[Glorantha] urban percent

[Thompson, Todd L.]

> >Strictly speaking potatoes have the highest yield per acre, which is
> >why the Irish planted so many potatoes in the day and helped set the
> >stage for the Great Famine.  They tended to have large families and
> >the little land they did have got divided up among the children until
> >potatoes were the only crop that could support their families.
> 
> Except that they grew wheat as well. However that crop went to pay
> the rent and was exported to England. I'm surprised that they had
> larger families than any other country at the time. The reputation
> for large families arose in the 20th Century when contraception
> became widely available in Britain. Prior to that large families
> were also necessary to maintain the population given mortality
> rates.

Well there were the English (generally Protestants) that were given
large tracts of land to immigrate to Ireland, the idea was to breed out
the troublemaking Irish (generally Catholics).  The land was taken from
the Irish but the Irish worked that land.  The Irish affected by the
Great Famine had no say in what was cultivated or where it went.  You
are correct and most of these goods were exported to England, inciting
more than a few incidents of violence.  England did make some
substantial efforts to help.  There are questions about whether they
could have done more, but England itself was pretty dependant on the
imports from Ireland to sustain its population.

As I recall the Irish didn't really own the plot meant for their own
use, but it was an agreement that was inherited and divided among the
descendants.  It wasn't unheard for the landowner to decide to evict all
the tenets and reclaim the land.  After many generations the amount of
land of this subplot was small enough that the only crop that was high
enough in yield was potatoes.

The families of the Catholic Irish were rather large, larger then
previous history suggests, and really I guess the cause it would be
described as boredom.  There really wasn't much else for them to do.

> 
> However the bigger factor is livestock, meat production requires
> something like ten times the land for a given weight of food.
> Granted some animals (e.g. sheep and goats) can forage where
> no viable crop can be grown.

Ireland also raised cattle but the meat didn't stay in Ireland.

> >The advantage rice has is that it can be harvested a second time
> >in a season, but the crop as a whole is very labor intensive and
> >requires a phenomenal amount of water, which works well in areas
> >with lots of low cost labor, thralls maybe :P
> 
> I don't see thralls as necessary given that in the RW rice is
> grown by peasant farmers across large parts of the far east.
> Of course peasants tend to be more productive than slaves.

Hmm, well the amount of labor involved in working rice is far greater
then other crops.  Worse yet, the way to get a greater yield out of it,
is to sow/harvest twice in a season and that assumes you are talking
short grain rice (long grain rice takes too long to grow).  There are
also the steep water requirements.  I don't think Orlanthi are lazy but
it doesn't seem likely they would plant rice, especially when wheat and
barley make better brews!  Maybe if the thralls were working the rice
fields it would be more economical.

Those RW cultures that rely on rice typically have very high populations
of very poor workers and being able to sow that rice a second time in a
season becomes necessary to sustain their population.  This doesn't
really seem to be the case for the Orlanthi.

> --
> Donald Oddy
> http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/