Daily Oil Blog

I’m really quite worried as our forefathers tried hard to a make a living tilling the land as peasants,land that was not even theirs and dream of a better future for their offspring Now with the decline of oil and no energy able to replace it,are our grandkids going to return to farming?

A century of oil backed growth have led many peasants seeking opportunities in the cities and the reverse will take place when the system collapse.
Will slavery and feudalism be back? I dreaded the day when mass populace will subscribe to the serf system to eke 3 meals a day. Nations reduced to mini states as central governments go down.Warlords and piracy will be back no doubt but facts are stranger than fiction and believe me…when that time comes..
Anarchy and brute force will rule the day..storytellers in the alleys will spin tales about how men was once civilized by the oil age..this all seem like a hollywood flick…only time will tell

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The recent surge in the planting of corn and other food commodities for use in the production of bio fuels has caused the price of corn and other commodities to rise, and as such the price of tortillas (made from dried corn) have risen dramatically. Tortillas, which are the staple food of the Mexican diet, have recently risen so high as to prompt concerns of food riots in some poorer Mexican states.

The web of influence spread by the increasing costs of crude oil seems to widen by the day, and we are now hearing regularly about both the environmental destruction these bio fuel plantations are causing in the world’s primary rainforest zones, and as well that the expanding hunger for commodities to be used as bio fuels are driving the prices up, and increasing the poverty level for many in the world’s less developed nations?

So what’s to be done about peak oil and food production?

Speaking at the Soil Association Conference in Britain, American oil expert Dr. Heinburg said that eventual rising oil costs and supply concerns would ultimately force a remigration back to rural areas, and suggested that as many 16 times as many people would be working the fields as do currently. Dr. Heinburg bases some of his forecasts on the model of Cuba, which after a US trade embargo, saw its oil supplies dwindle substantially, and as a result saw a dramatic increase in its rural communities.

Less oil means that food will be more expensive to grow, and will be more expensive to ship, and one way that some of these expenses are offset are by increasing the population of growers, and as well decreasing the distance that food must travel to market.

Dr. Heinburg calls for this shift to occur within the next 2-3 decades and says that some major American cities, such as Oakland, are already implementing strategies to greatly increase their food production needs within a small radius outside of the city.

It will be very interesting to see whether peak oil costs are enough to reverse an urbanization trend that has continued unabated for hundreds of years. Will the rising price of oil have us back on the farm…and will we need a team of mules to plow with?

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The tangled web of oil and food

What do a rich oil baron and a famine sufferer have in common…they are both very affected by the price of oil.

Food commodities prices have risen by 21% in the last year, and this is causing some disruption to the funding for, and therefore delivery disruption of badly needed food aid to many of the world’s poorest nations. The reason for this dramatic jump in food costs is the rising price of oil.

With the political instability of foreign oil as well as the skyrocketing pricing, nations, notably America as well as the EU, have been pushing for far greater ethanol production, and in the case of the EU, have even mandated a certain percentage of ethanol in all fuel. Since ethanol and bio diesel are produced largely from commodities staple products like palm, sugar cane and corn, this means that demand for these commodities has risen, and prices have gone up.

Experts warns that these so called greener alternatives may not look so green once demand rises to a level that has poorer South American and Asian farmers clearing large swathes of rainforest to grow massive amounts of fuel purposed commodities, and in addition to the ecological impact, these poorer nations may also see price increases in domestic food costs. These large commodities plantations, generally the domain of rich plantation owners and bio fuel corporations, do not create wealth distribution to the masses, and as a result the higher commodity prices on food will not be offset by a proportional gain in earnings from the sale of these domestically produced commodities.

Absurdly, many of the recipient nations for food aid are also the poorer nations courting bio fuel agro businesses. These bio fuel plantations change food crop production to fuel crop production and reduce the natural biodiversity, and thus the natural food sources. These bio fuel plantations drive the prices of domestic food commodities up, thus increasing their relative national need for food aid, but at the same token by participating in the bio fuel business, they also increase the prices for donor nations, and as a result will likely see less total food aid.

