The coming black plague?

Oil fuels America’s agricultural might. Soon, experts fear, it could plunge the world into a food crisis.

…The mechanized “Green Revolution” the family joined after World War II created an explosion in food productivity that allowed global populations to multiply. But it also forged a dependence on oil that could now lead to a food crisis, a small but growing number of scholars and activists warn.

Dr. Brian Schwartz, co-director of the program on global sustainability and health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said governments should start planning for a worst-case scenario, with soaring oil prices disrupting food supplies, just as they plan for other possibilities like nuclear war and bioterrorism.


“We have an industrial model of food production that requires intense amounts of fossil fuels,” Schwartz said. “Food is going to be a huge problem for us.”

Dale Allen Pfeiffer, author of the recent book Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture, goes even further in his warnings. With global oil production soon sliding into decline, fuel prices might continue to skyrocket until the world’s food system collapses, causing starvation, he wrote.

“Growing evidence indicates that world [oil and gas] production will peak around 2010, followed by an irreversible decline. The impact on our agricultural system could be catastrophic,” he wrote. “Hunger could become commonplace in every corner of the world, including your own neighborhood.”

Baltimore Sun