SUBHEAD: The redesign of our oil dependent industrial food and agriculture system is particularly urgent.
By Frederick Kirschenmann on 19 October 2009 in Monthly Review - http://www.monthlyreview.org/091019kirschenmann.php
Image above: Photo from article on permaculture and sustainability efforts. From http://yogizendude.com/2009/09/13/permaculture-creating-a-sustainable-now
[IB Editor's Note: This is the opening portion of the original article . To read the entire article and end notes please click on the link above.]
Probably nothing could be farther from the truth. As Richard Heinberg points out, “Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a huge task. Virtually every system must be redesigned — from transport to food, sanitation, health care, and manufacturing.”2
As Heinberg implies, the transition we now must contemplate is a shift from an oil dependent society to an oil independent society. Such a transition must include, but is clearly not limited to, our food system. The transition must be comprehensive. We must “re-imagine human culture from the ground up.”
The “transition movement,” which was launched by Rob Hopkins, a permaculture teacher schooled in ecological design, acknowledges such a comprehensive approach, and the movement is designed to help communities make that transition. Originally focused on transitioning towns, the movement has now expanded to transitioning islands, peninsulas, and valleys, and it may serve as a model for the kind of transition we need to contemplate in our food and agriculture systems.
In his new book, Hopkins points out that the “transition initiatives are based on four key assumptions”:
The Limits of Industrial Agriculture
While the industrialization of agriculture was somewhat successful in achieving its limited goals of maximizing market-based production and providing short-term economic returns, it largely ignored many of its unintended negative consequences. Some of these unintended consequences now have been documented in the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report. The most critical negative consequences include soil and water degradation and the loss of both human capital (farmers) and social capital (vibrant rural communities).
Industrial agriculture also largely overlooked the need for resilient production and a long-term view of the economic returns. Consequently, it ignored the erosion of the very capital that enabled it to be so successful — cheap energy, abundant, fresh water, stable climates, healthy soil, and vibrant communities. Since these resources are wholly interdependent, it is imperative that we account for the impact (costs) of their widespread depletion, even as we explore the possibility of bringing about a new agriculture.
Industrial agriculture finds itself in a predicament: how does it fulfill its stated goal of “feeding the world” when the resources on which it depends are being depleted, and the social and physical infrastructure on which it has relied is collapsing? As the authors of the recent United Nations report, the International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), have indicated, “Agriculture [is] at a Crossroads.”5
The global expansion of industrial agriculture was based on a set of core assumptions, namely that technology, trade, and aid could successfully address global food shortages and inequities, and that maximum production, short-term economic return, unlimited growth, the free market, and labor efficiency were the key components that would bring about this industrial food miracle.
As we begin to assess its overall results, many questions are now being raised about our industrial food system. These issues are of concern, not only to food activists, health care professionals, nutritionists, and farmers, but increasingly to the scientific community, as well.
As the authors of the IAASTD report put it:
At the same time that we recognize the many negative, unintended consequences of our industrial agriculture, we must take note of the fact that the planet’s human population has tripled in our lifetime, and is reportedly headed toward a peak of nine billion people by mid-century. This burgeoning human population is also rapidly increasing its rate of consumption as individuals change diets. According to some estimates, global meat consumption will double or triple by 2070. The production of meat using grains such as corn and soybeans that could be directly consumed by humans as food is an inefficient way to supply both calories and protein to people.7 Furthermore, Jared Diamond has calculated that, if everyone on the planet now consumed at the rate we do in the United States, our agriculture would need to be capable of supporting 72 billion people.8
We know that over half the world’s population lives on landscapes classified as marginal. We also know that agricultural systems based on the long-term needs, both of people and the environment, need knowledge and attention from more people than those involved in highly mechanized industrial agriculture. But the large number of small farmers that would be needed to design and implement the new agricultural systems that regenerate the soil and local habitat has shrunk dramatically, especially in the regions of the world where industrial agriculture has been practiced. For example, as of 2002, in the United States, there were only a little more than 400,000 farmers producing over 94 percent of our total agricultural commodities, and only 5.8 percent of all farmers were under age thirty-five.9 In the poor countries of the world, the decades-old mass migration to the cities, in which people mainly ended up in slums without work, has seriously depleted the farming population, as well. This means that, by mid-century, we may be trying to feed almost twice as many people with half the topsoil, and very little experience-based wisdom in managing that soil.