Bio fuel may well cause a higher demand for food aid in the countries producing the fuel crops, and because they are producing these fuel corps, they have driven the prices up, and as a result will get less aid.

The price of oil weaves a tangled web of influence, and it certainly doesn’t stop at the gas pumps.

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When evaluating our personal petrochemical footprint on the planet, few of us consider the bag of carrots sitting in the fridge, but maybe we should.

The debate on environmental harm reduction tends to focus on our personal transportation contributions to global warming causing emission, but in America, 17% of the annual national energy consumption is burned while growing and transporting the food we eat. That translates into billions of gallons of oil consumed each year to bring those carrots and hamburgers to my table!

The problem starts with fertilizer, and 1 kilogram of nitrogen equivalent fertilizer–very commonly used–requires an equal kilogram of crude oil to produce. The quantity of this fertilizer used by farmers each year is astronomical, and partially explains the huge energy debt of our modern food production methods. Oil continues to be burned during the mechanical care and harvesting, packaging, shipping, repackaging and re shipping, until we eventually find the product at the supermarket, and burn ever more oil while motoring home to prepare dinner.

So what’s a conscientious cook to do?

The answer, at least in part, is to buy locally produced products, and eat with the seasons. By supporting your local farmers, you greatly minimize the distances food must travel, and also likely minimize the processing steps along the way. Eating locally tastes better anyways, and a tomato grown a few miles from home at least ripened on the vine, and not over a 5000 mile journey across the continent.

The second thing that can be done is to eat organically. Organic farming methods minimize the use of oil intensive fertilizers and other agro chemicals, and as such reduce the overall petrochemical burden of the production. These products are also generally tastier and better for you as well.

The third thing to do is not to eat organically. That’s right, eating an organic tomato grown 5000 miles away is not preferable to eating a commercially grown and oil fertilized product grown close to home. The largest single factor in the relative oil consumption implicit in any food is the distance it needs to be transported, regardless of the method that was used in its production.

The hidden oil in the food we consume is substantial, and the agro food industry is enormously dependent on cheap oil for the production and transport of the foods we eat.

Oil isn’t that tasty anyway

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The real kilo calorie energy involved in the production of a box of processed breakfast cereal is 7000 calories, but the actual caloric energy within is just over a thousand calories. If animals expend more energy in the hunt for food than they consume in food, they die, thankfully for humans, and with our ability to manipulate the natural world, these same rules don’t apply…yet.

The food consumed by the average American each year requires 400 gallons of oil to produce. About a third of this oil is expended in the production of nitrogen fertilizers, and the rest of the oil is burnt through transportation, harvesting, packaging and other processes. It’s all fine for now, but when peak oil is achieved, and when our finite supplies begin to dwindle, how will our massive urban populations be able to sustain themselves?

World populations have increased 500% since the industrial revolution, and this massive growth has only been possible through increasingly sophisticated and oil driven farming practices. These farming practices, completely dependent on oil, have had some environmental impact, and when top spoil erosion (from commercial farming practices) and ever increasing urban encroachment or rural lands are factored in, there is some cause for concern that we may have created an unsustainable farming system that will ultimately be unable to meet the food demands of an increasing world population.

Since the finite supplies of oil do seem to be a reality, and although estimates on when oil supplies will dwindle substantially are unclear, there will come a time in the not so distant future when our current farming practices are both unable to supply the food we need, and are well as unreasonably costly to use.

So what’s to be done?

One of the biggest shifts that will need to occur is to transition away from oil intensive and transport heavy farming, and towards less oil consumptive organic farming, done locally to minimize the oil burned in the shipping of goods. To achieve this transition, the change in our societies will be profound. Food will cost more, the abundance of products out of season in our local areas will evaporate from the shelves; and the number of people working the fields will need to increase substantially. The up side is that this food will likely be healthier, almost certainly be tastier, and will be sustainable.

