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Agriculture Meets Peak Oil: Soil Association Conference
Posted by Chris Vernon on February 1, 2007 - 10:37am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: agriculture, climate change, food, organic, peak oil [list all tags]
Last summer they launched a major peak oil initiative going by the name of Food and Farming – Post Peak Oil. This theme was the focus of their 26-27th Jan 2007 annual conference, subtitled “Preparing for a post-peak oil food and farming future”.
With over 800 delegates and the peak oil educator stalwarts of Campbell, Heinberg and Leggett amongst the speakers this was the largest and potentially most significant peak oil communication event yet.
This was different. A step change. This conference wasn’t organised by or for the peak oil community. It was the first time (that I’m aware of) the peak oil message – as delivered by Campbell and Heinberg et al – was core to the annual conference of a major organisation.
The event kicked off on the Thursday night with a discussion between the Soil Association’s president, Jonathan Dimbleby and director Patrick Holden. From this I got the impression the peak oil focus was Holden’s rather than Dimbleby’s doing. Holden described the subject of this conference as making it the most important conference in the Association’s 60 years history. Justifying this by explaining that to date the Soil Association had been focused on:
Development, defining, of a prescription for the application for sustainable agriculture.And that this was now doubly important as things are changing, due to climate change, decline of fossil fuels and food security meaning the Association needs to consider the wider issues. Holden mentioned he “argued very hard” for the peak oil theme so presumably someone was arguing almost as hard against.
Dimbleby did say he was sympathetic to the direction Holden was taking the conference but suggested there were other problems, today’s problems, prices, DEFRA, standards, attracting more people to organic farming etc. and that perhaps they should be the focus, that peak oil is a case of biting off more than one can chew? Holden’s defence was to say that was the day job but peak oil was:
...far far bigger than that, it’s going to completely threaten all the systems that we take for granted.Having described his own farm as quite radically sustainable he went on to say:
…but then I realised that when my food gets to the farm gate it goes into a centralised distribution system which is entirely dependent on the existing fossil fuel driven national distribution infrastructure. And if this scenario of progressive decent of fossil fuel energy which could halve it or maybe even reduce it to a quarter or less than that by the late 2020s happens I’m going to have to rethink all that. Which means maybe I’m going to have to rethink how the food is sold which begs the question, can I get loyalty of the citizens around me because at the moment they are buying food on price or they are buying a commodity food...The following day covered the meat of the conference in a series of plenary sessions where the following spoke:
Jonathon Porritt, One Planet Agriculture
Dr Colin Campbell, Energy Shortages: How soon and how serious?
Dr Jeremy Leggett, Climate change and peak oil: The two great oversights of our time
Rob Hopkins, Energy descent plans: The Kinsale and Totnes projects
Carwyn Jones, Minister's address
Richard Heinberg, Implications of peak oil for agriculture
André Viljoen, Agriculture without external inputs: The Cuban experience
Peter Melchett, Organic farming and food distribution: Present strengths and weaknesses
To their credit the Soil Association have made MP3 audio recordings of each speech available on their conference page here.
I won’t describe the content in detail however I will especially recommend Porritt’s, for a well articulated, intelligent, linking of a broad range of difficulties, Hopkins’ for a humours and inspirational account of his response to peak oil, Melchett’s for discussion of climate change impacts of farming, land use, nitrous oxide and carbon loss from soil and Leggett's for bringing together climate change and peak oil in his authoritative manner.
Jeremy Leggett has also recorded his thoughts on the conference at his blog hosted by the Guardian newspaper in an article titled Take to the fields:
If the peak-oil proposition is correct, the tipping point of global oil production will happen - largely unexpectedly - in this decade or early in the next, accompanied by a dire energy shock. The people in the room will be in the front rank of those first affected. They can also be in the vanguard of those who can offer a proactive vision of what a survivable post-shock future could look like.
Click image for .pdf
A 13 page booklet containing contributions from the speakers was given to the delegates and is available to download as a pdf from Rob Hopkin's Transition Culture site here or by clicking the above picture. This will be expanded upon over the coming weeks based on output from the conference workshops.
The closing address was given by Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy (blurb lifted from here). Her speech on "how to get the oil out of food" is also available to download from the link above - probably worth the 36 minutes of your time. Impressive lady.
