[Seeker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('retiredguy', 'S')eeker,

Couldn't agree with you more; your assessment is totally correct. The challenge is how to build these eco-communties. The vast majority of Westerners are not ready to make this committment and I suspect that a great many posters here aren't ready to do that either.

Of those that might be interested, many probably don't have the skills needed to build such a community.

I saw attempts at this in the 60s, but very few of these communities exist today. Takes a lot of dedication and strong leadership.

Do you have a plan?

[Ghog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')o full-on plan yet, but that's to be expected. You can't really have central planning for a community, that wouldn't be very conducive to the development of the community. I don't want it to replicate the hierarchical scheme of civilization (at all), and so I'm not going to be any sort of self-proclaimed leader.

Shared vision is important, community is important, motivation and commitment are important. Leaders will show up at the right time if these things are in place, but I think they might be a by-product of the others, so I don't want to emphasize leadership above the others.

For now I'm just trying to learn some of the skills needed to build and maintain a self-sufficient egalitarian community... which is an entirely different way of life, so I imagine it could take a while. Despite the idea that this life is supposedly "utopian", it still takes a lot of hard work to get there.

[Seeker]

Thanks Ghog. Good stuff.

[eric_b]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Seeker', '
')The mega-farms are going to be the first to go. Centralized .. centers of production are exactly that. Centers. They depend on inputs from all over the world... on pesticides, on the transportation systems, on distant processing and packaging plants, on oil-powered machinery manufactured hundreds or thousands of miles away (and the machinery itself requires huge amounts of specialization and centralized production). IMO, we're not going to be able to support this level of complexity and interdependence any more. Break one link in the chain, and we're seeing some major problems. Peak Oil has the potential to not just break one link in the chain, but many or most. These mega-farms you speak of are the most highly dependent on these complex and unsustainable systems, and they will be the first to go.

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Seeker', '
')
The mega-farms are going to be the first to go. Centralized .. centers of production are exactly that. Centers. They depend on inputs from all over the world... on pesticides, on the transportation systems, on distant processing and packaging plants, on oil-powered machinery manufactured hundreds or thousands of miles away (and the machinery itself requires huge amounts of specialization and centralized production). IMO, we're not going to be able to support this level of complexity and interdependence any more. Break one link in the chain, and we're seeing some major problems. Peak Oil has the potential to not just break one link in the chain, but many or most. These mega-farms you speak of are the most highly dependent on these complex and unsustainable systems, and they will be the first to go.

This is just common sense, really. Cheap oil allowed centralization and specialization beyond imagination, and so when the end of cheap oil puts shackles on our necessarily constantly expanding economy, we're going to be running that race in reverse. (Except probably a lot faster.)

Those who are independent of this collapse, separate from it, will have the best chance of survival. Those who are utterly dependent on the current systems will have the hardest time staying afloat.

[Ludi]

When I lived in the city, no one ever simply provided me with food, water, shelter, etc. I feel much more secure in the country surrounded by these necessities, which no one has to bring to me, on rail or any other way.

[Seeker]

:D It's amusing to me that you think enough food is going to be in the cities come post-peak. Every person is going to be in the city, scrounging around for food, because they are completely dependent on the system. The high population density of these areas combined with the complexity and difficulties of centralization and distribution of resources makes them a prime target for collapse. The number of inputs needed to keep these systems alive is FAR less than the number of inputs those who are living relatively self-sufficiently will need.

Let's use your analogy -- The Titanic (industrial civilization) has run into an iceberg. Do you stay on the ship, hoping that they'll close off enough chambers and that the massive ship will be able to stay afloat? (Staying in the cities that are the very centers of industrial civilization.) Or do you get on one of the few life rafts available, and jump ship? (Becoming independent of the system.)

The thing you seem to be leaving out of your (foolishly confident) perspective is that there are thousands upon thousands of people and communities that are already self-sufficient (or close to it) that don't need that resource distribution and allocation. The resources that you will be depending on are dependent on the complex systems that are the most vulnerable.

That agribusinesses are billion dollar industries is not a question. But what happens when the petrodollar goes bankrupt, when these businesses stop getting huge subsidies from the government, when transportation and production becomes unstable and scarce? If you think you'll be able to depend on these supporting you regularly and continuously for the rest of your life, I think you're in for a complete surprise.

