Thinking about the energy balance, peak oil and sustainable farming
Aug. 12th, 2007 by Al
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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