Whist the core peak oil message was not new to me, I left the conference enthused. Agriculture and food security is a vital aspect of peak oil, climate change and our future. The organic farmers at the conference I met and who contributed to the workshops came across as incredibly smart and well informed people. These people know what’s going on, know what is important and seemed to accept peak oil without batting an eyelid. As the unsustainabilities of industrialised farming come home to roost, organic farmers represent the future of agriculture and by extension our very civilisation itself.
Unfortunately the mainstream media have not widely reported on the conference. The BBC's Environment Correspondent Sarah Mukerjee reports on the conference here, however she seems to have missed the point. She doesn't mention peak oil itself with her only mention of oil being quoted from Holden "...when oil demand outstrips supply, and it becomes too expensive to import food from around the world, we will have to think fairly radically about how we use the land to support ourselves." Instead Mukerjee focuses on the growing popularity of the organic movement:
Within a few years, the organic movement has found itself swept from tree-hugging hippy obscurity to the mainstream. And for an organisation that has spent most of its existence shouting angrily from the sidelines, this entry into the establishment takes quite a bit of getting used to. They face a question that many other environmental charities are asking themselves: Now we have won many of the arguments, what do we do next? And what do we say to all the people who are finally listening?Well, Sarah, the Soil Association had a very powerful message this conference, they know exactly what they are saying. It would seem however you still aren't listening!
Excellent report Chris.
I was there and like you was impressed by how much the organic movement now rates the low energy, sustainable agriculture part of their message relative to the health benefits of organic food. I am sure they have been talking about the former for a long time but I suspect, at least until recently, the general public buying organic food have mainly thought of the latter.
This emphasis on energy and sustainability is underlined by the Soil Association considering removing certification of food that has been air freighted. A fair part of American organic food production is now carried out on almost the same huge industrial scale at conventional agriculture. In may not use pesticides and oil derived fertiliser but it has massive energy inputs for machinery, processing and transport. The Soil Association is certainly fighting to ensure that the organic movement here does not go the same way.
I was also impressed by how many of the large number of growers there, so often caricatured as romantic rustics up to their knees in manure, were vitally aware of energy matters and had detailed figures of how much they used and were making great efforts to reduce it. Still there must be something that marks them apart. I do not wear a cast mark on my forehead like Dr. Vandana Shiva but when I stood up in the question time session, Anna Ford who chaired it, immediately asked "Are you an engineer?"
I also found widespread knowledge and concern about the use of biofuels as it is now being implemented, both from the point of view of removal of agricultural land and wild life habitat and the input of fossil fuel. Several growers were carefully considering how much of the material grown could be used locally for energy and how much this would detract from the return of nutrients and fibre to the soil.
The energy and sustainability theme was further emphasised by the organic fashion show and the session on low energy architecture. I had thought that that organic clothes were a pushing the organic theme a bit too far. However on learning about the damage done by industrial scale cotton farming I see the point of it. Besides the fashion show allowed us to see the food writer and broadcaster Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall racing across the catwalk clad only in organic underpants. The architectural session made clear that in new buildings you can get far greater fossil energy savings for your money by concentrating on lowering the energy consumption of the building than you can by adding renewable energy generators to the outside of a less energy efficient building. Unfortunately the very low rate of replacement of the housing stock in the UK, due to the widespread use of very durable materials like brick and stone, mean that a lot of the savings that can be made starting from scratch cannot be obtained here in the short term.
The sessions on transition towns brought me the news that Lewes in Sussex very near were I live was about to try and emulate Kinsale in Ireland, Totnes in England and a number of American towns in a local community effort to lower energy use. I shall be involving myself in these efforts.
In all, a welcome positive note in a world with too many negative ones.
In Dr. Vandana Shiva's words "The uncertainty of our times is no reason to be certain about hopelessness”.
Sure organic farming is a good thing. Mainly here in Switzerland and also in Germany it is considerable growing market.
But keep in mind: organic broad acre cropping is delivering just 50% of the yield as traditional cropping does. Many people talking about this seemingly perfect picture - organic farming- don't know this very important issue. I'm sorry, but organic farming cannot feed the world.
So is that "organic farming" or "organic broad acre cropping" that can't feed the world. My (limited) understanding is that organic farming can match "traditional" (thought that was an interesting use of the word traditional) faming in terms of productivity per unit area but a lot more variables had to be controlled and more labor was needed, i.e. it was harder.