Challenges & Opportunities Establishing a Sustainable Agriculture
All of this leaves us with formidable challenges. How do we put a “sustainable” agriculture on the landscape in the decades ahead, assuming that: as oil becomes more scarce, its price could well be $300 a barrel; we will only have half the fresh water available to produce and process our food, fuel, and fiber; we will have twice as many severe weather events; and we will have a tiny fraction of the human population possessing the acquired skills to grow food, conserve water, manage soil restoration, or imagine new production systems that are less dependent on all the natural resources that so effectively fueled our industrial economy?
Fortunately, there are some hopeful developments on the horizon that may provide us with new directions. Health care professionals and nutritionists have begun to point out the necessary changes in the quality of our food, if we are to address some of the day’s critical health issues. We are discovering that fresh, diverse, whole foods, less meat, and foods produced on biologically healthy soils may offer very beneficial health effects. Experiments conducted in some of our school systems (such as the Appleton, Wisconsin public schools) where junk food, sodas, and highly processed foods were replaced with fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, fruit juices, and whole grain breads, dramatically changed the behavior and academic performance of students, and saved the school system money at the same time.10
Meanwhile, small farmers around the world have been abandoning high-energy input monoculture farming systems that are especially vulnerable to unstable climates. In their place are diverse, biological polyculture farms wherein there are biological synergies that tend to store energy, are highly productive, and use very few energy inputs from off the farm.11 Research is now beginning to corroborate the benefits from these diverse farming systems that farmers are introducing.12
Another positive movement on the horizon is the dramatically increased interest in urban farming. Urban farming is evolving in cities throughout the world, from Havana, Cuba to New York City, Detroit, and many other urban centers. New York City recently hosted a “Food Summit” organized by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city leaders that attracted more than 500 food activists who rolled up their sleeves to begin developing a new “food charter” for the city.
The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a nonprofit entity located on eighty donated acres on the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, just outside New York City, has been exploring ways to produce food in an ecologically sound way in urban and suburban settings. Stone Barns is now demonstrating, in suburban surroundings, how vegetables can be grown year-round with minimal energy inputs and how animals can be produced on grass to the benefit of both animals and the environment.
All of these activities are creating interest among a new generation of farmers who want to grow healthy foods, by means of intensive growing strategies, based on low-energy input and requiring limited acreage.
Evolving along with this food revolution is a new paradigm that may replace the technology, trade, and aid system with a new approach suggested in the UN IAASTD report. That new direction is grounded in principles articulated at the New York City food summit: food justice, food democracy, and food sovereignty. This underlying new concept has been framed as a food system based in “foodsheds.”
A foodshed is a regional food concept that is based on a new set of priorities. The first priority of a foodshed is to feed people within the foodshed by people in the foodshed, making them as food self-sufficient as possible, and only then fulfilling other needs through trade.13 This new vision of our food future gives people in each community (“foodshed”) much more authority over the food they will produce and consume, and allows them to determine how it will benefit their own communities.
This new movement has the potential to grow rather rapidly and eventually evolve into effective rural-urban food coalitions with farmers and consumers working together as food citizens to create food systems that are based on resilient production and long-term return. This can benefit their own communities economically, ecologically, and socially, rather than making them totally dependent on distant enterprises from which they gain little and over which they have little control. And, as John Cobb put it some time ago, they will recognize that trade is only free when they are free not to trade.14
Since agriculture is now at a crossroads, it provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to initiate some of the changes we need to make if agriculture is going to be sustainable in the future. And our new energy future will likely be one of the principal drivers contributing to those changes. For reasons already mentioned, the end of cheap energy will be especially challenging to our industrial food enterprise.
Since petroleum provides the energy for almost every aspect of industrial agriculture, costs will spiral upward, rendering industrial agriculture increasingly untenable — especially for farmers. For example, as the cost per barrel of oil climbed from $50 to $140 in 2007, the cost of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer for Iowa farmers went from $200 per ton to over $1,300 per ton. When oil climbs to $300 a barrel, as it is expected to do sometime during the next decade, it may well render industrial agriculture cost-prohibitive.
Our new energy future provides an opportunity to design a better food system.
By Frederick Kirschenmann on 19 October 2009 in Monthly Review - http://www.monthlyreview.org/091019kirschenmann.php
Image above: Photo from article on permaculture and sustainability efforts. From http://yogizendude.com/2009/09/13/permaculture-creating-a-sustainable-now
[IB Editor's Note: This is the opening portion of the original article . To read the entire article and end notes please click on the link above.]
