At some point in the future, humanity will have to produce its food without the help of fossil fuels and without destroying the soil. In a well-researched and succinct new essay, "What will we eat as the oil runs out?", Richard Heinberg analyzes the main problems with the global agricultural system, and proposes a solution: a global organic food system.
Heinberg lays out four major dilemmas of the current system:
The direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs ... the increased demand for biofuels ... the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions...[and] the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.
He then goes into more detail concerning these four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse, and shows how, even now, these crises are leading to a decrease in global food production.
Later in this post I will propose a thought experiment solution, based on Heinberg's solution of a fossil fuel-free agriculture:
The idea is not new. The aim of substantially or entirely removing fossil fuels from agriculture is implicit in organic farming in all its various forms and permutations - including ecological agriculture, Biodynamics, Permaculture, Biointensive farming, and Natural Farming. All also have in common a prescription for the reduction or elimination of tillage, and the reduction or elimination of reliance on mechanized farm equipment. Nearly all of these systems rely on increased amounts of human labor, and on greater application of place-specific knowledge of soils, microorganisms, weather, water, and interactions between plants, animals, and humans.
In order to make the agricultural system fossil fuel-free, the transportation of food will have to be minimized; in other words, agriculture will need to be relocalized. Let's look at the United States; could organic, local farming feed everybody? I thought that as a first approximation of an answer to this problem, I would make a set of very simplified assumptions:
First, assume that 80 percent of the population lives in a city the size of New York City. New York City covers 786 square kilometers of land (300 square miles), and contains 8.2 million people. Thirty New York Cities would hold 246 million people, and cover only 3/10 of 1 percent of the 7,900,000 square kilometers of the lower 48 states! (All data from wikipedia.) Of course, there would be no suburbs ... but as I said, this is a first approximation.
Assumption number two: all farming acreage would exist in a belt around each "New York City." And how much land would this require? According to John Jeavons, inventor of the Biointensive farming system, the average American currently needs at least 15,000 square feet for food production. Jeavons claims that a vegetarian diet with vegetable sources of protein can be produced for one person using biointensive techniques on 4,000 square feet. Let's assume, however, that we will add an extra 2,000 square feet to allow for some fish and to raise some chickens, and that we will even make room for red meat lovers by letting the prairie reassert itself and culling a certain sustainable percentage from the millions of bison that again roam the plains.
So we can envision each NYC-type city being surrounded by 8 million times 6,000 square feet, or 48 billion square feet of farmland, or 1,722 square miles, in other words: about 6 times the area of the 300 square miles of the city. So only about 2 percent of the land area of the continental U.S., theoretically, could feed and house the American population.
The third assumption of my primitive model is that the remaining 20 percent of the population could produce all the food grown in the farming belts around each city. In another essay, Heinberg estimated that a farming population of about 50 million people might be necessary in a fossil fuel-free future; 20 percent of 300 million is 60 million people.
Of course, we could loosen these assumptions to make room for cities and towns that were smaller than New York City (not that I wouldn't mind, but I think many others would). Or think of it this way; perhaps this thought experiment can serve as a small effort to fulfill one of Heinberg's suggestions:
1. The various strands of the organic movement must come together so that they can speak to national and international policy makers with a unified voice.
2. The leaders of this newly unified organic movement must produce a coherent plan for a global transition to a post-fossil-fuel food system.
Any suggestions?
Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?
GoodGuide scanner makes healthy food shopping point and click
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Comments
View as Flat
elbarto Posted 8:44 am
06 Dec 2007
In many cities, enough rainwater could be collected from suburban roofs to provide water for crop growing / drinking. And of course the same roofs would generate power and heat water.
Waste water would be recycled on site and treated to become fertilizer.
In many cases, cities and urban sprawl is built over what would be the most productive farmland. Why not live amoungst it?
For everything that is bad in Cuba, they are already doing what I mentioned: http://bss.sfsu.edu/raquelrp/pub/2000_aug_pub.html
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 9:02 am
06 Dec 2007
I love the concept and I grow tomatoes, chilies, onions, and stuff like that all the time, turned by shovel and pitchfork and using horseshit and seaweed for fertilizer. Even lacking a bunch of space, I grow stuff on the patio too. Me and the possums know each other VERY well.
That reminds me of a story I saw in NY Times about the heirloom gardens of Italy, where almost every place outside the cities had a garden. The oldtimers are dying off now and only a few garden plots remain, with scientists begging for seeds such as green tomatoes shaped like pears when fully ripe, and peppers that look like red bananas. The scientists speculate that such heirloom varieties would be more hearty than today's hybrids because they were farmed for centuries.
The only thing I can think of as a drawback is more suburban sprawl, as more people want an acre of house and an acre of garden. It's expensive. And Lord knows, unless you have very good soil already, it takes 2-3 years of staying with it to get good results. /sam
Onward through the fog
Permalink
elbarto Posted 9:34 am
06 Dec 2007
This is all about producing an entire families fruit and vegetables from a single back yard plot using heirloom varieties and biodynamic methods.