That figure of 50%, is it rising or falling? My complete guess is that it is rising as organic practices tend to increase productivity over time through soil improvement and farmer experience. Where under "traditional" things go downhill as soils are degraded and those artificial inputs deplete.
When pesticide and fertilizer and diesel fuel inputs become too expensive, it will have to do. World oil depletion will result in world population depletion.
Its hardly demonstrable that pesticide, fertilizer and diesel fuel will become too expensive.
It is a fact unless you can demonstrate that the rate of petroleum production will increase in the future.
The law of supply and demand is not a theory.
You misunderstand; All these inputs aren't solely dependant on petroleum. Pesticides and fertilizer can easily be manufactured with nuclear process heat and electricity, and diesel fuel can also at a high price.
Second, fuel demands for agriculture are relatively low while food demands are relatively high. There are plenty of surplus industries that will die first, from airlines to large commuter cars.
Just a couple of points.
The bulk of the human diet for the last few thousand years consists of grains. These days wheat, corn and rice are it. They run the world. They are not optional.
Since ancient times grains were often consumed a long way from the fields that produced them. Rome, for instance, imported enormous quantities (for the time) from Egypt. The far east has had centralized rice markets for millenia.
Historically, when times were tough, *more* of the diet consisted of grain as meat became a luxury and imported fruits and vegetables became expensive and scarce. Instead of fattening the pig on corn and oats, we ate the corn and oats.
There was massive transnational trade in grain (and other commodities) in the age of sail, long before coal and steam, before gunpowder and printing presses and the English language.... before oil.
I would love to see somebody savvy in economics build a scenario where the global grain market ceases on account of peak oil. I want to see numbers crunched.
The difference with historical times is the scale of many grain-growing enterprises. Look this up in google earth: 50.8156,5.5292. It is a region historically specialized in growing wheat and oats (population was roughly 3/8 of today). Compare the size and quantity of the settlements with those in, for example, a farming area in on of the corn states of the USA. There is much more need for fossil fuels to just produce the grain.
Additionally, grain trade was conducted largely via water transport. Producing it is one thing, moving it to market is another.
Yes, agriculture is fossil fuel intensive. But it uses only a small fraction of total consumption and it is an absolutely necessary activity. It's hard for me to envision a scenario where peak oil consistently chokes off fuel to the most important uses. Makes no economic sense.
Similarly with bulk transportation of grains and beans. Very oil intensive. But only a tiny tiny fraction of total consumption. And history proves you don't need oil at all.
I sympathize with folks who hate globalization. But world markets for food and other commodities existed for centuries, even millenia, before that buzzword emerged.
Our extravagant automobile cultures are dependent on cheap oil, but I seriously doubt our basic food supply is.
But it's happening already. Agricultural output is down in some poor parts of the world due to high oil and gas prices reducing the amount of fertilizer, pesticide, mechanisation and pumped irrigation that can be afforded. For every dollar a barrel of oil rises, a poor farmer somewhere in the world finds he can afford less of the industrialised inputs his productivity relies on.
Marginal farmers can definitely find themselves in trouble.
The Question is: Why doesn't the price of his crop rise to offset the increasing costs of his inputs?
Here's what you often find:
(1) There is a grain surplus in his home nation. Essentially his services, as a marginal farmer, are not required. Awful, but true.
(2) He is denied access to world markets. Or, at least, denied anything like fair access. Subsidies that other rich countries use to pad their farmers' wallets keep the price too low. This is a biggie. And the developing world complains about it all the time, as they should.
(3) He faces outright price controls for his produce.
That said, my comments in previous posts apply to nations where fossil fuel use in agriculture is only a tiny fraction of total use: the developed world.
If a country uses fossil fuels mainly for agriculture, they could be in real trouble post peak. No argument there. Unless, they have completely unimpeded access to global markets (fat chance!), they would have to begin the wrenching transition to another form of agriculture, a transition that may well be a century distant for developed nations.
Another way of putting it would be: We have seen the end of cheap oil. But the age of cheap food continues (at least for now. But observe Mexico). And that's what's killing the marginal farmer.
It's also happening due to ethanol. In essence, we are diverting oil and other fossil fuels away from food to a substitute for oil. We are clearly making the judgement that our cars are more important than our food or those who would otherwise be importing our food.
