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Which EROI do we need to collect berries?

Which EROI do we need to collect berries?

My wife, Grazia, collecting berries in the woods of Tuscany in a hot day of August. Maybe her ancestors were doing exactly the same, more or less in the same place, hundreds or thousands of years ago. Here, I present some reflections and some calculations showing that the EROI of this simple way of collecting food may be over 100, better than almost anything we have nowadays. Of course, no empire in history was based on hunting and gathering, but was that a bad thing?
 

The question of EROI – the energy return on energy invested – is raging nowadays, with some people insisting that a civilization cannot exist without an EROI of at least variously estimated values, at least 10 and higher (image on the right by Charles Hall). And that is said to mean we absolutely need sophisticated technologies, such as nuclear, in order to survive.

Yet, this morning I had been collecting berries in the wood with my wife and wondering: ‘what is the EROI of what we are doing?’ A reasonably good EROI, I am sure, enough for what our ancestors needed when they survived on hunting and gathering. All you have to do is to walk in the woods, find the berries and pick them up (and watch your step, you don’t want to fall into a thorn bush).  If our hunter-gatherer ancestors used this method, and if we are here today – their descendants – it means it was an effective strategy for survival. Collecting what you can find is an ancient and tested strategy that goes under the name of “gleaning” and it has accompanied humankind for millennia. It is a good strategy just because it is so simple: no tools, no laws, no hierarchy. And it works.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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