Could Vermont feed itself?

…The mainstream food economy is heavily dependent on petroleum — used in conventional fertilizer and pesticides as well as for cultivation and transportation — which the world has in limited supply. It stands to reason that sooner or later, the world will run out of major new oil reserves to exploit; oil production will “peak” and start dropping. People in Vermont and across the country who subscribe to the “peak oil” notion are betting on “sooner,” and they’ve started giving serious thought to reorganizing their lives in the face of a huge, impending spike in the price of gasoline and fuel oil.

Nobody can say for sure when the “peak” will occur — by some accounts, it could be many decades away — but growing numbers of people in Vermont are getting ready for it anyway, and “eating local,” to the extent that it lessens fossil fuel use, is part of the new lifestyle they envision.


Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, is among those who see “peak oil” as “a reality,” although he admits to the usual uncertainty about when the peak will come. Meanwhile, oil infuses the nation’s food system.

“Corn,” Costanza remarked, “is made from oil.” If the price of oil skyrockets, conceivably, Iowa corn growers might lose their competitive advantage over Vermont corn growers.

“If the fuel cost tripled,” said Pete Johnson, who runs a Craftsbury vegetable farm, “all of a sudden, there would be no price differential between the greens I grow and what a local restaurant buys from California. It would be a whole new paradigm.”

Burlington Free Press