"The bulk of the human diet for the last few thousand years consists of grains. These days wheat, corn and rice are it. They run the world. They are not optional."
An excellent point. And why grains? Cheap, easy storage of a calorific food. Economically air dry on the stalk and they are good for the winter, or for transport.
I have great hopes for organic foods, but post peak must address grains. So much of the calories of our diet is grain,whether you agree with the diet or not. Bread, cereal, pasta, noodles, junk food, “pork and beans”-all of three beans, rest corn syrup-, the barrels of soft drinks and beer. Check the products in the 3 or 4 aisles of the grocery store selling food. Primary ingredient is grain.
“Grain, the currency of currencies”
That sums it up wonderfully.
In a post-peak scenario, where production is falling rapidly, I expect it would become an almost sacred obligation to keep the fossil fuels flowing into grain production.
And, as a percentage of total consumption, they don't use much at all.
Grain is the foundation of civilization.
The quote is from Dan Morgan's "The Merchants of Grain". It's an older work on Cargill, Bunge, Dreyfus, and the history of grain and trading. He uses it as a chapter title, and attributes it to Lenin, if I recall correctly.
Indeed, let us compare Rome with our current society. I shall go for a zeroth order estimation of energy available per capita and what that meant to agricultural production, since it fits into the discussion.
The Roman empire had, at its height, probably some 65 million people. I quote
http://www.unrv.com/empire/roman-population.php
here... I can not guarantee that the source is any good, but the author who does not claim to be a professional scholar seems to have done a good job summerizing the data. And from what I remember about Roman history, the numbers are probably in the right ballpark. You can slap me for being too lazy to find professional sources, if you like.
The author elaborates:
"10 to 30% or 6 million to 19 million people lived in the cities, leaving the vast majority of some 46 to 59 million people to live in the country as independent and mostly tenant farmers"
Assuming that there was little farming done in the cities (they did have vegetable and herb gardens, of course), the Romans had managed to achieve a ratio of three to four famers per city-dweller, a remarkable achievement that would not be replicated for many centuries, essentially not until the the industrial revolution.
I will be conservative and assume a ratio of 4:1 between people who produce agricultural goods and consumers.
We know that besides manpower the Romans used horses, mules and oxen to pull carts, the plow etc.. So that probably multiplies the total manpower available to the agricultural part of the society by a considerable amount. Shall we say, fivefold? In other words, the effective manpower (and by that I mean raw mechanical power generation capcity) per Roman city dweller (the people most of us resemble most) was roughly 20:1.
Now, in other posts we did discuss that a single human being is not capable of producing more than 100W continuous for eight hours and probably no more than one third of that averaged over 24 hours. Effectively, this is hardly more than 20W on average over the population because children, old people and most women will fall far short of the peak power output of a well fed and thoroughly whipped slave or a farmer who ows taxes and rent and wants to keep his family happy. Also keep in mind that the Romans were kind of short people... :-)
Given all of these constraints, we can probably say that the average Roman city dweller had access to no more than 20*20W = 400W of average power generation capacity. And even that might be an overestimate, by far.
It follows that if we wanted to recreate a Roman citizen's lifestyle (which was quite good, actually), we need no more 400W per capita. That was before the invention of pesticides, high yield grain species and fertilizer, mind you. Obviously, we can do much better than they can!
So, now let me come to the cost end of the equation. If all I need is 400W for myself, how much will it cost me? Well, if I bought solar panels, it would be around 6 times $5/W or $12,000 amortized over 25 years. That is $480/year at current cost. Wind power probably comes in a little bit cheaper. Does anybody doubt that solar and wind will be cheaper by at least another factor of two or three by the time we actually ramp them up to the 400W/capita level? If not, we are now talking less than $250 per year in generation investment cost for ALL renewables.
What about driving, you will ask? Well, the Roman citizen usually either lived in the same house where he worked or could walk there. I don't remember Fiat being around at the time to produce cars.
And what about transportation? I believe our civil engineering skills are a lot better than those of the Romans and we could easily engineer a system of canals and railroads that can compete with their transportation cost. Can you imagine the increase of towing capacity for an oxen that pulls a railway car in comparison with with a Roman cart running on a road like this?
