
Comment by Peter — 25 November 2005 @ 12:07 PM
So, I’ve been reading several systems thinking pieces for Philosophy class, and just got through a few chapters of The Fifth Discipline that the prof had us read. While it might be more accurate to call this a Shifting the Burden, or Addiction archetype (as you’ve diagrammed it), it doesn’t really make any sense to explain it like that…
I think it fits more as a Fixes That Fail archetype, and because I’m a dork, I drew a quick one up… (here)
-Mike
Comment by WackyMorningDJ — 7 December 2005 @ 10:42 PM
Actually I based this one fixes that fail. I merely added on the limitations of resources, and the natural fix. So now it’s an attempted fix that adversely effects the ultimate fix.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 11:44 AM