Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply - redux

[villager]

Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply

A paper presented at the FEASTA Conference, "What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?", June 23-25, 2005, Dublin Ireland

by Richard Heinberg

Food is energy. And it takes energy to get food. These two facts, taken together, have always established the biological limits to the human population and always will. The same is true for every other species: food must yield more energy to the eater than is needed in order to acquire the food. Woe to the fox who expends more energy chasing rabbits than he can get from eating the rabbits he catches. If this energy balance remains negative for too long, death results; for an entire species, the outcome is a die-off event, perhaps leading even to extinction....

In the US, agriculture is directly responsible for well over 10% of all national energy consumption. Over 400 gallons of oil equivalent are expended to feed each American each year. About a third of that amount goes toward fertilizer production, 20% to operate machinery, 16% for transportation, 13% for irrigation, 8% for livestock raising, (not including the feed), and 5% for pesticide production. This does not include energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retailers, or cooking.

Trucks move most of the world's food, even though trucking is ten times more energy-intensive than moving food by train or barge. Refrigerated jets move a small but growing proportion of food, almost entirely to wealthy industrial nations, at 60 times the energy cost of sea transport. Processed foods make up three-quarters of global food sales by price (though not by quantity). This adds dramatically to energy costs: for example, a one-pound box of breakfast cereal may require over 7,000 kilocalories of energy for processing, while the cereal itself provides only 1,100 kilocalories of food energy.

Over all - including energy costs for farm machinery, transportation, and processing, and oil and natural gas used as feedstocks for agricultural chemicals - the modern food system consumes roughly ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food energy produced.

<snip>


http://321energy.com/editorials/heinberg/heinberg091605.html

[slor]

1. Thanks for posting n/t

[villager]

2. yr. welcome!

n/t

[CascadeTide]

3. locally grown organic vegetables

that's what we're all going to have to eat soon. It's not a bad thing, just changing your tastes and attitudes. People survived on locally grown food before combustion engines, we can do it after.

[villager]

4. yes! "Local" including...

...your own backyard, and what you swap with your neighbors!

[CascadeTide]

5. this has become a lost practice only the last 30 years or so

my grandparents always had their own gardens going that they ate out of. Most people can't grow enough to support themselves but the less you have to depend on from a distant source the better off you are.

[KittyWampus]

11. what is more tasteless than the steroidal strawberries found in winter?

they're huge, white in the middle and totally tasteless.

[YapiYapo]

13. Before combustion engines

They weren't 6+billions people on earth.The green revolution allowed it to be possible therefore without oil billions will die

"Since the 1940s, agriculture has dramatically increased its productivity, due largely to the use of chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and increased mechanisation. This process has been called the Green Revolution. The increase in food production has allowed world population to grow dramatically over the last 50 years. Pesticides rely upon oil as a critical ingredient, and fertilizers require both oil and natural gas. Farm machinery also requires oil. Arguing that in today's world every joule one eats requires 5-15 joules to produce and deliver, some have speculated that a decreasing supply of oil will cause modern industrial agriculture to collapse, leading to a drastic decline in food production, food shortages and possibly even mass starvation."



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Catastrophe

[CascadeTide]

15. food production will have to be more efficient

so much now spoils and so much more takes far too many resources to produce. It's not fair to use numbers like this given the current production/consumption trends and say it's the only way to feed the world.

[YapiYapo]

18. Not fair lol ??

Are you suggesting food production will increase during peak oil ?

How do you increase efficiency without fertilizer and pesticides ?
How do you transport food to the customer ?
etc

[IDemo]

19. Localization of agriculture will be a big first step

It is wildly fuel-inefficient to bring grapes from Chile and oranges from Australia to grocery stores in the US, but I've seen both here.

[YapiYapo]

32. Problem is

We export food to africa , if we stop lot of die.

Bigger problem , we export food to OPEP country if we stop they stop exporting their oil.So we won't have to face a few % depletation per year, instead we will have to deal with only a tiny % of the oil we consume now.

[CascadeTide]

23. have to focus on effeciency, not production increase

Like I said, there is so much waste in our agriculture industry. We'll have to change our eating habits to feed the world. The question is whether people will, not whether we can.

[YapiYapo]

33. ok i get your point.

I also doubt people will be willing to share more.Let's hope so.

[anarch]

35. yes, but what scares me is

that a whole lot fewer people survived on them then, with a whole lot more arable land to grow stuff on.

I don't even have a back yard...although I guess it's pretty much a given that urban areas will fall apart pretty quickly when the shit really starts to hit the fan, so even if I did have one, I'd want to get out of the city.

[FloridaPat]

6. I'm starting to get real interested in sustainable agrculture. Starts

with organic. Taking a master gardener class and am going to see about doing edible landscapes. I bought a farm but can't figure out how to feed myself on less than 100 acres. There has to be a way. Time to rethink a lot of stuff we were raised with. Time to see what foods the rest of the world eats.

[KittyWampus]

12. I've found beans and carrots to be high yield and beneficial. Mustards

are also terrific. Many are heirloom and naturalize in the landscape.

Which brings out the next point: many heirlooms stay true to type and establish themselves well in the environment around their original planting. Thus, requiring very little upkeep or thought later on.