[retiredguy]

I would tend to agree with Novus. During the initial decline, the federal government will still be around. Their initial response will be to set up distribution centers in the populated urban areas. Why? Because that is where the riots will begin. Massive, uncontolled riots in the urban centers would cripple the country and bring down the government. Plus, the urban centers are already served by mass transit systems.

The people who are going to be really hurting are the suburbanites. Infrastructure in these areas will not be maintained due to cost.

If you live in a rural area that is not served by rail, you had better be self-sufficient or close to a distribution center. And you had better hope that your friends and relatives don't decide to come to see you for lengthy visits.

However, I don't think all urban centers will be good places to be. Those that are located in environments with sufficient natural resources (water, good soil, favorable climate) will be preserved. Those centers located in deserts (LA, Phoenix, etc.) will have to be emptied out. The support costs will be too high.

If the collapse is quick and the government collapses, then the urban centers will indeed be the last places one would want to be. But I believe that our federal government will grow more powerful, not less, in the face of PO.

[Pops]

It really amazes me how myopic people can be in defending their particular version of doom.

Novus is right on one point – there will be fuel and fertilizer for years into the future.

Does that mean the powerful corporations will necessarily have priority? It does if they have the money – anyone with money will be able to purchase fuel.

So where does one imagine their money will come from? Well if mega-farms are in the business of selling food, obviously the money will come from the people purchasing the food.

Now look at some pictures from the depression. Those skinny, unemployed people standing in soup lines didn’t have any money. Oh there was food, a huge surplus in fact, but they couldn’t afford to buy it.

Today people all over the world starve while warehouses sit full of food. Why is that?
They haven’t the ability to pay.


So some unknown distance in the future, if high energy prices cause widespread unemployment and large increases in the cost of food, what is going to magically change making food free of charge to those in the city?

Will the government tax those still employed to the point of making employment a losing proposition? Print up the greenbacks forever? Borrow ever more from the bank of Asia? Ship those in the soup line to the mega-farms to hoe weeds? Collectivize the entire country? All the above?

My crystal ball is in the shop so I can only speculate. Certainly there isn't one right plan for everyone, but the end of cheap energy is, as that description implicitly states, all about money.

Since I’m too old to join the military and don’t have any skills that are absolutely essential hence guaranteeing an income, my best bet seems to be to make some food - I can’t do that in town.

Bottom line rule-of-thumb for me:
Regardless of location, if you can’t make food, better be sure you can make money.

[Ghog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince I’m too old to join the military and don’t have any skills that are absolutely essential hence guaranteeing an income, my best bet seems to be to make some food - I can’t do that in town.

Bottom line rule-of-thumb for me:
Regardless of location, if you can’t make food, better be sure you can make money.

[retiredguy]

Time for a reality check here. I have been growing some of my own food for thirty years. Could I be totally self-sufficient? No, I currently don't have enough land to cultivate. Further, expecting everyone to be able to produce most of their own food post PO is a fantasy. There will be a division of labor just as there is now just as there was 150 years ago.

I would expect that locally grown food would be marketed to townfolk and exchanged for other goods just as it was in the past. I have some experience with this since I grew up in a small town in a very rural, agricultural area. Big towns in my county had a thousand inhabitants.

The point about having some marketable skills, is a good one, though. Ya gotta trade something for food.

[Seeker]

Time for a reality check: 6.5 billion people are not going to be able to continue to exist in this world. Status quo is going to change, this is not a question.

I strongly suggest that the change includes decentralization and increasing local food production. For those who have the resources to do so, living in a self-sufficient community (one that engages in trade but is not required to do so for survival) is perhaps the best way to survive the transition. For those who do not have the resources to do this, I suggest you obtain them somehow. You're not going to have a lot of competition, as most people don't have a vision anywhere remotely similar to this. So, I don't expect everyone (or even a small percentage) to produce their own food. Those aware of Peak Oil constitute a tiny minority, at the moment, and those who are aware and who seek to become self-sufficient are an even smaller minority.

Also, I don't see how you can say that people will have difficulty producing food, but then expect these same people to have enough food left over to trade with people in the city/town. How does that make any kind of sense?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Seeker', '
')Also, I don't see how you can say that people will have difficulty producing food, but then expect these same people to have enough food left over to trade with people in the city/town. How does that make any kind of sense?

[Seeker]

Out of context, you're absolutely right. But my point was a counter-point to his idea that those seeking to become self-sufficient will have a hard time doing so.

