Post-peak mechanized agriculture: the RAMSES project

Both in the capitalist and in the socialist world, tractors have been seen as machines of freedom, symbols of progress and modernization. Indeed, mechanized agriculture has been a worldwide revolution that has freed a large part of humankind from the Biblical curse of hard work. However, with the reserves of fossil fuels being slowly depleted, can we keep tractors running? The RAMSES project proposes an answer: a new model of agricultural mechanization based on battery powered vehicles and renewable energy sources.
Today, agriculture in the industrialized world is a task for a minuscule fraction of the workforce; people whose job is to operate heavy machinery powered by fossil fuels. But, with peak oil arriving, or perhaps already arrived, we are going to see big changes. In itself, mechanization does not affect agricultural yields, but higher costs of fossil fuels are already affecting food prices. And, without power from mechanical engines, farming would have to go back to the old ways; relying again on human and animal muscles. Richard Heinberg has spoken of the need of “50 million farmers” for agriculture in the USA. But that would imply transforming overweight and under-excercised office workers into the kind of lean and fit peasants who are the typical workforce of countries where the industrial revolution has not arrived yet. It won’t be easy, especially if we were forced to do it in a short time.

The Oil Drum