For all our technological advances it may be that we need to return ox driven ag. Unless we develop a tractor that can feed itself on grass, produce great fertiliser, grow new offspring and be eaten and turned into clothing at the end of it's life.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 9:43 am
06 Dec 2007
But that begs the question (and I have plenty, not being a farmer but a concrete-addicted city boy), can you grow enough food to feed everybody without tractors/animals, even using biointensive/permaculture techniques?
Permalink
elbarto Posted 10:22 am
06 Dec 2007
For urban agriculture to work my guess is that it would require between one in four and one in ten people to be farmers. Those people not farming would directly support the farmer to produce their food and perhaps devote a portion of their suburban land.
We might still need some broadscale ag with mechanisation for grain production. This could be done more or less the convential way, powering small tractors with fuel produced only from ag waste or maybe compressed air generated by wind power??
Moving fruit and veg production into suburban areas would then contract grain production to higher yeilding land clsoer to cities so that less fuel per tonne of grain would be required.
For those in high rise cities like NY there are the collective farms where you devote two weeks a year of your time to working on a farm that supports a few thousand people. You get your everyday urban life, but also return to nature once a year to remember where food comes from!
The sad thing is that all of this is possible will only a tiny dose of social collectivism and spending a slightly higher proportion of income on food. It may turn out that urbanites have become too lazy to bother averting total ecosystem failure
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 11:13 am
06 Dec 2007
Of course that's just veggies. Grains are a big part of the picture and require those bigger plots envisioned.
Heinberg I think is right. We're going to need a lot more hands on the land. It's a rewarding lifestyle, but not for everyone.
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 11:20 am
06 Dec 2007
It would be interesting to extend the rooftops idea and try to figure out what percentage could go to gardens, and what percentage to solar panels. And then there is the issue of retrofitting the roofs to take the weight of soil; that could be part of general building retrofits.
Someone did a study of all the parking lots in the NYC area, and how much -- I think it was energy -- that could be collected from them. At any rate, it seems to me that between the urban areas (and oh yes, if, God forbid, we used some lanes for gardening) and close suburbs, there should be enough land, even for a NYC.
Energy, food, and buildings intersect to form a holistic suite of opportunities.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 11:35 am
06 Dec 2007
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
odograph Posted 12:07 pm
06 Dec 2007
BTW, my new EEE PC (Asus) is pulling 2 watts right now (0.17 kwh in the last 24 hours, per my kill-a-watt monitor). Things change, and not always in a bad way.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 12:16 pm
06 Dec 2007
But even if "all" we had to worry about was 30 or 40 years out, it would still behoove us to at least do some serious thinking about it now. It's taking 20 years to build a new water tunnel in NYC, we need to think in terms of decades.
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 12:45 pm
06 Dec 2007
The subtle undercurrent is that millions of acres of farm land would be reapportioned to people for small plots, something which I don't think you have thought about. Rooftops, backyards, and highway strips just aren't going to cut the mustard.
So much of our ag land goes for stuff we really don't need, though, like for producing Twinkies, chips, and half-rotten export shipments to foreign countries. Do we really NEED all that extra sorghum, corn, soy bean and so forth? This goes to perhaps changing our dietary habits to less empty starch and sugar, in addition to changing upside down farm subsidies.
Onward through the fog
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:17 pm
06 Dec 2007
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:25 pm
06 Dec 2007
Think hypercar technology. The Amory Lovins concept. He claims only .06% of the energy in the gasoline actually is used to transport the weight of the passengers. Because conventional cars are so heavy.
How about tractors? Massive, because they pull plows and cultivators, huge tanks of chemicals, their weight makes huge tires a necessity too. Adding to the whole bulk.
Imagine a hypercarred tractor. It never plows, instead it drills small holes and injects seeds or seedlings with organic fertilizer that is worked into the hole by the drill. It is unmanned, operated by remote computer by the farmer/technician. It is small, light, solar rechargeable. It can inject water and organic fertilizer in just the right amount for each plant. Going up and down in the field all day.
The farmer would program it, one person operating a few of these machines. They would mulch, plant insect repelling plants here and there. Turn any weeds into mulch on the spot. All the things done by hand labor on the typical organic farm.
This increased productivity would keep food costs down. With this kind of on the spot attention, pesticides, herbicides, and mono GMO crops would be obsolete. The lower costs for energy, no chemicals, no fertilizer, coupled with a new emphasis on quality, only possible with organic farming and very close attention makes this the winner. In the consumer's world. Clean, chem free food, with real taste that's cheaper.
And the farmer/technician makes a better living. As do the people building and servicing the robotic ag equipment.
College ag departments and extension services should start to work with local organic farms to get this up and running. They have been pushing agribizz chem for decades. I bet they could switch to this mode of organic, hi-tech, robotic farming.
This would save enormous amounts of water too, with pinpoint water injection. The GHG prevented would be enourmous, and so too would be the carbon stored in the organic soil as it got deeper and deeper with every year's addition of mulch and soil mass and roots. That's tons of cO2 stored per acre per year.
