Productivity and sustainability of ecosystems

A mature climax ecosystem is extremely productive and sustainable. The evolution of the ecosystem required that the species which make up the mix of plants and animals in the ecosystem be the absolute best at utilizing energy and materials. Otherwise, some other species that could perform these functions better would have become dominant.

We, not being as good as nature, have tended to reduce the complexity of the ecosystems so that we could use fossil fuels to make them more productive for our own needs, which made them necessarily less sustainable.

The “third way” is to substitute species of plants that we can use for food, medicine, and fiber that occupy similiar niches in mature ecosystem. This is called by several names Forest Farming, Agroecology and Permaculture. However, the idea in each is that we can retain the sustainability of mature ecosystems while making them more productive for human needs. However, this productivity may never reach the total biomass yields that can be obtained by factory farmers