[deMolay]

Ashurbanipal that was brilliant. The high cost of food production will start the initial decline. That is already beginning. My family combined farms and ranches some 3,000 plus acres. It now costs about $500.00 dollars a day to fuel a monster tractor. The other problem is the weather seems to be changing from historical patterns slightly. Canada no longer is a storehouse of grains like in former times the landscape in the west was covered with grain elevators chock full of wheat. They are all gone. All it will take is one missed crop either by weather or too high of cost of production versus a return on investment and the farms will shut down. I have horses, I have wood, I grow my own food, and can do so on a small scale. The only future I see that will be viable for most will be the existance of the small crofter's of Scotland and Ireland. I switched from commercial beef to Highland beef. They are low cost converters of pasture and browse into high quality beef. I am starting next year to grow small crop of heirloom wheat and spelt. The old varities don't require pesticide or hericide, the new varieties were selectively bred for mass production harvesting by machines. The new varieties gave up the other qualities in order to be economical for the machines to harvest. It won't just be people starving that will be a concern people will also be freezing to death and people will become very violent, that is what worries me. We have bred generations of people without any moral code, who want instant grtification. When they are not instantly gratified they will become very nasty. Nothing can replace oil. If you want to see what will happen and what life will be like look at N. America circa 1900-1930. A mixture of animal and machine power. Wood heat, gardens, foraging, small farms. You will also see schools affected, all the schools are miles from the homes of the children. There is going to be a lot less tv watching and a lot more focus on survival of the fittest. The die off will be huge. Some of it from a lack of food and most of it from food and water shortages and wars to attain the last 2 items.

[holmes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'A')shurbanipal that was brilliant. The high cost of food production will start the initial decline. That is already beginning. My family combined farms and ranches some 3,000 plus acres. It now costs about $500.00 dollars a day to fuel a monster tractor. The other problem is the weather seems to be changing from historical patterns slightly. Canada no longer is a storehouse of grains like in former times the landscape in the west was covered with grain elevators chock full of wheat. They are all gone. All it will take is one missed crop either by weather or too high of cost of production versus a return on investment and the farms will shut down. I have horses, I have wood, I grow my own food, and can do so on a small scale. The only future I see that will be viable for most will be the existance of the small crofter's of Scotland and Ireland. I switched from commercial beef to Highland beef. They are low cost converters of pasture and browse into high quality beef. I am starting next year to grow small crop of heirloom wheat and spelt. The old varities don't require pesticide or hericide, the new varieties were selectively bred for mass production harvesting by machines. The new varieties gave up the other qualities in order to be economical for the machines to harvest. It won't just be people starving that will be a concern people will also be freezing to death and people will become very violent, that is what worries me. We have bred generations of people without any moral code, who want instant grtification. When they are not instantly gratified they will become very nasty. Nothing can replace oil. If you want to see what will happen and what life will be like look at N. America circa 1900-1930. A mixture of animal and machine power. Wood heat, gardens, foraging, small farms. You will also see schools affected, all the schools are miles from the homes of the children. There is going to be a lot less tv watching and a lot more focus on survival of the fittest. The die off will be huge. Some of it from a lack of food and most of it from food and water shortages and wars to attain the last 2 items.

[FrankRichards]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', '
')2) They did not possess the carrying capacity to transport foods in meaningful quantities quickly enough. Cities located on rivers did receive some foods from trading partners that were also on rivers. However, the majority of locales in the world were not so fortunate. The vast majority of food was distributed by an animal pulling a cart. Ships were mainly used to haul high-value, low weight items such as silk, spices, wine, gold, or slaves.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FrankRichards', ' ')Most workhorses get grain because hay requres more time -- time to eat, and time to chew cud. .

[deMolay]

Farming will become a catch 22 situation. Mr. So and So from Japan did remind everyone that if you put compost into the soil as nutrients and scatter seeds something will grow. Not exactly rocket science. North American farmers are the most efficient in the world, that is a fact. In fact they are so efficient that they produce such a great abunence that their crops are worth almost nothing. Wheat fetches what it did in the 1930's. This abundence is only because of the inputs from fossil fuels providing the energy, the fertilizer, the herbicides, and pesticides. Remove oil and the abundence is gone. Crop yields will drop to 15/20 bushell's to the acre. Their will be no more boatloads of cheap grains feeding the Chinese and African's. Mr. So and So from Japan while a dear old man, his method's will not feed millions like the USA and Canada does now. The farmers are at the breaking point, I have never seen so many farm sales and auction's in my lifetime. They are even trying to sell old equipment and vehicles along the roadsides. Their input costs are shutting them down. In order to make their payments they need quanity. 1930 prices for crops and 2/300,000 dollars for a tractor or a combine etc. Thousands of dollars a week for fertilizer, sprays and fuel. Can't be maintained for ever.