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/a/a5/250px-PompeiiSt...
Just kidding. But I guess you know what I am getting at...
"Given all of these constraints, we can probably say that the average Roman city dweller had access to no more than 20*20W = 400W of average power generation capacity. And even that might be an overestimate, by far."
O.K. taken as given...
"So, now let me come to the cost end of the equation. If all I need is 400W for myself, how much will it cost me? Well, if I bought solar panels, it would be around 6 times $5/W or $12,000 amortized over 25 years. That is $480/year at current cost. Wind power probably comes in a little bit cheaper. Does anybody doubt that solar and wind will be cheaper by at least another factor of two or three by the time we actually ramp them up to the 400W/capita level? If not, we are now talking less than $250 per year in generation investment cost for ALL renewables."
Sorry, you loose me here; PV panels or windmills, and their associated bits and pieces (Insulated copper wire, storage batteries, solid state inverters and charge controllers, etc etc) as well as the equipment they are capable of powering (electric motors, and other electrical devices) are the products of our culture, not that of ancient rome
For instance a PV factory needs ultra-pure chemicals, in quantity to do mass PV, clean rooms, exotic solvents, energy intensive metals like aluminium in quantity, skilled engineers and workers etc etc in other words it sits close to the top of our cultures "technology pyramid" the rest of which is all supported by energy intensive activity.
I'm not saying that 400W per capita is not do-able, or that it's not "enough" for a decent life, but i think you will be doing it with Roman level technology (i.e. wind water draft animals and human sweat), and getting Roman level products from it i.e. don't be expecting a gas turbine, telephone, or PV panel
"Sorry, you loose me here; PV panels or windmills, and their associated bits and pieces (Insulated copper wire, storage batteries, solid state inverters and charge controllers, etc etc) as well as the equipment they are capable of powering (electric motors, and other electrical devices) are the products of our culture, not that of ancient rome"
Both (thinfilm) solar panels and wind tubines have EROEIs on the order of 10:1 or better. They can easily replicate themselves in terms of energy cost. That includes the raw materials, which are not nearly as expensive as you seem to think they are. And none of the elements used in the production of these things are rare, either. We will most likely be running out of catalytic converters for our cars soon but we will never run out of silicon and glass substrates for PV.
"For instance a PV factory needs ultra-pure chemicals, in quantity to do mass PV, clean rooms, exotic solvents, energy intensive metals like aluminium in quantity, skilled engineers and workers etc etc in other words it sits close to the top of our cultures "technology pyramid" the rest of which is all supported by energy intensive activity."
And yet, none of these material need anything else for their production than energy from solar cells... and the correct recipe, of course. What seperates us from the Romans is that we have the recipes.
"I'm not saying that 400W per capita is not do-able, or that it's not "enough" for a decent life, but i think you will be doing it with Roman level technology (i.e. wind water draft animals and human sweat), and getting Roman level products from it i.e. don't be expecting a gas turbine, telephone, or PV panel"
I did not say 400W were enough to support our lifestyle. That's why I pointed out that the Romans did not live far from work and that their transportation networks were based on stone covered roads which require enormous amounts of energy to transport heavy loads in comparison with paved roads and especially rails. That is why rails were invented: they save energy! Trust me, OUR efficiency to get things done beats the crapp out of anything the Romans have ever been able to do. Yet, they lived and conquered the known world. We usually just bitch.
What I am saying is that the Romans can give us proof that one can live very well for 400W. Actually, if you do my analysis right, you will probably find that they had less than 200W because I might have overestimated the horses and oxen power by far.
The point is this: one slave equals 20W of power generation capacity. That is the same as one square meter of solar panels. If you really want to be serious about comparing Roman economy with ours on an energetic level, that is what you get. 1 slave = 1 medium size solar panel. I could have the equivalent of 25 Roman slaves work for me on my own roof and another 50 could be slaving away on my employer's roof for each and every one of our employees. A 5MW wind turbine equals 250,000 slaves peak. Six of them would equal the manpower of ALL of the slaves in Rome (the city) on average.
One can only imagine what the Romans would have done with this much power! One thing is for sure: they wouldn't have bitched about how little it is.