Human innovation may solve what looks to be a certain food supply problem in the years to come, but rather than relying on an innovation that may or may not occur, farming practices should be gradually shifted towards the sustainable now. This will require both a governmental commitment to enact major changes, as well as a consumer willingness to pay the prices needed to support local and organically grown products.

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As oil prices skyrocket and the impact of green house emissions continues to exacerbate damage to the planet, the debate invariably turns to energy conservation, and how nations and their citizens can reduce their overall oil needs. For the most part these debates center around transportation, and the usage of alternative technologies in motoring and home heating or cooling are often discussed; but what rarely receives the attention it merits is the global commercial system of food production, and the massive amounts of oil that are needed to stock our pantries with the products we consume without a second thought.

A case in point is ketchup. A recent Swedish study on domestically produced tomato ketchup identified 52 separate stages in the process and shipping of the product, and all of these stages were dependent on oil. The tomatoes were grown in Italy and shipped to a separate facility for processing into tomato paste, packed and shipped into bags that were themselves shipped from out of the country, and then shipped from the Italian factory to a factory in Sweden. By the time the tomato ketchup had reached the supermarket, different products needed for the production and packaging of the ketchup and been trucked from around Europe 52 times.

Ketchup is only a single example of how dependent our food processing and distribution networks are on cheap and available oil, and just how much oil is being burned in the production of any one of the thousands and thousands of products that line our supermarket shelves.

We are reliant on, and have become accustomed to the finest of the world’s produce, available throughout the year without a thought of seasonality or the origination of production. In many parts of the world, it may not be natural to be enjoying asparagus in January, but we count ourselves lucky that it is available when we want it. We rarely consider that the asparagus that was obviously not harvested from under the snow drifts outside, was likely trucked and then flown to our doorsteps, and as a result has caused the consumption of a significant quantity of oil in the process.

As oil prices continue to rise, it will be interesting to see how high food production costs must go before consumers balk at the implied oil costs in imported foods, and when a head of iceberg lettuce in February may be an extravagance.

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With oil prices once again soaring to near record highs, consumers have been feeling the pinch when filling up…and with U.S. congressional hearings concurrently suggesting that the oil companies have been duping customers with less gas then they’re paying for, oil execs are becoming the newly reviled heads of industry.

The issue is called hot gas, and the problem is that as the temperature rises, the volume of gas increases, and the embodied energy in a liter, or gallon, of gas decreases. So if buying a liter of 60 degree gas, you’re getting a lot more fuel than you are when buying a liter of gas at 70 degrees.

Oil companies seem to be taking a dichotomous stance on their industrial policies, and it’s curious that they argue that although they need to buy and sell gas at the industry standard 60 degree energy calculation, they feel it’s not beneficial for gas to be temperature regulated for the consumer.

The average retail temperature for sold gas is 66 degrees, which doesn’t seem like a lot over the 60 degree industry standard, but testifying experts claimed that this slight temperature fluctuation meant more than $1.5 billion in extra oil profits last year in America alone, and a corresponding loss in governmental taxation revenues off of the untaxed gasoline.

Oil industry executives argue that the infrastructure and technology required to calculate the true volume of energy flowing out of the pump, and into your car, and adjusting pricing accordingly is too expensive; and will only serve to raise prices for the consumers. Industry watchdogs disagree, and the successful implantation of this technology in several countries, including Canada, leaves the oil execs position questionable at best, and many say just plain dishonest.

Nobody really seemed to care when oil remained below $40 a barrel, but with today’s prices approaching $80 a barrel, and oil companies announcing record profits, it’s good to see that government may take some positive action to regulate the cowboy mentality of oil companies seemingly determined to get away with whatever they can.

Oil prices have eased a bit this week, with OPEC announcing possibly pumping more oil in September in response to escalating prices, but no one sees a substantial drop on the horizon, and for the moment at least, consumers need to get what they’re paying for at the pumps.

Consumers are stuck footing the bill, and as always remain powerless to the moves of the oil cartels, and their seeming collusion against the consumer. Only governmental industry regulation can keep the oil companies honest, and save the consumer from paying too much for already expensive gas

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