All farmland turned to a carbon sink would reverse GHG buildup once a renewable power grid and plugin cars take hold. The fertilizer run off saved alone would curtail a huge amount of methane release.
And you know how farmers could afford to do this? With government subsidies diverted from agribizz and fuel farming. But also by turning farms into power stations on the distributed renewable grid. Help farmers invest in wind, solar, and biogas power. The kwh generated can pay for upgrades to organic farming. The biogas digestors providing plenty of organic fertilizer.
Now this would be a farm policy. If a farm bill could be created to promote it.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:40 pm
06 Dec 2007
Local food would take over most of the local market that way.
I also think greenhouse walls on large buildings like malls or community centers could provide building solar heat and space for farmers to grow greenhouse vegetables off season in winter climes, making a multi level farmers market where fresh food could be vended into the mall space.
Add in the dried and frozen locally grown organic products and a whole new year round indoor farmers market could really liven up the winter doldrums with real food, fresh oxygen, and sunlight. A party for sure in cabin fever lands.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
trock Posted 5:24 pm
06 Dec 2007
Farming itself takes about 4 percent of the United States fossil fuel use. I'm less sure of the entire food system, but I think it is about 20 percent. I think farming could with some effort use 50 percent less fossil fuel with nearly the same production, some made up with efficiency and the rest to renewable fuel substitution.
Then 90 percent of grain is used to feed animals, which we eat. Eat more vegetables and grains, less meat and that would have a big affect on the total amount of grains that we need. Use more pasture fed animals; cattle, sheep, goats and use less grain fed animals, chickens and swine.
Agriculture would change, but we can become just as overweight as we are now.
Permalink
justlou Posted 8:37 pm
06 Dec 2007
And set up a system to get the Amish to start having 20 kids per family. Cause Americans have become way too soft in the body, head and work ethic to make any of your ivory tower dreams become reality.
I am almost 56. I am a farmer and do a lot of manual labor. Frankly, folks, it often sucks. When you weenies peer out your air conditioned offices when the temp is 95 degrees and 80 percent humidity think about how the Mexicans suffering in the heat to feed you are feeling.
Yeah I can see your model working but you better hand over the production to the brown skinned people to get it done. Oh yeah, did you factor in all the millions of acres needed to feed your plow horses and oxen?
It all might happen. But I expect the human population to plummet to about 1 billion by the time the transition is completed.
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 9:14 pm
06 Dec 2007
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
edmharris Posted 9:17 pm
06 Dec 2007
Heinberg says 'we must localize, because we don't have enough fossil fuels not to' (and even if we did, carrying on burning them is not an option).
This is a significant difference because the first argument (should...) is unlikely to persuade the majority of people, big business, government, whereas the second argument (must...) is a bit more clearcut. Doesn't mean they're not both valid, but is an interetsing distinction amongst arguments for food system localization.
More at: Local Foods Research Project
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 9:48 pm
06 Dec 2007
According to these data, human population dynamics are common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species and, as significantly, absolute population numbers of the human species are determined by food availability. More food globally equals more people; less food production worldwide equals less people; and in any and every case, no food supplies equal no people. That simple.
Humanity does not have a food production problem; it has a food distribution problem.
For a remarkable scientific analysis of agriculture, food production and human population growth, consider the empirical data found at the following website,
http://www.panearth.org
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D. M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
odograph Posted 10:29 pm
06 Dec 2007
I read above about "agriculture without oil" and ask how long (how many decades) it will be before we are truy "without oil."
The immediate answer is that there are other problems too, and that I (we all) should unify them in our minds.
I think that is a useful trick for a would-be Leader, but seldom justified.
Or, seriously, see this article at Overcoming Bias on Affective Death Spirals
Or put another way, when we "need to discuss" higher energy prices, water shortages, and etc ... should we really ignore that farmers are already adapting to them? Should we assume that we non-farmers have smarter answers?
A "yes" to that question would be another red flag ;-)
Permalink
gmobus Posted 12:27 am
07 Dec 2007
One way to go about modeling food production is to think of it as a baseline energy production process. After all, all we have to work with is photosynthesis, conversion efficiencies (species distributions), area available, insolation at latitude, temperature ranges, soil nutrients, and water. The question starts with how many kilocalories (nutritional calories) per capita are needed and then we can work backward to figure how much land per person would be required.
If a farm can produce a net energy flow sufficient to supply some number of non-farm workers with calories while remaining CO2 neutral, then we have a basis for judging the population size that can be sustained.
A question I have is: Can a farm be a net energy producer, not just food for humans and animals, but also help feed the grid? With advanced wind turbines, solar panels (on out buildings, not covering growing areas), possibly even biofuels generation, could a unit farm be designed that would export net energy gain? That is an open question so far as I know. But it sets a lower bound on possibilities.