[deMolay]

Horses if you give them grain when they are not working it off, you will founder them. When it is 40 below 0F I give them each a double handful every couple of days to help keep them warm.

[holmes]

good to know we have 4 horses. It will be only mega ag corps in the end..... and folks like us and POPS, monte, ludi, etc. who visioned out and had the resources to build land base with an ecological paradigm. I am already lining up sales for my produce with high end restaurants. my next job. Also the isrealis are master farmers. They know how to grow organic with limited resources. perfected efficiency. Got a friend down in cottage grove, an isreali, man u should see his efficiency and setup. WOW!
they made the gaza strip fertile. masters!

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', ' ')Mr. So and So from Japan while a dear old man, his method's will not feed millions like the USA and Canada does now. The farmers are at the breaking point, I have never seen so many farm sales and auction's in my lifetime. They are even trying to sell old equipment and vehicles along the roadsides. Their input costs are shutting them down. In order to make their payments they need quanity. 1930 prices for crops and 2/300,000 dollars for a tractor or a combine etc. Thousands of dollars a week for fertilizer, sprays and fuel. Can't be maintained for ever.

[NugBlazer]

Awesome post, ashurbanipal!

One thing though: you say that food shortage killed off the Incas. I thought that they were wiped out by the Spanish Conquistadors. Weren't they?

[deMolay]

Ludi, don't be so touchy, the article I saw on him showed his compost thing happening, anyway by just scatterring seeds around were ever to make things look pretty kind of natural looking will not feed millions of people. If the billions of people who depend on oil to create food for them via Fuky's method's they would all starve. A few cobs of corn here, 3 cabbages behind the rockpile, 13 grapes and 4 cucumbers, gee don't they look pretty.

[Ebyss]

Fukuoka's yields equal and/or exceed those of any farm in Japan, big or small, organic or "normal". Your flippant and incorrect analysis of his method is most likely based on your bias regarding alternative methods, not actual fact. The data shows the yields are equal, yet the inputs are lower. Using phrases like "scattering seeds" and "natural looking" show that you don't understand the method he uses. Read the books if you want a clear picture of what he does and why he does it, not just one or two online articles.

Having said that, I agree with your analysis that big farms can't run without oil. I also agree that we can't feed the current world population without big farms.

[deMolay]

Very small scale and yes low inputs. The basis of feeding billions will never be done by Fukuoka's methods of scatterring seeds and random harvesting of whatever springs up wherever. It takes large scale factory type farming to feed billions of people anything less now will ensure dieback sooner. No oil no food. His methods would work to feed people on a very small family scale. Many other methods would do the same. How it would work outside of Japan's ideal gardening situation might be another story.

[stepka]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')is methods would work to feed people on a very small family scale.

[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', ' ')The basis of feeding billions will never be done by Fukuoka's methods of scatterring seeds and random harvesting of whatever springs up wherever.

[Seadragon]

Let me be the latest to compliment the original poster...

As I understand it, the oil we currently get out of the ground is an extraordinary source of energy, in that it has a high ROEI relative to most other sources. This has enabled us to do historically remarkable things with food production, transportation (anyone notice that pretty much all Internet commerce is based on cheap transport of goods?), manufacturing, but also population overshoot as a secondary effect. When oil is no longer so easy to get (thanks, Chevron), it isn't so much about how much it costs to fill up our vehicles, but every aspect of Western industrialized society we need to be concerned with, starting with how are we going to feed ourselves without oil-enabled Green Revolution chemicals, machinery, and the like.

[deMolay]

Yah come up and see me, big deal what I said is the truth, the N.American farmer is the most effiecient in the world. When the N.American farmer goes down millions will starve. The quaint Japanese gentleman's method's do work on a small scale, so do dozen's of other natural method's. You guys are chasing your tails. I don't see his name on bags of grain feeding the millions of starving all over the world. The American farmer will soon be out of business and so will millions of 3rd world people.

[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'Y')ah come up and see me, big deal what I said is the truth, the N.American farmer is the most effiecient in the world. When the N.American farmer goes down millions will starve. The quaint Japanese gentleman's method's do work on a small scale, so do dozen's of other natural method's. You guys are chasing your tails. I don't see his name on bags of grain feeding the millions of starving all over the world. The American farmer will soon be out of business and so will millions of 3rd world people.