[hatrack]

24. You might want to try this book - all about organic microfarming

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0963281437

[kestrel91316]

25. You don't need any 100 acres to feed yourself. Get ahold of a copy of

Jon Jeavons' "How to Grow More Vegetables........" and bone up on biointensive gardening. Get some chickens and rabbits and learn to butcher them if you want meat.

Get a copy of Carla Emery's "Encyclopedia of Country Living". You CAN produce most, if not all, of your own food and it doesn't require much land if you go about it right.

[Porcupine]

28. Look at permaculture they get amazing on small plots.

Also remember that you do not have to produce everything on your own farm. You just have to have a surplus to trade out for other locally produced items or cash.

[brokensymmetry]

7. Thank you!

The message needs to get out; many lives depend on it.

[villager]

10. we will simplify and slow down...

...because in the end, we will have no choice...

and yr. welcome!

[IDemo]

8. An excellent (and lengthy) article on this topic:

The Oil We Eat, by Richard Manning

[villager]

9. "The wheat and beef people."

Another great article, too. Thanks.

[gasperc]

14. that's why cheerios cost $4.50 a box

it is insane that it takes 7x the energy to create the actual food

[villager]

16. sigh -- yeah, gonna have to give up cold cereals

Back to backyard laid eggs, I guess!

[brokensymmetry]

17. You like cereal?

Why not cook up some rice...add a little sugar, some cinnamon, a bit of milk...it's pretty good!

Or, boil some wheat...or there's always rolled oats...

[villager]

20. I confess, I do like cereal.

But then again, I like oats and Cream of Wheat, too...

[NickB79]

21. Better learn to like vegetarian

Like it or not, our current method of growing corn to feed to cattle to eat as steaks is not very efficient for food production. Some livestock ranching will remain, as there are many areas of the US that are too dry to use for anything other than grazing land, but the days of large-scale feedlots will end relatively soon. Even raising cattle may go out of style, as bison and bison/cattle hybrids are better suited to weathering the climate of the Great Plains than cattle. Chicken will probably replace pork and beef, since chickens convert grain to meat more efficiently than cattle and pigs do.

It sucks, because I love my cheeseburgers and porkchops :-(

Oh, and old-style "victory gardens" in suburban front yards will probably become quite common once again. Frankly, I'm amazed more people don't already have them. Who needs flowerbeds when a mixture of sweetcorn, squash, tomatoes and eggplant look so beautiful mixed together properly :-)

[villager]

22. agree completely....

Let's dump the feedlots and bring back the bison now ...

[buzzsaw_23]

26. Eating Fossil Fuels

Eating Fossil Fuels



http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil_summary.html
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

"What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published."

SUMMARY


October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Some months ago, concerned by a Paris statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton regarding his concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on fertilizer production, I tasked FTW's Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start looking into what natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production costs. His investigation led him to look at the totality of food production in the US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world the answers have global implications.


What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. Even as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week, acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less than predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been devoted to the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of publicly accessible thinking.

This article is so serious in its implications that I have taken the unusual step of underlining 26 of its key findings. I did that with the intent that the reader treat each underlined passage as a separate and incredibly important fact. Each one of these facts should be read and digested separately to assimilate its importance. I found myself reading one fact and then getting up and walking away until I could come back and (un)comfortably read to the next.

All told, Dale Allen Pfeiffer's research and reporting confirms the worst of FTW's suspicions about the consequences of Peak Oil and it poses serious questions about what to do next. Not the least of these is why, in a presidential election year, none of the candidates has even acknowledged the problem. Thus far, it is clear that solutions for these questions, perhaps the most important ones facing mankind, will by necessity be found by private individuals and communities, independently of outside or governmental help. Whether the real search for answers comes now, or as the crisis becomes unavoidable, depends solely on us. It is also abundantly clear that fresh water, its acquisition and delivery, is a crisis that is upon us now as certainly as is Peak Oil and Gas

[kestrel91316]

27. You don't even have to give up meat entirely, just eat LESS of it.

Beef is very energy-intensive to raise and process the factory way. Buy grass-fed beef, and buy big hunks and cut it up or grind it yourself. Healthier that way, and uses less water and other resources.

But mostly, learn to enjoy meatless meals. When you grow your own vegetables and fix them up for dinner, they are immensely satisfying all by themselves. With whole grains and eggs/dairy added, who the heck needs to eat meat every day???

[CascadeTide]

29. it's a problem because a lot of people refuse to change

Many of my friends laugh when I bring up humans all but reducing our intake of beef. They're used to eating beef 10 meals a week and find it ridiculous that they will ever have to change their habits. It really pisses me off...

[Rainscents]

30. Not to mention, too much red meat gives

colon cancer. Nowadays, red meat is pack with Chemicals!

[bobbieinok]

31. US front lawns; Switzerland towns: front yards filled w/ flowers and vegs

saw these everywhere

[villager]

34. coming to a neighborhood near you...

...I hope!

[SpiralHawk]

36. Best solution for most families: Join a CSA farm

Community Supported Agriculture - the nation has over 2,000 CSA farms now -- and they work: they are local, they save familis money, they provide dignified work for local residents -- and they yeild tons of clean, healthy food.

This page has some great links for basic CSA info:

http://www.chiron-communications.com/farms.html

[villager]

37. thanks - but they need a "Freecycle"-like way for localities to sign up

Couldn't find one on the link...