Peak Oil and Hunger

Diesel farming feeds the world. But what happens if the fuel becomes too expensive for the farmers?

Listen in to WYPR 88.1 FM public radio in Baltimore tomorrow morning (Wednesday, July 23) at 9:35 a.m. to hear my most recent “Environment in Focus” program. If you’re not next to your radio, or you miss the segment, you can listen to a podcast on the WYPR web site.

Tomorrow’s piece is about “peak oil” and world hunger. Back in the 1950’s, Shell Oil’s top petroleum geologist, M. King Hubbert, discovered that all oil production follows a bell curve, with a rising amount of new discovery of oil fields, a peak and then an inevitable decline. He correctly predicted years in advance that America’s lower 48 states, then the world’s largest producer of oil, would pass its peak production in 1970. And since then, 33 of the world’s 48 largest producers of oil have also passed their peak, including perhaps Saudi Arabia. That means production will start slowly declining (some say the world passed its peak in 2005, others say 2015). Meanwhile, the world’s population continues to grow — and developing nations like China and India are buying more cars and trying to live American lifestyles.

The result of falling production and soaring demand will be continually soaring gasoline and diesel prices, according to researchers including Dr. Brian Schwartz and Dr. Cindy Parker of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Because so much of the world’s food production is dependent on petroleum, this price acceleration could spark a collapse of our agricultural system — and the starvation of millions of people, Schwartz and Parker warn. The professors say governments need to start planning for declining oil production as a possible public health and environmental crisis, just as they prepare for other worst-case scenarios like nuclear war and epidemics.

In the piece, I also interview a Maryland farmer about his operation’s dependence on oil. We discuss how many manual laborers it would take to work his farm (hundreds) if he didn’t have diesel-powered tractors and combines.

Baltimore Sun