Peak Oil, Peak Food, Peak Risk
Posted by Stoneleigh on January 9, 2008 - 11:17am in The Oil Drum: Canada
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: agriculture, biofuel, food security [list all tags]
This is a guest post by Rick Munroe, an Ontario farmer.
There is no substitute for energy. The whole edifice of modern society is built upon it…. It is not “just another commodity” but the precondition of all commodities, a basic factor equal with air, water and earth.
E. F. Schumacher (1973)
As humanity climbs toward the global peak in oil production and the oil industry squeezes out a few more barrels per day, we should all take a moment to view life from the summit.
This is life at the top. If we aren’t careful, this may be “as good as it gets.”
Energy Slaves
Canadians are the most voracious users of energy in the world, and it is estimated that each of us has about a hundred cheap ‘energy slaves’ to serve us. Each barrel of oil provides the energy-equivalent of a dozen humans working for an entire year. With the turn of an ignition key and the flick of a switch, these slaves transport, feed, clothe and water us. They warm & cool us, and even fly us to the moon.
But the days of cheap energy are rapidly drawing to a close, and our extraordinary reliance on fossil fuels puts us at great risk, particularly when it comes to our food supply. Our entire food system is based primarily on diesel fuel. We use diesel to till the fields, plant & harvest. Diesel transports food for processing and delivers finished products to supermarkets.
But although we can use alternative forms of energy to generate electricity and heat our homes, we clearly cannot propel a tractor with solar, wind, firewood or uranium. When it comes to the energy needed to produce food in the volume required by our urban populations, the options are very limited. Nothing comes close to the wondrous power of petroleum.
Biofuels to the Rescue?
As the world rushes to embrace biofuels as a solution, there are some obvious and immediate concerns. For corn-based ethanol, the ratio of energy returned on energy invested is marginal at best. The recent demand for ethanol has contributed to a rapid increase in the price of basic grains and a decline in global grain reserves during the past two years. There are detrimental environmental and social effects from mono-cropping corn, sugar cane and oil palms. Despite consuming 20% of the US corn crop in 2006, the resulting ethanol contributed only 3% (5 billion gallons) of the US gasoline supply. Clearly, biofuels are utterly incapable of replacing petroleum in the volumes which are required.
Overnight Conversion?
Family farmers have a problem: When -- not if -- diesel fuel climbs to $2 and $3 a litre, farmers will almost certainly have to scale back their activities. Farmers are historically on the lower end of the income scale. Taxpayers fail to appreciate that farmers themselves are the number one source of farm subsidies, since most of them rely on off-farm income to support their operations. Very few are in a position to absorb a doubling or tripling in energy costs.
Collectively, Canadian farmers have millions of hard-earned dollars invested in combines, tractors and large implements. This equipment will sit idle if farmers cannot afford to fuel it, and then much of it would be repossessed by the banks.
But if farmers have a looming problem, their non-farming neighbours surely have a much bigger one. When fuel costs skyrocket, intercontinental shipping will quickly diminish and prices of all goods will escalate. Without the steady flow of far-off food that we have all become reliant upon, our urban neighbours will quickly turn to a relative handful of local farmers to start feeding them again.. These farmers, however, will themselves be facing unprecedented costs and uncertainties
Farmers will be faced with practical issues on several fronts. First, they must obtain reliable and affordable sources of mobile energy. Electric tractors exist as prototypes, but they cannot generate the sustained horsepower which is required for heavy field-work. An extreme option is a return to draft animals, but this presents a multitude of obvious concerns. An obvious interim scenario is fuel rationing, where farmers receive some allocation at a subsidized cost, but this would probably be tied to production quotas (which would present farmers with a new set of pressures). Certainly the agri-food sector would be need to be fundamentally reorganized and administered.
Aside from fuel concerns, farmers would also need to consider crop conversion to meet personal and local food requirements. Should hay or corn fields be converted to market gardening? Such conversion often requires irrigation and specialized equipment which most farmers cannot afford. Furthermore, many farmers have limited experience with intensive vegetable production, and there will suddenly be an urgent need for information and resources. Another limitation is that many soils are not optimal for market gardening. Indeed, much of Ontario’s most versatile acreage has been paved over, lost forever.