[parainwater]

[merged topic by MQ]

For purposes of this topic I will assume a 2000 calorie per day diet averaged over all the people in the US.
children included.
2000 calories is equal to 8372000 joules per day, or 7932 BTU.
I have read on numerous ocasions that 10 units of energy are used for
every unit of food energy consumed. Based on that, 79320 BTU are
utilized on average per person each day. If we assume there are
124000 BTU of sensible energy in each gallon gasoline then that
works out to .64 gallons of gasoline equivalent per person per day. Multiply that
by a nominal 300 hundred million people in the US and we get
191900000 gallons of gasoline equivalent per day. If we assume
there are 16 gallons of gasoline per barrel of oil and a barrel is
equivalent to 42 US gallons (I think) then 12 million barrels of
oil equivalent are used everday to feed us. Of course some of that
energy comes from natural gas but this gives you an idea of our
metabolic energy requirements everyday. FYI

[foodnotlawns]

I just finished One Straw Revolution and I was very impressed. he gets 1100 pounds of grain out of a quarter of an acre!

He doesn't use the term "volunteers" but he mentions taht encouraging "wild vegetables" works really well. Here in the US we call those "volunteers" and I've noticed that volunteers are the hardiest vegetable plants.

A volunteer is when an annual seed manages to survive the winter and reseed the following spring.

In One Straw he didn't say he used chemical fertilizers. He said he uses poultry manure on top of straw and other vegetative matter.

It was especially impressive how he turned a hard clay hillside into a fertile orange orchard.

There is a very blunt chapter in One Straw "Commercial Farming Will Fail." He tells the small farmer to not seek after money profits, but focus on feeding his own family. That was a hard pill to swallow for me. I farm in teh hope of escaping Office Torture Hell, but he's basically saying, "Don't quit your day job, kid."

It's well worth the read. One last thought -- if you are familiar with Buddhist thinking, you'll have a pleasant surprise from reading One Straw Revolution.

[PeakyKeen]

Hmmm...I am currently a Heinberg fan and dissent will not be tolerated! Just joking...well sort of.

Just because Heinberg may be wary of relying primarily on nuclear energy in the future, doesn't mean he's a complete crackpot and all of his wisdom is rubbish. Nuclear energy is not inherently "clean" and "safe" and I'm skeptical that safety standards would be of primary concern when the peak oil sh*t hits the fan. It will be a key player in a post-peak oil world but I'm not ready to list it as my first option either at this point.

Nuclear plants produce approximately 8% of the U.S. energy demand. Given our country's previous track record and also basic human nature, we will not respond to the peak oil crisis until gas/oil prices have already risen to high level. The manufacturing that goes into producing nuclear plants requires oil inputs, and by the time America gets a clue, the costs of constructing these plants will be much higher and it begs the question whether the ventures will even be economically feasible? Companies aren't going to invest in a project that's not profitable and the government will be bankrupt by that point...but that's a totally different subject.

Heinberg does not think that oil will run out, nor do I. I believe he makes a point to say in the Party's Over that on average, the first half of the world's reserves, the oil that is cheapest and easiest to obtain will have been pumped, and the type that harder to get out and will yield diminishing returns due is it's inferior quality. Maybe the point of contention is that world demand outstripping the supply isn't such a big deal? Or maybe the point of contention is the idea that our economy can handle expensive oil regardless of the price per barrel? All I can say to that is we couldn't handle price spikes in 1973, we can't price spikes after major natural disasters, heck we can't even handle slight price increases at the pump, when we haven't even felt the effect in the prices of consumer goods we buy every day! Somehow I think terms "peak oil crisis" and "no big deal" will continue to remain mutually exclusive in my head.

Nuclear power (even combined with wind power) will not be able to remotely compare to or provide all of the crap we get from oil and how we live our lives. There will be indeed be some energy rationing going on, but it won't be Sally gets 10 watts on Sunday, Peter gets 10 watts on Wednesday, and Dora gets 10 watts on Friday. It'll be more like the military gets 8,000 watts to fight resource wars, agricultural farmlands come next so the majority of Americans don't starve, hospitals and emergency services get 1,000, the local police force comes next, waste and water treatment plants come next, and so on and so forth. And that's an idealic allocation of limited resources based on what's fair to society as a whole. If pre-peak oil politics have given us any kind of indication of what's to come, those without money and political clout are going to get screwed in this whole rationing process.

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http://kicktheoilhabit.blogspot.com/