I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation.
-- Barack Obama, from an interview with Time's Joe Klein
Copenhagen talks ready for take off: 5, 4, 3…
Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets
Comments
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amazingdrx Posted 1:02 pm
27 Oct 2008
"the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food."
That chemical fertiler made from natural fas emits nitrous oxide, a 300+ yimes worse GHG than CO2. The GHG emitted is equal to 2/3rds of the CO2 absorbed through the photosynthesis in the crop.
How can this be stopped? With organic farming that recycles fertilizer. As Pollan says by composting organic waste. Manure, food waste, crop waste, forest waste, even sewage.
The problem with this is that during the first stages of composting, the hot anaerobic phase, nitrous oxide is released.
By subjecting that waste to biodigestion this potent GHG, along with methane, a GHG 20+ times worse than CO2, is captured and can then be used for energy production to backup a renewable power grid.
The product that comes out of the digestor is a safe organic fertilizer free of pathogens.
Every bit of organic waste processed this way produces an extra income source for farms, money saving organic fertilizer, and huge GHG offset.
Please, those of you who do have the next president's ear, explain why farm biogas can make organic farms the key to our GHG saving, renewable energy, oil independent future. Let's pay farmers for our power, instead of big coal, big oil, and big nuclear corporate enpire.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Delay And Deny Posted 1:52 pm
27 Oct 2008
You guys should check out the SuperStruct Game. It's a way of creating solutions to future threats, in text and then having people group together and discuss and problem solve.
I created a SuperStruct called "Agraria" which I use to solve the land poorness of current exurbia.
My SuperStruct is here:
http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/438
The game's home page:
http://superstructgame.org/
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ndunne Posted 7:34 pm
27 Oct 2008
You're somewhat off the mark here with your compost comment. Hot composting is generally an aerobic process, releasing carbon dioxide (through microbial respiration) but -- if the organic matter is nutritionally balanced -- not a whole lot of nitrous oxide or methane.
You can find a factsheet on compost and GHGs on the website of the U.S. Composting Council, http://www.compostingcouncil.org.
NJD
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mdwalsh Posted 1:13 am
28 Oct 2008
Small victory? At least.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 1:14 am
28 Oct 2008
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
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amazingdrx Posted 2:08 am
28 Oct 2008
...If it is aereated. I see it as a two step process, the concentrated high nitrogen waste digested anaroebically, to tield a high nitrogen, more stabilized, less gassey additive to aerobic compost, either in the soil itself or a compost pile waitng to be utilized.
Green manure and manure type waste could be digested anaerobically in the first step to produce energy and offset methane and nitrous oxide release.
How much nitrous oxide and methane would properly composted waste produce? Not very much, but the usual procedure of pumping manure into ponds or pits open on the top to the atmosphere is a GHG disaster.
Composters unite! Digest your hot waste first. generate clean backup power for a renewable grid in the process. You'll still have plenty of compost, fed with the biodigestor fertilizer.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 2:25 am
28 Oct 2008
These latest pandemics originate in inetrspecies manure/food stream intake and the development of resistant mutated strains of pathogens that migrate from species to species. Bird flu to humans for instance.
It's a big issue. As big as eliminating GHG? Maybe, if pandemics start up.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pangolin Posted 4:44 am
28 Oct 2008
The only way for a person in their twenties to start farming is to inherit land anymore. Since commodity and produce prices have been relatively low most farms cannot support the two generations needed to hand off land and skills to younger farmers.
In twenty years there is going to be a major problem finding people willing to start farming after living urban lifestyles. Where are we going to find these people?
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 7:22 am
28 Oct 2008
I say we welcome entrepenurial immigrants. Socially responsible progressive corporate investment and industrious new americans, most of us sprang from risk taking, adventurous immigrants.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Podchef Posted 1:18 am
29 Oct 2008
As a member of an Agriculture Resource Committee working to preserve dwindling farmland and agricultural significant areas and creating markets and opportunities for young--and old--farmers I hear your riff often. No land/capital/access/housing/etc for the young farmer wannabe. I should know. I was singing this song 20 years ago.
The rise in developments, ranchettes, farmettes and the realtor's wet dream of selling a country-life style to people whose horticultural expertise is killing Easter lillies or spider plants is gobbling up prime agricultural land at an unprecedented extent. Land values where I live are in the 10's of thousands per acre. While there is an educated community who believes they support good food choices and local farmers, they are in majority, fickle consumers. Support and markets access are far below what they need to be to have a sustainable local farming economy.
What I've found is most young farmers who've done their internship or college eco-ag programs are burning to get out there and farm. To create their own CSA empires. But slow and steady wins the race. Sure working 4 1/4 acre plots on opposite ends of town is hard work, but it's still an acre. An acre can produce a lot of food and make it's farmer enough money to buy more land in time. Bootstrapping is key. I couldn't/wouldn't run livestock if I had to afford permanent fences on land I don't own. Temporary fences and a lot of graft get me where I'm going.
The key is skill building. Patience. With crashing property prices, peak oil, and the tendency for the industrial-ag complex to implode there will be farmland available or certainly more land to farm. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who have land which sits fallow who would love to get their own vegetables or meat but can't figure out how. Enterprising young farmers need to meet this challenge. I would gladly grow vegetables in a 1/2 dozen backyards I didn't own with the rent being produce and the profit from sales going towards my own land. Such arrangements may become commonplace soon.
As for 20 years in the future. . . those soft, fat urbanites too lazy to leave their xbox, cable tv and take-away to think about farming will be a thing of the past. They will either have perished through ineptitude or have changed with the times and taken control of their lives and begun to grow some of their own food or even find they want to grow food for others. The future is now. Those who wait for hand-outs, government aide, grants, or other free money will find out the heavy cost. A hoe, watering can and some seeds cost less than an hour's minimum-wage. Find some vacant land and get farming.
You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:48 pm
11 Nov 2008
My friend is running a superstruct named the Decline of Oil Based Farming.
http://www.superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/391
There's a running discussion here:
http://www.superstructgame.org/DiscussionView/334
I just added a reference to this Grist article there.
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