The size of the population and what that population can do in terms of wealth creation ultimately depends on the production of free energy, in the form of food and in portable fuels and in electrical power generation. It all starts with photosynthesis. Any long-term sustainable system will need net energy export farms (probably localized as Jon points out vis-a-vis Heinberg's vision).
For a really good analysis of civilization's dependency on food production and how extending the land area to sustain a growing population and a growing consuming life style read Thomas Homer-Dixon's "The Upside of Down". He has done some preliminary modeling of the energy flow problems associated with building the Roman Colosseum that is a real eye opener.
Regards
George
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 12:38 am
07 Dec 2007
Long ago Frances Moore Lappe argued that intensively -worked, that is, labor-intensive, farming was more productive in terms of land. The present system measures productivity in terms of labor. Obviously, we need a whole new metric of productivity: in terms of energy, or water, or materials. But those studies are very seldom done, as far as I can tell.
Since my back-of-the-envelope calculation yielded the need for only 2% of the US land mass for food and housing for the population, land itself might not be a huge problem, but getting it close enough to population centers, and having population centers, to minimize transport, is a bigger design issue, to put it mildly.
So basically, we need to model the food, energy, housing, living patterns, and transportation systems (not to mention the manufacturing to do all of this). No problem!
Permalink
gmobus Posted 1:10 am
07 Dec 2007
Here is a rough diagram of a net energy production farm. It is necessarily simplified and I have left off the relevant parameters (e.g. amount of insolation per unit area).
a sustainable net energy farm
The devil is always in the details, isn't it? But I find it is best to start with simple frameworks and add details as they become apparently needed. As per my last comment, there are baseline numbers that can be applied to this kind of model that would at least tell us what is feasible.
Regards
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
Permalink
kmp Posted 1:26 am
07 Dec 2007
Sign me up for the community greenhouse/farmer's market - but please, not at the dreaded Mall!
Kaela
Permalink
odograph Posted 1:47 am
07 Dec 2007
From what I remember, the bottom line was that for a small (electrical) energy increase, we can cut our agricultural water use significantly.
That and trains to market (the 1800's solution), and cities need not panic (in, as I said, an Affective Death Spiral).
Permalink
mat Posted 1:55 am
07 Dec 2007
i like Sam Wells post, thanks Sam, i think those thoughts every day. it stops me from going to the candy machines down the hall from my office.
America, and the rest of the world, needs to stop producing non-nutritious junk food. we waste SO MUCH potentially good food in THIS country by our production of junk food that could instead be used to help produce REAL food and help support the world's poor. and most Americans eat way too much in general anyway!
i trained to be a chef at one time in my life, and the main reason i never became a chef was because of the over-use of meat and the enormous amount of food waste generated from everywhere - homes, grocery stores, restaurants, etc... i was grossed out big time and became a vegetarian non-chef!
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 1:59 am
07 Dec 2007
So, reducing the amount of carbon-based fuels and inputs to farming would in effect increase the energy you get from food, since the energy required to grow it and transport it to market should be lower.
Or is it? Seems like you body would have to burn up a bunch of the harvest as energy, doing everything manually, which I guess would be sustainable if your back can handle it! P.S. don't forget the sunscreen!
Onward through the fog
Permalink
odograph Posted 2:02 am
07 Dec 2007
I'm sure there is lots more for the bathrobe-world-planners to dig out.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 2:06 am
07 Dec 2007
I'm not sure if I totally agree with his solution, to chop the theory into pieces, because a systems theory by definition is greater, or different, than the sum of its parts.
To some extent, what they're talking about is similar to Thomas Kuhn's discussion of paradigms and normal science; as a consensus emerges on a particular way to see the world, scientists (or others) stop questioning the underlying theory. It becomes their hammer, and everything becomes a nail.
But I'm confident that venues such as grist offer an opportunity to be thoroughly disabused of getting too carried away by a Great Thingy, as they so eloquently put it.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 2:34 am
07 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
odograph Posted 2:43 am
07 Dec 2007
We've just had days and days of "give us a carbon tax."
That is neoclassical economics in action. Get over your cognitive dissonance. Either abandon Pigouvian taxes and neoclassical economics for real, or stop complaining.
Permalink
BernardBrown Posted 2:48 am
07 Dec 2007
Change the world one lunch at a time. Find out how at www.pbjcampaign.org
Permalink
gmobus Posted 3:04 am
07 Dec 2007
It seems to me that taxes are a necessary element of any social system with common needs to be met and central coordination of resource management. Thus tax policies will have some overlap in form regardless of the ideological purpose.
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
Permalink
odograph Posted 3:13 am
07 Dec 2007
I highlighted that people here often do condemn it, in general, without the least sort of subtlety you now put forward.
In fact, your post is a classic case of agreeing with me, with extreme prejudice ;-)
That is, you say I'm wrong, and then restate what I already did.
Permalink
odograph Posted 3:42 am
07 Dec 2007
The member's list might have some familiar, and some surprising, names. (They have a fairly honest, but somewhat sneaky, way of populating it.)