And I hope you realize that I am not the one who makes this comparison for real. I had six years of Latin in school, that is plenty to know that Roman society worked nothing like ours on any level. But many people on TOD like to bring up the past to convince themselves that mankind is on its way out because the black gold is running out. They like to compare us with the middle ages or antiquity, not realizing how ridiculous that comparison is. What I am trying to show is how ridiculous that comparison really turns out once you dress up the naked thought with numbers.
Great line, Infinite!
Your analysis might be aggressively reductionistic but your main point is very secure, in my view.
Unless we start think quantitatively, we risk getting the order of magnitudes all wrong and getting stuck in our fantasies and nightmares.
There are enough real things to worry about without those bugaboos.
I like your reasoning, IP, but there's one hitch...
Your analysis sort of assumes that the Roman citizen's way of life and standard of living was sustainable.
It wasn't. It's been demonstrated that the fall of the empire can be explained in terms of ecological degradation and running out of cheap energy (deforestation = lack of firewood...)
Its been asserted, but in no way demonstrated.
How ironic that Cuba is showing the rest of the world about low FF farming after decades of blockade...'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. Of course Chavez is helping out for now. However when global depletion hits 75% or so Cuba's detractors might wonder if it is a better place to live.
With reference to the above comment regarding a huge transnational bulk grain trading system existing pre oil.
You're absoloutely right!
Its unlikely we'll ever go back to sail, as the worlds bulk carrier fleet could probably run from CTL fuel derived from 1 medium sized coal mine and the total environmental impact would be minor especially compared to the net benefit to society. Which would be food security.
There is also another point worth noting.
The bulk of the farming industry works on price. Not organic standards.
In the future, if it turns out that it is cheaper to use biomass derived hydrogen to produce nitrate fertiliser to permit current high yeild practice farming then I'd expect it to continue this way.
Sure it'll be slighty more expensive than NG nitrate fertiliser, but it may provide essential volumes of necessary grains, and crucially may be cheaper than organic.
Also there is another point. If oil becomes scarce the absoloute last thing we stop using it for will be food production.
This means that pretty much every other use for hydrocarbons will have had to cease before it gets to the stage that the farming industry ceases to use it.
This is based simply on the need for food, which is completely essential.
Who was it that said a nation is just two square meals away from anarchy?
So ironically the very last thing I'm worried about is the impact of oil shortages on the farming industry. I'd imagine that the entire hydrocarbon requirement for the entire US farming industry could be provided from what remains of the old West Texas Fields. And its been 30 years since that went into terminal decline.
The UK's farming industry is a fraction of the size of the US's.
Several months ago Leanan and Odogragh, if I recall correctly, debated the portion of global natural gas supply that went to fertilizer. The conclusion was somewhere between 2-4%.
As you note, this is probably the highest priority use of natural gas. It does seem almost impossible for oil/gas supply to plummet far enough to seriously impact the availability of fertilizer, at least in our lifetimes.
Yes, we can continue to feed ourselves, but that is predicated on spending a much greater proportion of income on food, because agricultural costs will go through the roof. If gas-based fertilizers cost five times more, then it is important that the farmer be able to pass on the cost by getting a better price for his production. If not, farmers will not be able to afford the fertilizer, and productivity will drop, until a paradigm shift occurs to non-fossil-based fertilizers i.e. truly sustainable agriculture.
There is an interesting historical precedent : the exhaustion of the cheap guano-based phosphate fertilisers a couple of decades ago led to radical changes in agriculture, in Australia and New Zealand at least.
True. But does anyone have any information on how much of the final cost of most agriculture comes from the cost of fertilizer? If it is a small portion, then the impact on the end price would be reduced considerably.
I doubt that it is likely that fertilizer prices could go up five times, but am just guessing. From what i have read, there are other alternatives that would be cost effective far below that level.
It also seems that there are other ways to adjust. If fertilizer prices went up 10% and beef consumption went down 20%, would that be a net plus? Maybe vegatarianism is a better objective than organic farming.
So I see this:
as possible and maybe a huge threat to our future. But haven't seen adequate documentation to help me understand the probability of it happening. As noted below, I also haven't seen a good comparative assessment of the various options for coping with it.
My guess is that "organic beef" is far worse for the planet than conventional beans and rice.
Agriculture has so many hidden costs, no direct analysis could do justice. You could start by looking at the costs for fertilizer, but it can't end there. The whole issue gets drowned in semantics when we don't even have any definitive answer to what we should be eating in the first place. Every word carries different meaning, depending upon whether you talk to a scientist, an economist, or a philosopher.
