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Page added on October 13, 2013
Be skeptical of ‘peak ag’
A few years ago, midway through the growing season, I asked a veteran farmer about his crops. He said his immediate area was dry and some of his fields were deteriorating.
Then he shrugged and said, “Yeah, there are challenges. But this is a great time to be farming. The tools we have today are amazing, and they keep getting better.”
I think of that whenever I read about “peak agriculture.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s the belief that, sooner or later, world food production will reach a plateau and then decline permanently. Advocates of the concept say looming water and fuel shortages, combined with soil mismanagement, will cripple the world’s ability to produce food.
Think of peak ag as a cousin to “peak oil,” the belief that, sooner or later, world petroleum extraction will reach a peak and then decline.
I’m not a geologist or petroleum engineer, but I’m skeptical that peak oil will occur anytime soon. Sure, the world’s oil supply is finite; we learn that in elementary school. Someday, inevitably, world oil production will fall. But will that day come in 10 years, 50 years or 200 years?
It’s encouraging that oil once deemed inaccessible or uneconomical is being tapped, thanks to technological advances. North Dakota’s Bakken formation is a perfect example.
Legitimate concern, but …
I’m not an agronomist, either, but I’m also skeptical that peak ag will occur anytime soon.
Sure, there are major, legitimate concerns about water supplies worldwide. Some smart people even say fresh water is a bigger concern globally than oil. But plant breeders are coming up with new varieties that require less water, and technological advances are reducing the amount of water used in irrigation.
Fuel use in agriculture is another concern, especially if you believe in peak oil. Even if you’re skeptical of peak oil, as I am, you’ll agree that ag producers should reduce fuel consumption, if only to cut expenses. In fact, most Upper Midwest farmers are using less fuel, in large part because they’re reducing the number of times they run equipment over a field during the growing season.
Petroleum also is used in fertilizer and pesticide, and peak oil would threaten that use. Again, the question is whether peak oil is likely anytime soon.
Threats to soil health might be the biggest concern in world food production. Soil is fragile and irreplaceable; it needs to be treated with care and respect.
I can’t speak for farmers elsewhere in the world, but most producers in the Upper Midwest are determined to do the right thing with soil health.
Sadly, though, it’s politically incorrect in mainstream ag circles to say so publicly, there are exceptions. The chief culprits are farmers who pay high cash rent for land, then skimp on good stewardship practices to save a few bucks. I’m not sure what the solution is; public shaming of the malefactors, like the Puritans used to do, might be worth a try.
Peak ag probably sounds plausible to a lot of people. But I suspect it shortchanges the contributions of ever-improving technology. True, technology often carries a downside that’s not immediately apparent. Glyophsate-resistant weeds are a powerful example of that.
Whatever its downside, however, technology provides farmers with great tools. As long as the tools keep improving — and farmers continue to make use of them — we can hold peak ag at bay.
10 Comments on "Be skeptical of ‘peak ag’"
action on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 12:47 pm
Wrong, and the only example I need to back this is, Dust Bowl. Current methods of farming are blundering and moronic, wasteful and depleting. Stop writing you fat idiot.
GregT on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 2:19 pm
Modern industrial agricultural practices, just like modern industrial society and all of it’s wonderful technologies, are completely reliant on one key resource, oil.
It is ironic, that even with oil, modern industrial Ag still relies on climatic stability, the very thing that fossil fuels are threatening to take away.
LT on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 3:38 pm
Climatic stability is the essential condition Mother Nature made for human beings to live.
I have noticed that rain has become less frequent. Drought becomes more frequent and longer in duration. It has happened in china, India, and the US (and other places on earth as well).
That is the trend and will not be reversible.
J-Gav on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 4:39 pm
Listen to the Lester Brown interview on this website and you’ll come away with a somewhat different view of the subject …
DMyers on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 6:41 pm
Subtitle: We Will Beat the Limits Again
The hopeful message once again, technology to the rescue (no diminishing returns). Genetic modification will save us from the threat of water drinking organisms. I love that one. We’re saved! I bet they’ll come up with plants that need little water and cattle, as well.
Consider that in light of the author’s own caveat: “True, technology often carries a downside that’s not immediately apparent.” Exactly! That’s what we’re beginning to face now. Longer term consequences are becoming apparent. We are discovering, for example that GMOs may lack nutritional components and contain an unbalanced assay of molecular composition that damages normal processes in the consuming organism (e.g. humans).
Clearly, climatic stability is critical to human agriculture. That friendly stability is attributable, in part, to our contemporaneity with an interglacial period. Man may be the measure of all things, but man is not, in the same respect, the determinant. Whether because or in spite of human presence, climatic changes will reduce dramatically the portion of Earth available for growing edible plants.
Agriculture will peak, but the decline phase may last only a hundred thousand years or so.
mike on Sun, 13th Oct 2013 9:32 pm
God I love people like this, so unstably upbeat about everything!
FLOOD INCOMING!! no worries we’ll plant extra water caltrop
HURRICANE INCOMINE!! no worries we’ll have extra wind energy
ASTEROID INCOMING!! no worries we’ll attach the earth to it and ride off to a new universe
You have to give people like this credit for being so consistently insanely upbeat in the face of collapse.
Ghung on Mon, 14th Oct 2013 12:40 am
The advanced agricultural system being discussed doesn’t provide its own supply chain, nor is it fire-walled off from the larger systems required to accomplish the levels of production suggested.
While the author may not acknowledge peak oil, he can’t avoid the fact that the cost of oil based products is eating a larger piece of our economic pie, largely fueled by credit. Agriculture, today, is utterly reliant upon credit. So climate, technology, oil, and bio-change aren’t agriculture’s only limits/vulnerabilities. A lot of things have to go right to feed 7 billion+ humans.
Maybe the author thinks those combines build themselves, or ignores that they don’t.
rollin on Mon, 14th Oct 2013 1:13 am
The soil is dead, without constant external fertilizer input nothing would grow on most large farms.
PO seems to be putting up a lot of anti-peak resource articles lately. Is this where the peak oil community is headed?
Is the peak oil community burying itself by spreading cornucopian fertilizer over itself?
BillT on Mon, 14th Oct 2013 1:16 am
Denial has no limits…
Ghung on Mon, 14th Oct 2013 2:25 am
@rollin –“Is the peak oil community burying itself by spreading cornucopian fertilizer over itself?”
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, huh?
The whole point of presenting these ideas is to challenge these ideas.