One of the great missteps in most of the future energy scenarios propagated in the popular media is the notion that we can transition to “alternative, renewable energy” and thereby “wean ourselves from Mideast oil.” The underlying assumptions in this scenario seem to be that energy supply is an isolated challenge that can be solved without major systemic changes, that we can meet that challenge by simply switching from one energy source to another — from fossil fuels to wind, solar, biofuels or a host of other alternatives — and that our current industrial culture and economy then can continue on the present course."Let us accept the current challenge — the next great energy transition — as an opportunity not to try vainly to preserve business as usual (the American Way of Life that, we are told, is not up for negotiation), but rather to re-imagine human culture from the ground up, using our intelligence and passion for the welfare of the next generations, and the integrity of nature’s web, as our primary guides."— Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything1
Probably nothing could be farther from the truth. As Richard Heinberg points out, “Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a huge task. Virtually every system must be redesigned — from transport to food, sanitation, health care, and manufacturing.”2
As Heinberg implies, the transition we now must contemplate is a shift from an oil dependent society to an oil independent society. Such a transition must include, but is clearly not limited to, our food system. The transition must be comprehensive. We must “re-imagine human culture from the ground up.”
The “transition movement,” which was launched by Rob Hopkins, a permaculture teacher schooled in ecological design, acknowledges such a comprehensive approach, and the movement is designed to help communities make that transition. Originally focused on transitioning towns, the movement has now expanded to transitioning islands, peninsulas, and valleys, and it may serve as a model for the kind of transition we need to contemplate in our food and agriculture systems.
In his new book, Hopkins points out that the “transition initiatives are based on four key assumptions”:
- Life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it is better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
- Our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
- We have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
- By unleashing the collective genius of those around us to design our energy descent creatively and proactively, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching, and that recognize the biological limits of our planet.
The Limits of Industrial Agriculture
While the industrialization of agriculture was somewhat successful in achieving its limited goals of maximizing market-based production and providing short-term economic returns, it largely ignored many of its unintended negative consequences. Some of these unintended consequences now have been documented in the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report. The most critical negative consequences include soil and water degradation and the loss of both human capital (farmers) and social capital (vibrant rural communities).
Industrial agriculture also largely overlooked the need for resilient production and a long-term view of the economic returns. Consequently, it ignored the erosion of the very capital that enabled it to be so successful — cheap energy, abundant, fresh water, stable climates, healthy soil, and vibrant communities. Since these resources are wholly interdependent, it is imperative that we account for the impact (costs) of their widespread depletion, even as we explore the possibility of bringing about a new agriculture.
Industrial agriculture finds itself in a predicament: how does it fulfill its stated goal of “feeding the world” when the resources on which it depends are being depleted, and the social and physical infrastructure on which it has relied is collapsing? As the authors of the recent United Nations report, the International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), have indicated, “Agriculture [is] at a Crossroads.”5
The global expansion of industrial agriculture was based on a set of core assumptions, namely that technology, trade, and aid could successfully address global food shortages and inequities, and that maximum production, short-term economic return, unlimited growth, the free market, and labor efficiency were the key components that would bring about this industrial food miracle.
As we begin to assess its overall results, many questions are now being raised about our industrial food system. These issues are of concern, not only to food activists, health care professionals, nutritionists, and farmers, but increasingly to the scientific community, as well.
As the authors of the IAASTD report put it:
Recent scientific assessments have alerted the world to the increasing size of agriculture’s footprint, including its contribution to climate change and degradation of natural resources. By some analyses, agriculture is the single largest threat to biodiversity. Agriculture requires more land, water, and human labor than any other industry. An estimated 75% of the world’s poor and hungry live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. As grain commodity prices rise and per capita grain production stagnates, policy-makers are torn between allocating land to food or fuel needs.The authors then propose that “The governance of agriculture requires new thinking if it is to meet the needs of humanity now and in the future.”6
At the same time that we recognize the many negative, unintended consequences of our industrial agriculture, we must take note of the fact that the planet’s human population has tripled in our lifetime, and is reportedly headed toward a peak of nine billion people by mid-century. This burgeoning human population is also rapidly increasing its rate of consumption as individuals change diets. According to some estimates, global meat consumption will double or triple by 2070. The production of meat using grains such as corn and soybeans that could be directly consumed by humans as food is an inefficient way to supply both calories and protein to people.7 Furthermore, Jared Diamond has calculated that, if everyone on the planet now consumed at the rate we do in the United States, our agriculture would need to be capable of supporting 72 billion people.8
We know that over half the world’s population lives on landscapes classified as marginal. We also know that agricultural systems based on the long-term needs, both of people and the environment, need knowledge and attention from more people than those involved in highly mechanized industrial agriculture. But the large number of small farmers that would be needed to design and implement the new agricultural systems that regenerate the soil and local habitat has shrunk dramatically, especially in the regions of the world where industrial agriculture has been practiced. For example, as of 2002, in the United States, there were only a little more than 400,000 farmers producing over 94 percent of our total agricultural commodities, and only 5.8 percent of all farmers were under age thirty-five.9 In the poor countries of the world, the decades-old mass migration to the cities, in which people mainly ended up in slums without work, has seriously depleted the farming population, as well. This means that, by mid-century, we may be trying to feed almost twice as many people with half the topsoil, and very little experience-based wisdom in managing that soil.
