Feeding the World

As I wait for IRENE to come, with sump pump and tarp at the ready, I’m reviewing some old-but-not-yet-read digests from Peak Oil News. Here are some disturbing thought from the May 31 2001 issue, from Farmer’s Weekly, written by Tyson Cattle (no kidding).  In essence, the writer is reporting on a visit by Tyson Cribb, noted science journalist, who was in Washington, Australia giving a presentation on Peak Oil and Agriculture: “Where is Agriculture Heading in the next 20 years?"

Cribb is peak-oil savvy, and is wondering how farmers will feed the world, given that our whole agriculture system (like every other modern system) presumes endless supplies of cheap fossil-based energy. 

Some excerpts from Cribb’s talk follow.

"Today the world faces looming scarcities of just about everything required to produce high yields of food, that is, water, land, nutrients, oil, technology, skills, fish and stable climates.

"This isn't a simple problem which can be treated with techno fixes or national policy changes."

"To put it another way, between 1990 and 2005, world demand for food has grown 15 times faster than the area of land being farmed."

"If, due to an oil crisis or local war, the endless river of trucks carrying food failed to arrive even for a week or two, what would their citizens eat?

• "In developed countries we trash from a third to half of all food produced," he said.
• "In developing countries we lose similar amounts post-harvest.
• "Half the achievements of the world's farmers are going to landfill.
• "While a billion starve, we waste food enough for three billion.

"Our grandparents would say we are idiots and they would be right."

Cribb suggested that Australia begin devoting a larger percentage of its funds for agricultural research.  He notes that the world spends $1.5 trillion each year on weapons, but only $40 billion on agriculture research.

Rather than wait for the research, I suggest this is a good time to start planting annual gardens – if you have sunlight, you can supply the rest—to see just how difficult but satisfying gardening can be.

Powering down before we need to

Which two disasters in this year and last inspired the most fear or anger? For me, the two events were the BP Oil spill and Japan's post-tsunami disaster at its four nuclear plants. Both threaten to poison our oceans and us who depend on it for some of our food supply. What do these disasters have in common? Both are related to:

• our ever-increasing consumption of energy in whatever form works for us, and
  
• the difficulty of maintaining (never mind increasing) our energy supplies.
  

With two in a row, it is likely that next year there will be another disaster, and the year after, etc. All the while, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are increasing their energy use. Saudi Arabia is itself consuming more of its fossil fuels each year. And why shouldn't they all do this, since they can now afford it and deserve it as much as we do. How do we avoid the oncoming energy disasters and ever-increasing price spirals? Live with less, and learn to live entirely without the one that is increasingly being swamped both by demand while its supply diminishes, inexorably. That one would be petroleum. That process of increasing energy frugality is what others, especially Richard Heinberg, call "powering down."

Nuclear

We in the US generate 20% of our total electric energy from nuclear, and –in spite of the 3 Mile Island disaster—nobody has been hurt and the possible environmental disaster was averted. Still, we continue to store spent fuel, with a half-life of thousands of years, in containers at each nuclear site. These sites were not designed to house the spent fuel. In fact, we spent upwards of $15 billion on studies to select a storage site, then in setting it up. It was only until Barack Obama shut the Yucca Mountain facility down –in deference to Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader from Nevada—that we lost the possibility of storing this in a controlled manner. (to be continued.)