In short, if people think that there will be a seamless transition from the present diesel-based food system to a local model based on a yet-undeclared source of energy, they are in for a “crude awakening.”
As we approach the peak of oil production, there appears not to be a cloud on the horizon. People still idle their SUVs in parking lots, fly to Florida for spring break and roar around lakes in muscle boats. Politicians and the media apparently have no interest in addressing peak oil issues. But as the great literary works repeatedly remind us, it is precisely at moments of complacency and hubris that mankind is at greatest risk.
Local Vulnerability
We in eastern Canada are surely at peak risk. Like all Canadians, we endure cold winters and long distances. But unlike Canadians who live west of Toronto, we who live east of Toronto rely on overseas tankers for 90% of our petroleum supply. People who think that we will simply switch to Alberta crude in an emergency fail to understand that presently there is no practical way to deliver Alberta crude beyond the refineries at Sarnia and Nanticoke. Indeed, even these refineries are partly supplied by overseas oil.
When it comes to petroleum, Canada has been effectively split in half, with the eastern half now almost entirely reliant on countries like Algeria (presently our #1 supplier). When it comes to petroleum supply, there are few people in the world who are more vulnerable than eastern Canadians. There are none who appear so oblivious to their own plight.
As many analysts have pointed out, we are only a couple of competent terrorists away from an unprecedented “oil shock.” There are two facilities in Saudi Arabia, for instance, which handle over five million barrels per day. Al Qaeda has identified them as preferred targets, and there have already been several attempts to attack them.
Virtually every analyst expects that the crippling of the facilities at Abqaiq or Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia would result in at least a tripling of global oil prices. This would be profoundly problematic for the entire world. It could be life-threatening for eastern Canadians in January. Yet despite our extreme vulnerability there appears to have been no formal analysis or planning for the domestic effects of an overseas oil shock.
How farmers would manage under these circumstances is of course unknown. How millions of low-income citizens would heat their homes at $3/litre has not been considered. But one thing is sure: eastern Canadians need to be informed about their own vulnerability, they need to discuss it, and they certainly need to mitigate it.
Personal Responsibility
As Aric McBay pointed out in the last edition of The Local Harvest, citizens could start by becoming more self-reliant. Grow your own food or make arrangements to be supplied by a reliable local producer. Obtain even a minimal back-up system for heat and electricity.
As the residents of New Orleans discovered, if we count on “government” to provide for us during a major emergency, we may be bitterly disappointed. Each of us must take some responsibility to provide for our own basic needs. It is unreasonable to expect emergency responders to somehow serve millions of us during a crisis, particularly when the problem is as fundamental as a shortage of energy.
To quote James Kunstler,
“The age of the 3,000 mile Caesar salad is coming to an end…. [Peak oil] is not just going to be a matter of not being able to drive to the mall. It’s going to be a matter of not knowing how you will feed your children..”
I read a report that the whole island of Cape Breton lost their fuel oil supply the week before Christmas and still has yet to have full heating oil deliveries available.
That's some 130,000 plus people, without heating fuel, Merry Christmas.
I have not confirmed this yet but it would not surprise me. Spot shortages in the Maritimes would be a 'canary in the mine shaft' for Canadians.
I've been very curious to generate a dialog on TOD about how we are going to farm without fossil fuel. Nate seems to be leading the charge on ethanol=evil.
If that is the case, pray tell what do we use to plow the fields, man power?
Twenty or so men harnessed to a plow, pulling for all their worth?
The western world is NOT going to go back to draft horses, notgonnahappenanytimesoon.
So what is it? Electric tractors? Thats as plausible as flying monkeys shooting out of my butt.
In 1920, there were a total of about 250 tractors, in the whole country (US), farmers were still using horses for the majority of plowing. The tractors were run with ETHANOL not gasoline. The farmers distilled their own fuel from bio material on their own farms, NOT from Rockefeller's refineries. They made just enough to run their own machinery, NOT to run the town near by. The bio=fuels of the early part of the 20th century were just for local farm consumption, NOT the fuel source for the entire country.
It was a Great Idea.
Screw the oil companies.
It wasn't any different than farmers setting aside 25% of their arable land for horse fodder.
There is no such thing as a free lunch in plowing farm land.
You either "pay the horses in oats" or "pay the tractors in ethanol/bio/oil/diesel.
