Why Our Food Is So Dependent On Oil

[chlamor]

Oil output is expected to peak in the next few years and steadily decline thereafter. We have a very poor understanding of how the extreme fluctuations in the availability and cost of both oil and natural gas will affect the global food supply systems, and how they will be able to adapt to the decreasing availability of energy. In the near future, environmental threats will combine with energy scarcity to cause significant food shortages and sharp increases in prices - at the very least. We are about to enter an era where we will have to once again feed the world with limited use of fossil fuels. But do we have enough time, knowledge, money, energy and political power to make this massive transformation to our food systems when they are already threatened by significant environmental stresses and increasing corporate control?

<snip>

* Oil refined for gasoline and diesel is critical to run the tractors, combines and other farm vehicles and equipment that plant, spray the herbicides and pesticides, and harvest/transport food and seed
* Food processors rely on the just-in-time (gasoline-based) delivery of fresh or refrigerated food
* Food processors rely on the production and delivery of food additives, including vitamins and minerals, emulsifiers, preservatives, colouring agents, etc. Many are oil-based. Delivery is oil-based
* Food processors rely on the production and delivery of boxes, metal cans, printed paper labels, plastic trays, cellophane for microwave/convenience foods, glass jars, plastic and metal lids with sealing compounds. Many of these are essentially oil-based
* Delivery of finished food products to distribution centres in refrigerated trucks. Oil-based, daily, just-in-time shipment of food to grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, schools, etc., all oil-based; customer drives to grocery store to shop for supplies, often several times a week.

http://www.energybulletin.net/5045.html

[spindoctor]

1. Don't forget fertilizer

Also a byproduct of oil refinery.

[amandabeech]

15. Nitrogen fertilizer is usually made using natural gas,

both as the source of hydrogen and a heat source for the high temperatures necessary to put the nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen together to form ammonia, the base of nitrogen fertilizer.

Other energy sources could be utilized to make at least some nitrogen fertilizer, and ammonia can be separated from waste water. Many scientists and companies are working on ways to do this both for sewage systems and those large animal feeding operation, so long as they are around.

I do not know the role of hydrocarbons in the processing of phosphate and potassium fertilizers. However, ground phosphate rock is used by organic farmers.

However, if we fully composted all uncontaminated human, animal and vegetable wastes, we would recycle considerable amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium necessary for food production.

[LiberallyInclined]

17. animal feed and pesticides too.

nt

[FloridaPat]

2. We're screwed aren't we? I guess it's time to think about raising

out own food!

[The Doctor.]

3. I'm starting 'insect farming'. nt

[chlamor]

5. Learn Seed Saving

Seed to Seed by Suzanne Answorth- The seed savers bible.

And by the way look forward to your posts. Small shards of wisdom sprinkled in there.
Simplicity and a turn to the local.

[The Doctor.]

7. Wisdom?

Shit... how'd that get in there?

I will most certainly have a look - in fact I just did.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/AFSIC_pubs/heirloom/srb9805.htm

Seems to be some good info here.

I see that you have become fervent over this issue, and I don't blame you.
It is remarkably serious.

I would be able to direct you to some of my writings on this (not much wisdom, but I do try to incite my audience...), but other sites I post to are gone or have deleted my 'unpleasant' projections as ludicrous.

Hmmm... perhaps I shall post them again here on DU?

In the meanwhile - I'd be happy to share a piece I once sent to friends and family if it could help give you ideas. Unfortunately... it may become apparent that I like to hear myself type.

[chlamor]

10. Definitely

would be interested in seeing what you wrote/typed.

For more on seed saving open pollinated heirloom seeds go to www.highmowingseeds.com a great out fit out of Vermont. At present I am teaching myself this skill with help of and in company with others. As a young father my concerns about the Long Emergency are profound. I am not a Y2K type-whatever that means-but have studied and read most of the stuff about "Peak Oil", don't like the term, on all sides that I am convinced its impact will be great and that it is already here.

[The Doctor.]

23. Very tired... will post again tomorrow. TY fer the link.

[FloridaPat]

8. What's inset farming?

[The Doctor.]

9. It's when one breeds and cultivates insects

as a nutritious food source.

[FloridaPat]

19. Which insects are you raising?

[CHIMO]

11. We Always Make

Sure that we have a place for the ladybugs to overwinter. Some leaves around a rose bush. You should see them crawling all over the plant on warm sunny spring days.

[Skip Intro]

4. some things, I suspect, are going to change

how soon is my question.

driving will be less.

but isn't it interesting just how dependant we all are on oil? Its almost as if there's an effort to make people think there's no other way.

[chlamor]

6. The Oil Megastructure

is all encompassing from its impact on the bond market to the price and availability of food to the price of tires to the etc.

[chlamor]

12. The Long Fingers of Petroleum

To truly grasp how much petroleum impacts our lives, let’s put John D. in his driveway, dressed for work and standing next to his dear Porsche 911 Turbo.