Permalink
gmobus Posted 3:57 am
07 Dec 2007
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 3:58 am
07 Dec 2007
That may or may not happen. But what I was referring to concerning neoclassical economics was the tendency of many practitioners to get "giddy", or as Stalin once said about his goons that were tearing up the society in the 1930s, "dizzy with success" (not that I'm comparing neoclassicals with Stalin's goons, I just love that phrase). There are some things neoclassical economics are good at; it should at least be a topic of discussion to explore alternatives when we're talking about the future of the planet (and many here seem to be potential members of the Pigou club)
BernardBrown -- The assumption of peak oil activists such as Heinberg is that nothing will replace oil for the various functions required, or certainly not enough. It may be the case that solar or some other technology could move trucks, ships, etc. around -- electricity could certainly be used to move trains around. The fertilizer, which is actually rather dependent on natural gas, another peaking commodity, and pesticides, cannot be replaced by electricity. Also, if biofuels do their worst, electricity won't help there either, neither will it help with soil erosion -- unless electricity helps with drip irrigation, which I think is what Odograph was referring to. So those are the challenges; I've seen one company trying to make electrical trucks, and none for ships, however.
Permalink
amc89 Posted 4:44 am
07 Dec 2007
Permalink
odograph Posted 4:53 am
07 Dec 2007
For that reason it's good to have a lot of tools in one's intellectual toolbox.
Certainly it's nice to know about Pigou (who "personified the Cambridge Neoclassicals"), his invention of "externalities" and his taxes. That gives us an answer that fits right into the discussion with "free market" advocates. Many of their own acknowledge environmental harm, the inability of a truly free market to price in that harm, and the need (at times) to price-for-harm through taxes.
Permalink
odograph Posted 4:55 am
07 Dec 2007
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 4:59 am
07 Dec 2007
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 11:34 pm
07 Dec 2007
Interesting to watch dvd "The Power of Community," about how Cuba "survived peak oil" when the Soviets stopped sending them petrol, how mini-farms popped up everywhere, and lawyers and all manner of city folk left their former white collar careers, rolled up their sleeves and got in the soil, and loved it.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
odograph Posted 1:01 am
08 Dec 2007
A Reading for the Pigou Club, including:
"Judged by the principle of intertemporal Pareto optimality, insecure property rights and the greenhouse effect both imply overly rapid extraction of fossil carbon resources."
That "overly rapid extraction" stuff is right up our alley, right?
(On total bans, sure, another tool in our toolbox. I certainly support the US DDT ban, but observe that some other nations face harder trade-offs. I believe that the World Health Organization supports limited DDT use in some circumstances, etc. A "total" carbon ban is an interesting idea for other reasons. CO2 is indeed part of natural cycles. What we are really concerned with is not CO2, but excess CO2. In any consideration of a ban that very word, excess, would become a battleground.)
Permalink
justlou Posted 1:25 am
08 Dec 2007
Please, spare me the red dreams. People here would rather starve than replicate the Cuban experiment. A lot of people were "smiling" at Jonestown too.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:14 am
08 Dec 2007
The farmers market staging a takeover. We have large casinos here now too. Government buildings and schools are good targets too. Convert the mess o america! Hehey.
Mall Of America, you are on notice.
Think of robotic organic farming as the ultimate alternative to chenical GMO farminmg. They use chemical coupled with GMO to kill everything in the field except the crop. Insects, weeds, animals, birds, humans (just takes longer, usually).
Robotic organic can grow delicious heirloom vegetables with greater productivity per area and human labor and cost to the consumer, all powered by renewable energy recharging the battery powered robots that work night and day.
Even commodity crops like corn and soy could be grown organically and efficiently. Mass production efficiency coupled with organic farming.
In the farmer's market green house/solar wall design the robots could ride on tracks. And you wouldn't need soiless gardening either. Hydroponic chemical greenhouse gardening produces bland produce just like chem field farming.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 2:14 am
08 Dec 2007
And to say that is not at all the same as full-blown "red dreaming."
And knee-jerk rejection of the least word of praise of anything accomplished within a communist system is as pitifully anti-intellectual and closed-minded as the idolatry of the dialectic itself.
Some generous, good-hearted eclecticism behooves us.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
justlou Posted 2:30 am
08 Dec 2007
I'm sure I'd love the Cubans but would be rebelling like hell against Castro and his regime if I lived there.
You do have the ability to turn a phrase.
Glad to make your day!
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:55 am
08 Dec 2007
I think they are the modern version of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Family farms and small businesses are indistinguishable from small cooperative non-profits in many respects. I believe they could all coexist peacefully, mixing real competitive capitalism (as opposed to monopoly capitalism ((corporate fuedalism)) typified by Walmart) with small; scale community socialism.
For instance, a non-profit cooperative could oversee the greenhouse farmer's market facility and individual family farmers could operate their own small businesses in the space created. Bringing in produce from their outlying farms. Direct marketing by the small producer to the consumer, the ultimate competitive capitalsim, faciliated by the socialisy coop.