Challenges & Opportunities Establishing a Sustainable Agriculture
All of this leaves us with formidable challenges. How do we put a “sustainable” agriculture on the landscape in the decades ahead, assuming that: as oil becomes more scarce, its price could well be $300 a barrel; we will only have half the fresh water available to produce and process our food, fuel, and fiber; we will have twice as many severe weather events; and we will have a tiny fraction of the human population possessing the acquired skills to grow food, conserve water, manage soil restoration, or imagine new production systems that are less dependent on all the natural resources that so effectively fueled our industrial economy?
Fortunately, there are some hopeful developments on the horizon that may provide us with new directions. Health care professionals and nutritionists have begun to point out the necessary changes in the quality of our food, if we are to address some of the day’s critical health issues. We are discovering that fresh, diverse, whole foods, less meat, and foods produced on biologically healthy soils may offer very beneficial health effects. Experiments conducted in some of our school systems (such as the Appleton, Wisconsin public schools) where junk food, sodas, and highly processed foods were replaced with fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, fruit juices, and whole grain breads, dramatically changed the behavior and academic performance of students, and saved the school system money at the same time.10
Meanwhile, small farmers around the world have been abandoning high-energy input monoculture farming systems that are especially vulnerable to unstable climates. In their place are diverse, biological polyculture farms wherein there are biological synergies that tend to store energy, are highly productive, and use very few energy inputs from off the farm.11 Research is now beginning to corroborate the benefits from these diverse farming systems that farmers are introducing.12
Another positive movement on the horizon is the dramatically increased interest in urban farming. Urban farming is evolving in cities throughout the world, from Havana, Cuba to New York City, Detroit, and many other urban centers. New York City recently hosted a “Food Summit” organized by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city leaders that attracted more than 500 food activists who rolled up their sleeves to begin developing a new “food charter” for the city.
The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a nonprofit entity located on eighty donated acres on the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, just outside New York City, has been exploring ways to produce food in an ecologically sound way in urban and suburban settings. Stone Barns is now demonstrating, in suburban surroundings, how vegetables can be grown year-round with minimal energy inputs and how animals can be produced on grass to the benefit of both animals and the environment.
All of these activities are creating interest among a new generation of farmers who want to grow healthy foods, by means of intensive growing strategies, based on low-energy input and requiring limited acreage.
Evolving along with this food revolution is a new paradigm that may replace the technology, trade, and aid system with a new approach suggested in the UN IAASTD report. That new direction is grounded in principles articulated at the New York City food summit: food justice, food democracy, and food sovereignty. This underlying new concept has been framed as a food system based in “foodsheds.”
A foodshed is a regional food concept that is based on a new set of priorities. The first priority of a foodshed is to feed people within the foodshed by people in the foodshed, making them as food self-sufficient as possible, and only then fulfilling other needs through trade.13 This new vision of our food future gives people in each community (“foodshed”) much more authority over the food they will produce and consume, and allows them to determine how it will benefit their own communities.
This new movement has the potential to grow rather rapidly and eventually evolve into effective rural-urban food coalitions with farmers and consumers working together as food citizens to create food systems that are based on resilient production and long-term return. This can benefit their own communities economically, ecologically, and socially, rather than making them totally dependent on distant enterprises from which they gain little and over which they have little control. And, as John Cobb put it some time ago, they will recognize that trade is only free when they are free not to trade.14
Since agriculture is now at a crossroads, it provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to initiate some of the changes we need to make if agriculture is going to be sustainable in the future. And our new energy future will likely be one of the principal drivers contributing to those changes. For reasons already mentioned, the end of cheap energy will be especially challenging to our industrial food enterprise.
Since petroleum provides the energy for almost every aspect of industrial agriculture, costs will spiral upward, rendering industrial agriculture increasingly untenable — especially for farmers. For example, as the cost per barrel of oil climbed from $50 to $140 in 2007, the cost of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer for Iowa farmers went from $200 per ton to over $1,300 per ton. When oil climbs to $300 a barrel, as it is expected to do sometime during the next decade, it may well render industrial agriculture cost-prohibitive.
Our new energy future provides an opportunity to design a better food system.
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