John is wearing a nice suit and tie. Unfortunately, the suit is wool and polyester, the buttons are plastic as well as the zipper in the pants. Remove 25% of the material from his suit, all elastic and plastic stays, the buttons and the zipper. Why? Polyester, dacron, rayon, orlon – these are all petroleum based, man made fibers. All plastic is petroleum based, as is elastic. Better get rid of the waistband on his under shorts too while we are at it. Abruptly, our friend John is rather chilly, as what is left of his suit, pants, shirt and under shorts have fallen around his ankles.

John wears glasses with polycarbonate lenses when he reads, and plastic contacts when he is doing anything active. These also require petroleum for manufacture, and will have to be replaced with real glasses made from glass. Oops – the frames are unbreakable plastic – those will need to go as well. While we are subtracting, let’s toss out his credit cards (plastic), the heels from his shoes (polyethylene-based rubber), and his all-weather watchband (faux-leather that is actually plastic). And we better get rid of that driver’s license too – the lamination is made from petroleum, as is the ink. And let’s not forget the ink that his money is printed with – yes, the ink which most currency is printed with is also a petroleum based product. As John stands with what used to be a suit around his ankles, the only thing he has left that hasn’t disappeared or fallen to the ground is his cotton undershirt, and he is completely broke.

<snip>

His fresh vegetables and many of his canned goods are gone. John suddenly remembers reading an article about fertilizer and pesticide shortages. It seems these are also made almost exclusively from petroleum, and without them, modern mass-farming techniques are not viable. Crop yields are down, and the cost of trucking lettuce from California and Washington to other places is just too high.

And if you think this hurts, imagine everything you ever bought from a department store vanishing – because they were ALL IMPORTED from cheap-labor “elsewheres” using petroleum as fuel.

Forget all plastic – it is 100% petroleum.

Toss out computers and electronics as we know them today – we don’t have the insulating materials to build them without petroleum. We don’t have the massive electrical capacity to build anything really high tech – the cost of oil or natural gas to fuel the power grid has become too high.

http://www.energybulletin.net/4740.html

[havocmom]

13. Dare I take a guess...

feeding tubes too?

[applegrove]

14. So actually meat that forages for food - like deer is a better alternative

Cows are just huge oil users. But then people in Texas know all about integrating their two markets.

For sure fertilizer helps soil and us eat. But really, do we have to eat as much meat?

Let us put the range back in free range. And open the border to world agriculture so that people willing to do the weeding themselves.. for say a school uniform and an education for their kids.. let us eat their stuff.

[chlamor]

16. Nice Call

fertilizer comes in many forms. Always found it funny that Agribusiness "fertilizer" ultimately renders the soil infertile. The Mad Hatter had a few words about that.

:toast:

[applegrove]

18. I learnt about the deer on this board.

[chlamor]

20. Nothing I'm Into

but a couple I know pull fresh road kill (deer) off the road and use all the goodies inside and out. They know what they are doing, not for the uninitiated I guess. It's pretty hilarious as they look more like Ken and Barbie than backwoods Jake and Thelma.

[applegrove]

21. Lots of people I know hunt. I never realized how ecologically hard

industrial cows were.

[chlamor]

22. 2,500 gallons of water for one pound of beef

Many of us love to eat hamburgers, hot dogs, bologna, and other items made from beef or red meat. While these foods may taste delicious, they often have a negative effect on the rainforests. In fact, one of the main causes of rainforest destruction in Central and South America is cattle ranching. Cattle ranchers slash and burn the rainforest to make room for cattle pastures. First, the ranchers cut down the trees and set the forest on fire. Then they plant grass and bring in cows to feed on the grass. When the cows are grown, they are slaughtered and turned into cheap beef. The beef is used in fast-food hamburgers, frozen meat products, and canned pet food.

It takes a lot of rainforest land, water, and energy to make a fast-food hamburger. As a matter of fact, fifty-five square feet of rainforest is destroyed for every quarter pound hamburger that comes from a cleared rainforest. That's the size of a small kitchen! Not only that, but since the soil in the rainforest does not contain many nutrients, after a few years of cattle ranching it becomes very difficult to grow anything on the land— even grass. What was once a beautiful, lush, living rainforest becomes a dry, desert-like wasteland. When this happens, even more rainforest is slashed and burned for cattle ranching.

Clearing the rainforest to produce beef also destroys the homes of the animals that live in the rainforest. Without their rainforest homes, many of these animals simply cannot survive and may become extinct. When an animal becomes extinct, it disappears forever like the dinosaurs.

Raising cattle for beef not only damages the rainforests in Central and South America, it also impacts the environment closer to home. Over half of the water used in the United States goes to beef production. In fact, it takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of red meat. That's as much water as a typical family uses in a month! With the amount of water it takes to produce one pound of red meat, farmers can grow up to one hundred pounds of grain, which makes a lot of bread, pasta, and cereal. One pound of beef can only feed four people for one lunch, whereas one hundred pounds of grain can feed four people for a month!