Period.
Human powered plowing is NOT and option.
Unless government mandates some laws, in the form of quotas, that allocate and prioritize oil/fuel/diesel for farmers and police and emergency vehicles first, the goddamn "market place" will NEVER guarantee that farmers will have the fuel they need to plow the fields. Period.
Farmers will be out bid on oil based tractor fuel. Period.
The fields are NOT going to be plowed with magical thinking or alternate energy sources because their is not enough "phoney, funny Wall St. credit" in the western world at this point to finance it, Get Real.
Even if you could put up a "Nanosolar solar thin film array" large enough to power one wimpy field tractor, the goddamn SIZE of the array would be enormous and would occupy a great deal of real estate. Nothing would be productive beneath these arrays, too much shade. The solar array square footage would probably equal the 25% of land the old time farmers set aside for horses.
The real bottom line to Post Peak Oil food production.
No food, no economy
No surplus food, No civilization.
That's been the pattern for, oh, THOUSANDS of years.
There are many levels of peak oil discussions. Adaptation and mitigation mean different things to different individuals, communities and nations. Corn ethanol is a waste of precious time and resources on a national scale. If economies were more localized, they could take advantage of local conditions and some biofuels might make sense.
And why do we need to plow? Certainly for large scale industrial ag, this increases yields, but aren't there no-till methods, even for large fields?
To get rid of weeds!
Siwmae (Hiya) Nate,
We don't need to plough (and all the subsequent soil cultivation that follows), of course. That’s an option, not an essential. And for those who choose to grow food that way, draft animals are an excellent, ancient, proven, and still highly practical power source.
The above statements are not just drawn out of the air, but are the result of much practical experience, my own, plus that of a big crowd of very much more authoritative others.
My own current experience is instructive. I’m a member of a CSA (community-supported agriculture) scheme; and also I run my own small permaculture operation, which is still in a state of expansion as I continue to learn.
On the farm, we use tractor-tillage. On my place I use no-till methods. Both are organic operations, of course. May I assure urban and suburban readers of these notes that the viability and the productivity of these operations, very typical of lots of grassroots initiatives which are now beavering away, getting started and making their way up the essential early learning curves, are in no way fatally dependent on the ultra-cheap-energy, fossil-hydrocarbon syndrome. Most seem to be using that facility, whilst it’s still widely viable. But the people involved are – usually, it seems to me – at the cutting-edge of awareness not only about the petro-energy crisis, but crucially of the wider, all-engulfing, inter-linked global crises of which it’s part.
We’re making it our – practical! – business to be ready when the fuel famines strike. We aim to have food and other essentials available for ourselves and for our neighbours, at least in survival quantities, despite the oncoming chaos of bigbiz commercial agriculture and food-retailing.
Rather than go on at length about this here, may I offer the two links below, which are densely-packed with practical, time-proven wisdom about these matters. These sites typify many such operations, which can be found easily enough with due diligence. Robert Denlinger and Dave Blume know their stuff from way back, are constant, practical (that word again) commercially-viable practioners of their craft, and are two of very many living proofs chugging quietly along in the undergrowth, out of the attention of big media, big biz and big politics, that another way is possible. Not only possible, but happening.
As a great bonus, from my personal viewpoint, Robert also protects his livestock, as I do on a much smaller scale (no wolves, bears or jackals in Britain, for the time being; back soon, I hope), with our wonderful, beloved shepherd dogs. Typically, Robert has recorded zero stock losses to predators since he got his first two shepherd dogs, the Kuvasz sisters Capella and Callisto, some years back.
http://www.permaculture.com/drupal/node/141
http://www.denstarfarm.us/
Incidentally, Dave Blume is FAMOUSLY very hot on farm-scale ethanol production for home use, as is Danny Day and the Eprida initiative. Google 'em!
Hwyl fawr (Cheers!), Rhisiart Gwilym
re-posted below
No-till? No plowing?
Around here in W. Ky we do a huge amount of no-till HOWEVER not all land and soil types are viable via no-till. So we have equipment that can do both..Planters ,etc.
However ,once more, we do use a large variety of tillage equipment. For instance subsoilers,chisel plows, paravanes , rolling harrows and more.
Creek bottom vs river bottom vs hill ground vs whatever. Each has a differing manner of cultivation and genetics as far as seed varieties and planting dates. It is very complex.