Somehow, the idea that people will have a hard time producing enough food juxtaposed with the expectation that there will be surplus food to trade just seemed silly to me. That's the idea I was trying to counter.

[Ludi]

You can find information about growing complete vegan diets in the Ecology Action papers "One Mexican Diet" and "One Kenyan Diet" available from Bountiful Gardens online catalog. These diets supply all calories and nutrients except adequate iodine and B12, which would need to be obtained from meat raised, hunted, or traded.

[Pops]

I guess we are still talking around the ‘self’ part of self-sufficiency on this thread too Seeker.

My take on guy’s remark is that it is extremely hard to not need anything from outside your little farm, community or town. But the big plan has been in place for millennia – best summed up by the big haired painter guy whose momma told him, “give enough people what they want and you can have what you want.” or words to that effect.

Independence from everyone is a pretty silly objective; the problem isn’t ‘everyone’ - the problem is the system that relies on cheap energy. That’s what folks who want to change lanes should try to separate themselves from IMO.

‘Guy said, “exchanged for other goods just as it was in the past.” ‘Goods’ produced by others in a similarly sustainable way is how I read it – not goods mass-produced via cheap energy.

[Novus]

The point I am trying to make here is that we already have enough farms to feed everyone. Why are you so insistant that we need to fight the big farms? The big farms can grow a 100 times more food than the independent farmer because they can trade for farm equipment, fuel, and fertlizer with cities who own the oil wells and factories. This is why there are huge food surplusses in the West where farmers trade and chronic famine where the farmers only subsist off the land with no trade.

There is a big contradiction in the beleif systems of many posters on this board. On one hand we have posters saying the third world will get hit the hardest by peak oil because they will be too poor to buy the oil they need to survive. But these same posters seem to think they are going to survive by subsisting like third world farmers. So the third world is going to die because they will be forced to trade less but they are going to live by trading less. Those two ideas don't square together.

So which is it? Is peak oil just a western problem where trade has made people too disconnected from the land or is the whole world facing an impending die off?

Peak Oil is not going to be like the great depression or any other event in living memory. The closest thing we can compare this to is the 30 year long collapse of USSR. In 1960 the USSR was equal to the US but by 1990 the USSR was largely a third world country. The greatest hardships of this collapse were in the countryside where there was lawlessness and scattered outbreaks of famine. This was not the case with the Rusian cities where interdependence allowed the people to survive the adversity of collapse. Also look at North Korea a country in the grips of a major famine. The starvation is the worst in the country side where the population is reduced to eating grass yet somehow there is still food in the city of Pyongyang.

When The Roman Empire fell again it was the countryside that fell into the Chaos of the dark ages centuries before the great cities fell. The same pattern can be seem in the collapse of the Mayan civilization and collapse of ancient Sumeria. The fertile cresant of Sumeria faced a very important resource depletion: Peak Soil. The so called fertile cresent is a desert today. Peak Soil is major problem for Farmers today in every part of the world and will play at least as important role in the die-off as peak oil.

[Pops]

Novus, I’m not sure you were directing those questions to me but if you were, then I guess I made all the points I could regarding big farms / little people in the thread about money.

Yes there will be big farms and hopefully little ones too, the question is; will you still be employed and able to afford the food.

If you are that confident in continuing your income; good for you!

I’m not.

[Novus]

Reguarding money I do not know what my income will be in the future. This is why I beleive staying out of debt and saving money is more important than playing farmer. I have paid off all my debts, have no car, and am saving money for a time when my income will be less. Right now I live with two other working adults. If my income goes down I will bring in another roomate. It will be hell but I figure I could fit 10 people in my place if I had to.

I was reading an article about an African refugee who came to America and was shown what life was like in the Suburbs. He asked his host what that other building on his property was for. It was a detached garage he used for storage. The African relpied that in his country a whole other family or TWO would be living in building like that. If you go to Africa you will see massive poverty but never starvation in the cities the starving are deep in the countryside. One man alone is weak and vulnerable to adversity of all kinds but together people can through interdependance come to function as one strong unit. American's for the most part do not live like that. But post peak they will. There will be no other choice.

[Ludi]

Novus, I'm losing track of your argument. Are you saying people can't be food self-sufficient because they simply can't, that is - it's impossible to grow one's own food? Or are you saying they can't be food self-sufficient because someone will prevent them from growing their own food? Or are you saying someone will come and take their food?

Thanks for clarifying, if you would.