There are contentions that "Sustainable Agriculture" is an Oxymoron:
http://patternliteracy.com/sustag.html
Unfortunately, most "scientific" study puts people at the center of the universe. Sure agriculture provides these huge surpluses of food ... for people. Fertilizers can be used to grow crops in sky scrapers under grow lights. However, these discussions forget that humanity isn't at the center of the universe and we can't stack people in iron towers out into space. At some point, we will depend on all those other species we crowded out and extinguished to make room for more food for humanity.
There is no perpetual motion to maintain any level of perpetual growth. We may say the growth slows, but how can we live without it? Our whole economic paradigm comes from these delusions of humanity's ascent, forgetting the cheap labor sources, required new land, and infinite energy and resources to keep the growth going. The whole cultural paradigm of "civilization" is flawed and inherently unfair to the majority of the human population.
These are the root issues and they can't be solved by humanity as the ultimate species:
Tilling - Short term fertility, requires fertilizer and crop rotation long
term. Since this is very energy intensive, this is where many
hidden costs can be found. There are many quotes pointing to
how much labor is eliminated, but there is no accounting done
tracing the factory jobs, oil refinery, mechanics, iron foundry,
ore mining, etc. There is no tractor without these other jobs,
so it isn't fair to merely count how many farmers the tractor
directly replaces. How much infrastructure is required to
support the use of tractors? Please include waste "disposal".
Fertilizers - All interfere with soil food web (creates unhealthy soil)
Nitrogen: Haber process (also used to pump the oil faster, called gas injection)
Excess nitrates wash into water supplies, cause algae blooms, and pigweed loves it
Phosphorus: What we do with twice as much radioactive waste
than we get useful phosphorus when mining? Google it.
Potassium: From dead lakes and former inland seas, or night soil and burning trees
Herbicides - Since most "weeds" are edible and nutritious to people,
I'll take this as food preference and crop rotation issues.
However, this also entails a discussion regarding ecological
succession and pioneer species.
Pesticides - Required after soil food web becomes unhealthy,
or file under Food == Population discussions (Malthus)
Continuing the use of these practices means humanity must perform the work previously done by the species he destroys by doing them in the first place. Object all you want, but that doesn't change the reality we face. Too bad this takes thousands of years to play out and so many demand "proof" of such outlandish allegations. If you need proof, try it for yourself. Since there are no "wild" places left, this is easier said than done. The proof is in the proverbial paper shredder.
How do we tell the global economy to stop growing? We don't need to. The only real questions are how many of us will there be? and how many can stay? In this context, conservation means there will be that many more people at the end of growth with the same or less that can stay. Fixing agriculture is tantamount to handing out band-aid's in a slaughter house.
Don't count on it.
Energy inputs to industrial agriculture are a lot more than
nitrogen fertilisers.
That's true, but the situation is very complex and without a quantitative look at it, we are all speculating.
The Economist magazine recently did a three page section on some of the fallacies in organic and localization concepts. They claim that it uses less energy to raise a sheep in New Zealand and ship it to England than it does to raise it in England. This is based on their assertion that the energy required to raise the same animal in England is a lot more energy intensive.
The same article criticized organic farming by saying that reduced yields required more land and so led to deforestation.
It has also been noted frequently that it takes more energy to move products the last few miles than to ship around the world.
I don't know if these assertions are right or wrong. However, there are interesting.
It does seem to me that if the organic movement wants to be able to get traction, it will have to document that what it is promoting is really better for people and the world.
Again, I am not taking a position, merely noting that much of the claims made here and elsewhere seem ideogical, rather than analytical.
This link leads to letters addressing the Economist article, including one by the Soil Association citing unspecified research that it claims thoroughly discredit the land use claim I mentioned above. It alos lead to the original article, which unfortunately is not free.
Does anyone know which studies they are referencing.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8515834
More generally, has anyone else rebutted the other claims made in the article. I am far from being expert in this area and don't have a dog in the fight. I did find the Economist article compelling both in its specific claims and, more importantly, in the broader approach to evaluating different method of producing food.
There was an article on Energy Bulletin that referenced various studies that show the yield of organic methods are a lot nearer industrial agriculture than some claim