Similarly, a local renewable distributed power grid could be a non-profit coop, with family farms, small businesses, and homes forming small energy generating businesses for profit. Selling green power through the cooperative utility grid directly to their neighbors.
Add a nice plugin hybrid leasing system into the coop, with small businesses that normally fix gas guzzlers, getting into the plugin hybrid business, converting used cars. You could lease a truely green car for an hour, a day, or a month through the coop.
What would Karl think of this scheme? Would he say it is just a way to delay the revolution to a perfect commie state? Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 4:40 am
08 Dec 2007
Are we unwilling to be intellectually honest enough to admit that we are in hot pursuit of the "golden calf" and coming to realize that nothing else matters, not really, but increasing our share of money and power here and now, come what may?
Are too many leaders of economic globalization suffering from what has been named a "nature deficit disorder?" Have many too many people in the developed world lost touch not only with the natural world but also with good science and the family of humanity? Who knows, perhaps people of the industrialized global big-business-culture have become jaded, utterly mesmerized and generally misdirected by their relentless pursuit of material wealth and power.
At its current scale and rate of growth, the continuous economic expansion we see today could be approaching a point in human history when unbridled increases of production capabilities, unchecked per human consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers overrun the limited natural resources and frangible ecosystem services upon which life as we know it utterly itself depends for its very existence.
It is precisely the unrestrained human "overgrowth" activities worldwide that need to change. Perhaps humankind is called upon to regulate the global growth of its numbers, its per capita consumption and its propagation so that we find a balanced relationship with nature and, consequently, give this marvelous planetary home the time it requires to renew itself.
Or we could choose to stay the current "business as usual" course by maximally increasing production capabilities and recklessly dissipating natural resources, thereby causing human numbers and economic globalization to continuously grow in a patently unsustainable way. Then conspicous over consumption, overproduction and overpopulation of the human species would commandeer remaining wilderness and original habitats, extinguish global biodiversity, degrade global ecosystems, dissipate natural resources and eventually ravage the planet.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 6:01 am
08 Dec 2007
(Unfortunately, that seems not to have had legs, so to speak, within the hierarchy. For good historical reasons, in the Catholic countries of Europe and Latin America, the Church has for centuries been allied with the rich landowners and the strongmen, and is associated with right-wing politics. The recent flourishing in Latin America of the liberation theologians and the organizers of comunidades de base, fellow-travelers with socialists, i.e. my kind of people, has regularly suffered withering blasts from the Vatican.)
To be clear, I am certainly no supporter of communism, nor an admirer of communist states. I consider the long, agonized efforts of the Left in the US and Europe to apologize for Stalin, Mao and Fidel to be both baffling and embarrassing. And, JustLou, I would be no more willing than you to live in Cuba.
Anyway, I do not have a dog in this fight. I was just sticking up for what I thought was a cheerful suggestion by Erik.
Speaking of dogs, Little Dog was born in a Cuban-American household, that of our former super and his wife, where she lived the first four months of her life. She is the daughter of their poodle, Suzy, and a bichon owned by an Ecuadorian friend. Victor (the super) and Lydia are not at all like the old, fiercely right-wing emigrants in Miami; but they have regularly visited Cuba as part of their ministry in an evangelical church, and deplore conditions there, and hate Fidel with a powerful passion. And I tend to trust their judgment on the matter.
Amazing,
I love your ideas about cooperatives. Would people from the Flat Midwest, between the Lakes and the Mountains, be disposed to go along, if they understood that they could profit?
In our parish's book discussion group, we just talked about Kathleen Norris's "Dakota," which is a very gracefully written observation of the sociology of the western Dakotas. Having lived for a short period in northeastern Montana, I found that it explained things that I had seen without understanding them.
JustLou,
to return your compliment, "to love one of those hoe handles" is a beautiful bit of poetry. Kind of erotic, too, if you read it in the right way.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:13 am
08 Dec 2007
As for what Marx would have liked, I think that that's the last thing we have to worry about -- partly because Marx never really said what he thought socialism was, he just threw out the phrase "dicatatorship of the proletariat" and went back to analyzing capitalism. Anything we discuss here will be miles ahead of wherever Marx wound up (not that he didn't have good analyses of capitalism, it's just that you need an alternative to a system if you critique it).
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:17 am
08 Dec 2007
SteveSalmony-- did you ever read Catton's book "Overshoot"?
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 6:33 am
08 Dec 2007
The old legal/financial structure of the coop ought to be able to be updated and made more social democratic for today's green citizenry.
Along with renewable energy incentives from government.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Colin Wright Posted 6:29 pm
08 Dec 2007
One question that sometimes pops into my mind when reading this sort of thing, is, Does it help to reduce one's personal consumption before our ecological predicament is grasped by most of the world? In other words, if I cut back on my use of energy, won't that just free up energy for other people to use? Worse, won't that land or oil that I free up be ultimately used to increase the population of the world somewhere. And thus carrying us further into overshoot -- with more lives at risk.