I rarely see a set of bottom plows here. Most are rusting away but there are surely large areas of the USA where no-till is impractical for some reason. Here we use it on hill ground else it would erode rapidly.
On flat ground or very low grades you don't have such problems.
Its not 'one size fits all'.
Speaking of 'plowing' is not very precise.
And you don't get rid of weeds by plowing. Also plowing , real plowing tends to leave a very large area of dry matter between the top of the soil and the subsoil. An area that prevents good water utilization and possible root penetration. More like a layer of insulation.
Chisel plowing is preferrable due to its not disturbing the surface of the soil but it takes an enormous amount of tractor power. Paravaning I have seen but am not that familiar with.
airdale
Why not? If there are prototypes about then somebody is surely thinking that they will be viable, and as oil becomes more expensive, they will be. 5 dollars says that there will be one on the market sometime in the next five years.
How about a wind generator then? Take up practically zero of your arable land, plug it into your spare battery pack to recharge, and then hot swap as the battery pack runs out of power. Sell the generator and the tractor as a set with the slogan "never buy fuel again", and I'm sure that somebody would buy them.
Wind power to ammonia, ammonia to fertilizer and fuel. NH3 bears about 40% of the energy of diesel by volume and it'll work in existing engines with simple modifications any mechanic can be trained to make.
especially with NH3 made from the stranded yet optimal wind resource areas close to the two polar oceans.
NH3 - dirty fertilizer, clean fuel
I think you are onto something here. In addition a bio-reactor unit could be researched/made that would provide enough fuel for the farm.
It's the time ramp up to mass deployment that may be an issue and the provision of the capital to purchase these investments in a potentially crippled financial system.
But given a fair wind and a smack by the government the basics of human existance can be sustained IMO.
Nick.
There was a post on PeakOil.com where someone had built a solar tractor. Here is the deal you're not going to be ploughing a field with power that hits the PV array direct.
First you charge a rather large battery using your solar array then you plough the field.
I would go one step further and allow the tractor to be plugged in not only to it's local solar panel which was quite small. But what would stop you from parking the tractor near the shed that has solar panels on the roof and getting a fast charge.
From what I saw it's feasable, just not sure if we will be smart enough to scale it up to any degree in time.
It is possible to raise oilseeds like rape on the farm and press them to make biodiesel. If this is done ONLY to provide fuel for farm equipment, I do not believe that this would be the disaster for global food supplies that the massive production of biofuels for automotive use threatens to be. By my estimates, the typical farm would only need to dedicate around 5% of its crop land for biodiesel production for on-farm use.
I see this as a last ditch fall-back rather than a silver bullet, but it is perfectly feasible. This is why I don't lose any sleep worrying about how farmers are going to fuel their equipment.
Great point WNC Observer!
The discussion on ethanol/biodiesel needs to become more nuanced in this regard. The current corn/ethanol thing is eclipsing sane debate on appropriate uses of alt fuels in the transition to No Cheap Oil.
Corn/ethanol is evil, evil, evil. "The Omnivores Dilemma" was a nightmare tale about King Corn, as it is, but it was published before the Corn/ethanol death spiral got in the headlines big time.
I would like to see some more definitive numbers (and real life stories), from real farmers (farmer Rick Munroe?) on just how much canola or other oil seed crops (or even hemp seed) they actually would need, for farm ONLY equipment. How much home grown bio-fuel per arce or per yield weight of food crop.
Example: I grew 20 tons of potatoes with X amount of home grown bio-fuel.
I don't farm on a big scale, but city folks are going to need someone growing food on more than the raised bed - hand dug scale to support their life style.
It would also be pretty hard to implement this farm equipment ONLY policy unless real laws existed and were ENFORCED.
Would farm ONLY biofuel be taxed? If not, what's to keep Joe farmer from filling up the in-laws gas tanks when they drop by? 'Off-Road' diesel is already highly abused from a tax stand point. People using back-hoe diesel in the family diesel car or truck on the highway, quite a savings in fuel cost over buying the stuff with a stiff tax on it.
there was a big push right after the first arab oil embargo to develop bio-gas tractors...gasifiers using woodchips for fuel...do a search on "woodgas".Hell,the Norwegians and other baltic states ran their entire economies on woodchip based engines...cars,tractors ect.I am surprised this has not received more discussion than it has here on TOD
this is simply not true. farmers are going to be the few who can bid for oil. if they don't get it who will? our food will cost more but the farmers will get oil.