Raising cows for beef—whether in rainforest countries or the United States—also adds to climate change or global warming. It takes a lot of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and gasoline) to raise cows, slaughter them, freeze the meat, ship it overseas or across the country, and then transport it to grocery stores and restaurants. The burning of fossil fuels creates a greenhouse gas called carbon dioxide. When cows digest their food, they also release a greenhouse gas called methane. These greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun close to the Earth's surface. When too much heat is trapped, it causes the planet to warm up, which in turn causes dangerous changes in the weather. For instance, less rain may fall in the rainforests, making it difficult for all the trees, plants, and animals that depend on rain to survive. Climate change is a very big problem facing the rainforests and our planet. We must do all we can to stop it from getting worse. One easy way to do that is to eat less red meat!

http://www.ran.org/info_center/factsheets/s10.html

[OneBlueSky]

24. future trend . . . much more locally grown food, much less . . .

imported food . . . and that which is imported will be very expensive . . .

[chlamor]

25. Hope folks are listening

to your words.

A turn to the local.

[JohnyCanuck]

26. Eating Fossil Fuels

Eating Fossil Fuels

by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

<snip>

The Green Revolution

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer

· 19% for the operation of field machinery

· 16% for transportation

· 13% for irrigation

· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

· 05% for crop drying

· 05% for pesticide production

· 08% miscellaneous8

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.

Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

More at: www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

[JohnyCanuck]

27. One farmer that's trying make a diffence and farm without oil.

From www.globalpublicmedia.com :

Stephen Decater speaks with Els Cooperrider of The Party's Over on KZYX about biodynamic farming in Round Valley of Mendocino county. Stephen talks about draft horses, their history, and how he uses them. He also talks about the Live Power Community Farm, which is a community-based agriculture (CSA) project, and how this arrangement differs from a market-based relationship. They are looking for apprentices now.

Links to downloadable MP3 and streaming audio (Real Player .ram format) of interview at:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/364

[chlamor]

28. Natural Systems Agriculture-The Land Institute

Natural Systems Agriculture is a new paradigm for food production, where nature is mimicked rather than subdued and ignored. Because we are located in native prairie, we look to the prairie as our model for grain crops. As a result, we are investigating the feasibility of perennial polycultures or mixtures of perennial grains. No other organization has sought to do this. After publishing numerous papers in scientific refereed journals, writing books, and making many presentations here and abroad, The Land Institute receives attention worldwide for its ideas.

The functions of a natural system can be achieved by mimicking its structure. We believe that with additional research, an agriculture that is resilient (and therefore productive over the long term), economical (the need for costly inputs would be significantly diminished), and ecologically responsible is well within reach. The first impetus to search for a new agriculture was soil loss and soil pollution. Agricultural chemicals poison our soils and our waters and harm people. Most importantly, a quarter to a third of our topsoil is gone 200 years after opening this country to agriculture. Natural Systems Agriculture would leave the ground unplowed for years and use few or no chemicals, solving many environmental problems at their root.

http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2000/08/05/377bbbe53

[JohnyCanuck]

29. Thanks for posting that link.

I find when I read articles like Eating Fossil Fuels, The Oil We Eat or the article that started this thread I tend to feel overwhelmed at the extent of the problem and to wonder if there really are viable long term solutions to pull us out of the energy trap we have built for ourselves.

I'm always encouraged to find out about the dedicated and innovative farmers, researchers, biologist who are not throwing in the towel and are working to reform our agricultural practices into a model that works with nature as much as possible, instead of just using machines and our depleting fossil fuel resources to bash nature over the head and grab what we can while the going's good. Another source of information about worldwide research into sustainable agriculture is the Institute for Science in Society from the UK: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/susag.php

[KittyWampus]

30. Also, No-Till Agriculture-Saves Oil, Soil Moisture Keeps Weeds Down &

helps enrich the soil.

Industrial farming is fucked up as it stands now.

[kineneb]

31. I hear Els Cooperrider on local radio

being just across the hills in Lake County. I am working on getting my garden going, on our little 1/4 acre lot. I plan to do the square-foot gardening technique and use my compost for fertilizer along with the contributions from our pet chicken, Henrietta.

I think a good plan is to aquire the basics to continue on after oil becomes verrry expensive, and then maintain them rather than replace them (appliances, cars, computers, garden equipment, etc.). Considering lots of stuff made from petrolium products don't degrade, maybe we will learn how to use what is already extracted in a more efficent way (recycling).

I did my recycling bit yesterday at the lumberyard...raided their junk bin for scraps to build Henny a chicken coop; after all she does not care if the materials are standard grade or not.

The future may look like my grandparents' descriptions of the Depression Era- make due with what you have, patch together what breaks, grow your own food, put up your own food for the winter, and in general, do with less. Remember, that was a time before Big Oil had really taken over.

And for suggestions, visit here:
http://journeytoforever.org

They have excellent ideas for gardening/farming in the third world where oil is not available or affordable.