I find this a frightening thought. The only conclusion I can draw is that it is morally more important to educate the world about overshoot than it is to consume less individually. Of course, once we have all grasped our predicament and drawn up plans to equitably divide up the world's resources, then that is the time to begin maximally conserving. Once we are on the downside of the energy peak, then our frugality will indirectly save lives. But if we are still on the upside of the energy peak, with increasing population, then our frugality merely puts more lives at risk.
Once we pass peak oil/energy/soil/water, then we are in a completely different world situation. But our current ways of thinking (and our political systems) are growth oriented (bigger houses, more efficient energy use, ...). We need to learn to think "ecologically" (on a limited planet) before acting "green" (a lifestyle choice).
Of course, I understand we need to develop workable models of sustainable living before TSHTF. And I can buy that the oil we don't use could be used by the developing world to increase their material standard of living, in theory anyway. (Or does the oil I save by bicycling just go to preserve the life of an SUV somewhere?)
Does this make any sense? Anyone else struggled with this? Could Gandhi have been wrong when he said, we must live simply so that others can simply live?
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 11:53 pm
08 Dec 2007
I think we can help figure some of these things out and make a difference in the long run.
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 2:10 am
09 Dec 2007
I don't think I've written any blog entries advocating individual change in behavior. As far as making changes is concerned, I think it's much more important to educate people and collectively work toward society-wide policies, preferably through some new mass movements. Activism is more important than changed consumerism.
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:35 am
09 Dec 2007
If we keep doing as we do now and getting what we are get now, is it possible that the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet we inhabit will soon reach a point when it is no longer possible for Earth's resources and ecosystem services to sustain either life as we know it or the human species?
What scientific evidence, reasoning or common sense explanation provides an adequate foundation for the utterly specious idea that the current scale and growth rate of human over consumption, big-business overproduction and overpopulation activities now threatening to engulf the surface of Earth can be maintained much longer, much less forever?
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
odograph Posted 3:22 am
09 Dec 2007
The Japanese and German reductions in total oil consumption are an example of it going missing, in nature.
Thus it is inaccurate to make the blanket statement that efficiency leads to greater consumption & etc.
In fact, you'd think "problem solvers" would be more interested in the German/Japanese solutions, and emulating it, than ... basically ignoring it, as is so often the case in peak oil circles.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:54 am
09 Dec 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Thanks, Jon, for the reference to the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which I had not heard about. And it bothers me that I have not heard about it, because now that I study our map of Spain, I suspect that we drove through Mondragon on our way from Vitoria/Gasteiz to San Sebastian. (Well, at least we drove through Gernika, the more internationally renowned Basque victim of Franco's aggression during the Civil War, on our way to Bermeo and Bilbao. There is a modest monument in the plaza.) That the founder of the Mondragon Cooperative, Father Arizmendiarrieta, was a priest is not all that surprising. In many small-town contexts in the Catholic countries, a priest can be a strongly committed social leader -- for better or worse. And my understanding is that among the Basques, their priests enjoy especially great authority.
Getting back to the thread, this by Jon makes a great deal of sense:
<<
As far as making changes is concerned, I think it's much more important to educate people and collectively work toward society-wide policies, preferably through some new mass movements. Activism is more important than changed consumerism.
>>
We should note that "collective working" might begin in such seedbeds as the agricultural and energy cooperatives that Amazing is envisioning. And "educating people" ought to coincide with Erik's "training a new generation of young farmers in sustainable ag."
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 5:40 am
09 Dec 2007
Odo -- It's true that Japan and Germany are good examples of more efficient societies, but at the risk of oversimplification, I think what's admirable about their societies is the different structure they have, that is, fairly dense, walkable towns and cities, and a very serious commitment to public transit. Those are the sorts of large-scale design elements that require, to a large-extent (but not totally), a social choice to socially construct that different structure. One element of that in Germany and Japan is to encourage, even through subsidization, the building of rooftop solar energy systems as well as wind. As much as efficient appliances and cars can be important, an efficiently designed society is more important -- and then we have to discuss how to go about socially constructing that society in a democratic, participatory way to avoid what I'm sure will be your warnings about social engineering.
Permalink
odograph Posted 9:44 pm
09 Dec 2007
Japan and Germany may be ahead of us on the curve, but the certainly show what is possible.
FWIW, I think the simple truth is that they didn't have the luxury of doing otherwise. They have no domestic oil production, rely on imports, and had to get serious.
We, on the other hand, as a longtime oil producing nation, have been somewhat spendthrift. That pattern also repeats itself.
Anyway I expect us to follow the pattern of places like Japan and Germany as prices and imports rise. That is only natural.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 11:37 pm
09 Dec 2007
The US also poured billions into industrial agriculture research, not organic agriculture research, and subsidized the construction of suburbia to the tune of tens of billions. So the solution is logical, if politically virtually impossible -- use the military monies to build walkable communities and a system of local organic farms.