What you say would be true in an egalitarian society. But disparity of income in North America is so great that rich people will be flying around in ethanol-fueled jetplanes long after long after fuel prices have driven farmers bust, and their farms to abandonment.
What will these rich people eat? If it comes to it, they will buy their own private farms and buy their own private farmers for their own private use.
And everyone else will be invited to starve.
And that is the plan that our governments have for North America.
One very big 'glitch' in either the planting or the harvest season could easily take this country to its knees.
The effects of last springs anomaly is still rippling thru the system and causing many effects and that was nothing really as far as what nature could easily serve up if she so desired!!!!
We are extremely vulnerable due to our methods. A big cold snap precisely timed , like last spring? Well you get the idea. Look at the runup in wheat prices, hay prices,etc.
If other non-nature induced events transpired? Akin to some manmade event? I shudder to think of the consequences. For the last two planting seasons there were some mad scrambles over farm diesel fuel,such that we had to resurrect an old tanker and go find and haul our own.
BTW that tanker was ordered sent to Katrina to haul and hold fuel. Order were given to the driver to go armed and not stop for anyone. If stopped take what measures were necessary to proceed.
Yes it was just that bad. The drivers returned with stories of armed to the teeth guards,dead bodies being eaten by gators,and more.
It was a big wakeup call. Most likely disregarded it. I was not tapped to make the run with the tanker and would have demurred if I was chosen. We sent a loser guy instead. One we could afford to lose.
airdale
There's nothing egalitarian about that. If marginal farmers can't afford to grow food, food supply will go down, and prices will then rise. If prices rise enough, more farmers will be able to afford to grow crops again. If prices don't rise enough, they'll keep rising until those marginal farmers can afford to grow crops again. This is basic economics, and won't break down until we abandon markets for setting prices. In that case, the government will be rationing fuel to make sure that farmers get their share. Nothing incites revolutions like famine.
That doesn't mean that farmers will become rich. "Dirt-poor" might take on its former meaning, but at least most farmers will be employed and mostly be able to make ends meet, if only barely. They will be far better off than poor people off the farm, who may have a difficult time finding work or food.
Way too many armed ,hungry neighbors for that meal to be quiet.I have noticed government plans change when the people are bone mad...
that's not exactly the whole story.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/071218/canada/novascotia_cb_imperial_6
The array has to generate power for short times in harvest and sowing. You need to size the array for peak use. Probably, certainly, cheaper to put it in Nevada and make the electricity into methanol and send that to Canada. Not to mention that we really don't have that much lead and nickel to use for batteries anyway.
When do farmers use their tractors and equipment?
You heard correct with respect to the Cape Breton oil shortage. Ironically the issue was not access to foreign oil but to the oil stored in Halifax facilities. There are essentially no storage facilities in Cape Breton so they only ever have a few days supply. The weather was so foul for a number of days that the tankers could not make the trip from Halifax and safely dock in Sydney. This situation also woke people up to the fact that the entire province is supplied by one company's storage facility - Irving. Every delivery company is reliant on Irving stocks to supply customers. Not only are the people in this region vulnerable to one dominant country supply (Algeria)and all global issues that affect it, they are vulnerable to the corporate strategies and effective management of one supply company. A global incident affecting Algerian supply or a significant management error at Irving hold an entire region hostage.
Although the Cape Breton shortage did not reflect a global supply crisis it is a wake up call to exactly how vulnerable we are on the east coast.
In Cape Breton, They only delivered a little oil to home oil tanks to keep them supplied untill the next oil shipments arrived.
No one ran out of oil, because of this.
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"The western world is NOT going to go back to draft horses, notgonnahappenanytimesoon."
The 700 (I think) folks who attended the inaugural Northeast Animal Power Field Days in VT last Sept. may beg to differ. In any event, it's at least one example not far from eastern Canada that there is a movement afoot - or perhaps that should be (ahem) ahoof...
http://www.animalpowerfielddays.org/
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=draft+horses&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=...
http://www.easterndrafthorse.com/History/drafthorseinamerica.htm
And:
"Human powered plowing is NOT and option."
I suspect you're wrong about that, but it will take me a few seasons to demonstrate. I certainly agree that no one person could plow 40+ acres that way.
Iraqis are turning to draft animals. Not for plowing (soon all their food will be imported. Say, just to exagerate.)
one example:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/aali.php?articleid=12183
I agree with much of what you say. I think farm based fuels will be made by farmers on land set aside for that purpose. If you are a farmer you have to plan accordingly. You need to have an ethanol or biodiesel processing unit onsite or as part of a co-operative. That fuel needs to be funnelled back to the farm. Any excess can be sold and the profit used to get farms of the co-operative out of debt. Going back to horses is not an option, yet. If you think farm machinery is dangerous try handling a big Belgian frightened by thunder or other loud, close noise. Most people other than the Amish groups do not have the skill set.
Historically, farmers have done OK in a crisis. In the hyperinflation of the 30's a lot of diamonds and gold was exchanged for eggs and grain. At the end of WWII in Germany, farmers were in relatively good shape. My fifth cousin in Germany was not a farmer, but he said his family was less hungry than many others because they lived in a rural area.
The post-WW II, post-Occupation West German government taxed, heavily, the only viable revenue source that they had, farm land. There was no popular sympathy for the farmers, who were viewed as profiteers by many.
The East German government just confiscated the land.
Those were not "prosperous times for farmers".
Alan
While grains in the West are largely farmed with machinery, fruit and vegetables are largely farmed by hand. Here's a picture of a farm in San Luis, Arizona:-
There's no oil there, and the only ethanol is in their drinks after work - if they can afford them, which on their average $5,000-$10,000 annually ain't likely.
Future employment scenario for all those "economists" and finanacial advisors whom choose to continue living in there dreamworld that says "fossil fuels are unlimited and will never run out" and peak oil is a myth.
I don't see much historic evidence for large scale food production that didn't rely on large tracts of arable land being plowed in some fashion by draft animals.
Surplus food is the very basis of 'civilization'. Not surplus technology.
Surplus food has historically allowed some people in a culture to not send all day growing food on a primitive level, but to develop other skills. Like inventing technology. Or being the butcher, the baker, or even the candle stick maker.
Jared Diamond had a number of interesting observations regarding civilizations that did not have draft animals. (New World vs Old World) Draft animal-less cultures were considerably slower in developing any degree of sophisticated technology or even any degree of sophisticated culture on the same time line as cultures that did have 'beasts of burden'. (Aztec vs Rome)
I wonder if Mick Jagger had this in mind when he sang, "I'll never be your beast of burden." Hmm.;)
Cultures that use only people power for farming never really produced enough extra food to allow specialist to invent much technology above and beyond subsistent farming levels.
Given another couple thousand years, western hemisphere cultures might have actually come up to Roman tech standards.
Masanobu Fukuoka is the only original thinker to my mind on farming with a dramatically radical new farming technology that uses little or no 'beasts of burden'. He is a very old dude by now and out of the loop on cutting edge farming stuff.
The permaculturalist Bill Mollison (the 'father of permaculture' wiki) from Australia, I believe, was a big fan of Fukuoka's early ideas and tried to incorporate some of his thinking into modern perma-culture ideas.
However, Fukuoka's ideas were never really tested on a grand scale, like, oh, China for instance. Farming without tilling (or draft animals/ tractors) for a billion people is not too feasible. Sure if everyone in China was forced out of the cities to go back and farm the land by hand...oh wait, they already tried that; Cultural Revolution or something like that?
The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming
http://www.amazon.com/One-Straw-Revolution-Introduction-Natural-Farming/...
Jim Kunstler is fond of saying how many folks think energy and technology are the same thing. He said when we run out of affordable liquid carbon fuel for the airline industry, some people think we can just 'plug in' New Technology and run the existing jet fleet on that.
No, we will Always run the current fleet of jets on liquid carbon fuel or nothing , because of the shear amount of momentum and investment in the jet technology we have in place. We are stuck with it for the duration. (He says it in a much funnier way in his presentations)
Well, food and Technology are the same as Energy and Technology. You don't just 'plug-in' one for the other. (Food Is Energy)
"How about a wind generator then? Take up prac