Permalink
odograph Posted 11:53 pm
09 Dec 2007
I think it would be nice if we could get ahead of the curve a bit on alternative energy (and conservation) but my feeling this morning is that it is "natural" that we are not.
We are slowly, at a human pace, moving from the mindset of an oil producing nation to that of an oil importing one. We don't have oil subsidies as high as in Venezuela or Iran, but neither to we have conservation measures as high as in Germany or Japan.
I think we are on our way to policies like those in the last two countries, but we have a lot of inertia to overcome. Some people fear that we'll never get there. They cite Jevons' paradox as a reason we "can't" reduce our consumption. I don't think the situation is that dire. Japan and Germany show that a net decrease in oil consumption is possible.
... it will still be some time before American society truly accepts that such changes are necessary.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 12:11 am
10 Dec 2007
The US klepto-class, typified by that weaselly christian crusader chieftain of Blackwater, are taking it all.
These other nations direct their resources in more positive directions. Here it is dissipated into multi-national corporate war for the enrichment of the klepto-class.
They think thievery, torture, and murder are their sacred duties as crusaders.
It might be difficult to wrest the direction on all these issues from their hands. They are quality of life issues, real standard of living of real people, energy is at the heart of it all.
Go to war over energy, then the extra political and financial capital needed to fix everything goes missing (like that 11 billion in $100 bills that dissappeared into Iraq on C-130s). That's why energy policy is important.
Without a healthy, motivated, educated workforce where will the war mongers manufacture their latest war machinery, who will they get to operate it? I guess Blackwater will have to hire help from the countries that don't go along with invasion, occupation, and nation building as just another step in the oil bidness.
Walmart will have to open up a military procurement department. Missles and land mines, aisle 23.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
spaceshaper Posted 9:52 pm
10 Dec 2007
But while I endorse amazing's support of the coop model I can't let his post go by without comment. First, it's not a good idea to describe coops as non-profits and thereby associating them with the charitable sector. Coops are businesses, and like any other business they have to project a long-term net operating surplus to survive the lean years and invest in their own future. The only difference is that in a coop the profit belongs to the those who directly participate in generating that value and not to external investors. That community of ownership ultimately gets to decide where that profit goes, typically to some combination of business re-investment, owner distribution and community support.
Second, coops differ from average "family farms and small businesses" in some very significant ways. Being community-owned means they are directly accountable to the community which depends on them. The profit goes to that community of ownership, not to some individual purse. And coops are not needlessly beset with inheritance and succession issues. Unless grossly mismanaged, coops outlast their founders.
This is not to say that coops are incapable of behaving badly. But I do believe that as community-owned businesses they are more capable of behaving well (sustainably, accountably, responsibly) than their family-owned or investor-owned counterparts. Grist readers, support your coops!
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 10:27 pm
10 Dec 2007
(And do we ever have the coop for Gristmill readers in the Northeast US: Coop Power. It's a member-owned regional effort to catalyze, build, and cooperatively-own distributed renewable energy sources: http://cooppower.coop that can't be bought and sold by fickle power companies.)
The coop structure works well for ag enterprises and could be a big figure in the future of how we feed ourselves.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:21 pm
10 Dec 2007
Highway systems carry all kinds of vehicles, made by many different manufacturers (although the big monopoly players have successfully repressed green automotive technology for the most part), why don't power lines carry power generated by more diverse, green sources?
Power lines can also carry broadband internet signals that can enable a smart grid to become more like the highway system, for energy and information, phone, video, internet signals.
Coops provide a legal and financial structure to pursue this goal. Federal funds for rural power and information systems are there, now they are only used by local monopoly utilities.
It is high time these funds were tapped to promote the grid as a freer system, like the highway system. A bill was passed in the dead of night less than a year ago to allow corporate criminal conspiracies like Halliburton to buy up local utility companies, that means the grid.
A quiet financial war is being waged already to ensure that monopoly forces that now collect their cash at the gas pump will be able to collect their loot from the grid instead, once electric plugin hybrids are the norm.
We the people better get behind local coops that can fight back. Fight back By making noise and bringing the lousy corpoRATs out into the light of day. Illumination tends to expose these vicious traitors where they can be targeted for prosecution.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 2:56 am
30 Sep 2008
But now it sounds as if Grist members want Coops providing our food at the exception of all else. For example, let's say I have a farm and I am producing food...... can I not sell it to one of the New York Cities?
In order for a coop to get started, the members have to become the investors. They have to buy the land. It sounds to me like someone here wants the city, state or Federal Government to buy the land and give it to the coop. Or the state would own and run the coop? Probably not efficiently.
Spaceshaper points out:
"The only difference is that in a coop the profit belongs to the those who directly participate in generating that value and not to external investors. That community of ownership ultimately gets to decide where that profit goes, typically to some combination of business re-investment, owner distribution and community support."
This is great until you go into bankruptcy OR until you have a great idea to become much more efficient but lack the funds to implement the idea. If you want to remain a coop, then you have to exclude external investors - you rule out a lot of capital access when you do that.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink