<DrumBeat: January 22, 2008 The Oil Drum The limit of the statistic R/P in models of oil discovery and production>

432 comments on The Fallacy of Reversibility

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Jason Bradford on January 21, 2008 - 3:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for this lead Jeffrey. One of my concerns has been the reliability of a lot of common statistics gathered by the government. It is very difficult to find comparison data on different scales and methods of production because alternatives to the industrial ag model are relatively scarce in the U.S. and those who pursue them do so in a kind of parallel universe with their own norms of communication. I simply don't know if they are even on the radar screen when looking at USDA census data.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Todd on January 21, 2008 - 8:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Jason,

One book you might get ahold of is Traditional American Farming Techniques, ISBN 1-58574-412-3, Lynons Press. It's a reprint of a 1919 (IIRC) farm book, 1086 pages. I highly recommend it. It has a lot of good information on "farming" including such things as horse "efficiency." Essentially, there are certain sized farms that use horses more efficiently. If you get up my way, I'd be glad to loan it to you. I'm in the phone book.

Todd

PS The Garden Club is still screwing around in setting up a Terra Preta presentation.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
bruce from chicago on January 21, 2008 - 9:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Todd, you recommended the book a week or so ago and I purchased it online from Deepdiscount. It is amazing the breadth of knowledge agriculturalists had at that time, especially in regards to soil management and cover crops such as alfalfa and clover. For someone like me who has a small farmette, it will be very useful. I’ve been browsing through it for the last week.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Nate Hagens on January 21, 2008 - 11:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I too ordered it a few weeks back when Todd recommended it. Its a thick bugger and I've had trouble keeping it out of my fathers mitts. Much of it over my head, but I guess thats the point of ordering it.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 2:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I just ordered it also. Thanks for the tip.

Stuart is probably correct about the continuing growth of industrial agriculture. The merging of the energy markets with the food markets means that the price of both shall move upwards in lockstep. Both our engines and our bellies will face progressive starvation.

This is even now being played out in the third world. Their farms are industrializing and growing food, fiber and energy for export, leaving the billions living on less than $5 a day to be priced out, with little chance of gaining access to cultivable land.

There are several questions: will those hundreds of millions quietly starve? At what point will there be revolution? What form will that revolution take; nihilism and suicide vests? retro Maoism?

I suspect that, at least in the first world, massive bankruptcy, combined with massive foreclosures and rising food and energy prices, will force democracies to turn to increased redistributionist policies, protectionism, and possibly fascism.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
tirwin on January 22, 2008 - 11:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I could be mistaken but I think that revolutions are started by the middle class with input from guilt ridden or disaffected uppers. The poor pick up the torch a bit later as they are more likely concerned with finding the next meal.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 12:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I believe you are right.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 3:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Actually, revolutions are often started by first world elements within third world countries (Lenin & Mao, Pol Pot, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru; western educated/influenced leaders leading largely uneducated workers and peasants). But revolutions can also be started by reactionary third world leaders like Ayatollah Khomanei.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 3:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

As Stuart's analysis sinks in, I realize this is the worst news I've heard in a long time.

Agribusiness -- a product of the "age of oil", -- has been primarily concerned with producing food and fiber. It dominates the best soils in the world, and is still in the process of displacing traditional farmers.

If the food markets hadn't merged with the energy markets, we would expect that we would now be experiencing "peak agriculture" along with "peak food". This (hopefully) gentle decline would give societies time to convert to whatever replaces agribusiness.

Instead, agribusiness is switching to producing motor fuels, so "Peak Agriculture" is now divorced from "peak food."

As agribusiness increasingly grows biofuels for our vehicles, it profits even as it diverts land and energy away from feeding people. Thus, peak agriculture is a long way in the future, while peak food is now, with a vengeance.

Furthermore, as we look at Hubbert's curve as it descends into the Oldavai Gorge, we are right to wonder at what point industrial agriculture no longer functions properly.

Can steel for tractors and combines be smelted using renewable energy? Can fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides compete with ethanol and biodiesel? If they cannot, then it is difficult to see industrial agriculture surviving beyond mid-century. And if it continues to grow up to the end, we may see a spectacular crash.

Meanwhile, of course, we can project that global famine is coming on like a freight train.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
silence on January 22, 2008 - 6:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I've got serious doubts as to whether we'll see the current corn-based industrial agriculture continue as far as midcentury in much of the US. Many areas depend on nonrenewable aquifers for their irrigation, and have only a 20-25 supply of water remaining. We're going to run out of water long before fossil fuel limitations seriously constrain American agriculture.

Depending on how we use the last few years worth of it, we will either transition to some sort of available-rainfall based agriculture in much of the midwest, or experience another dustbowl.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
DaveMart on January 22, 2008 - 6:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

..or you could charge properly for water, and use some of the many conservation techniques available, such as are common practise in Israel, for example.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
silence on January 22, 2008 - 7:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Conservation would slow the depletion rate, but not solve the problem that we're trying to irrigate with a nonrenewable source of water. Even if we launch a massive conservation effort next year (which realistically, isn't going to happen) we will likely see exhaustion of several major aquifers within my lifetime.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
FuturePundit on January 22, 2008 - 8:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We can smelt metals with nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal power.

Whether this trend is bad news for you personally depends on your income level. With a high enough income you'll be able to buy more expensive food and put more expensive biodiesel in your gas tank.

But is competition for agricultural product between food and biofuels really the worst possibility here? Seems to me not. What would be far worse is if agriculture has a very low EROEI. Take away the oil and we have a hard time running agriculture if that is the case.

By contrast, with a high EROEI from agriculture while part of the agriculture will get shifted to producing energy at least the remaining part that produces food has energy from its own fields to power it. I find that comforting. I just have to earn enough money to afford to buy the resulting product.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
jim burke on January 23, 2008 - 1:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So you and me and 100 million others can afford food on the table. The other 6.4 billion (plus interest) can all go to hell.

I wonder if those "others" will let me enjoy my meals in peace....

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
WNC Observer on January 23, 2008 - 9:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Can steel for tractors and combines be smelted using renewable energy?

Yes, at least on a small scale. CSP arrays can produce a lot of heat, or a large WT array could produce a lot of electricity for an electric furnace; maybe both could be combined. It might be possible (indeed, we DO have to figure out how to MAKE it possible) to set up sufficient capacity to recycle metals from old worn out equipment in order to make new equipment.

If we can't manage this, then sooner or later we will fall all the way back in the neolithic.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Jason Bradford on January 21, 2008 - 11:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Todd,
Just ordered it. Thanks! As a newbie to farming I appreciate good leads.

I don't have any idea what your last name is, but know another farmer around here who wants to talk to you. Would love to go to a Terra Preta presentation so please let it be known in Willits when it is happening.

You do know my first and last name and I am in the book too...or contact the WELL office to get a message to me.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
sandiego on January 21, 2008 - 8:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Jason, I think this is a very good point. And we are that particular case in point. We just purchased 13 acres of "black dirt" muck soils 60 miles from New York City. This is soil that is only allowed for farming and not development because of its particular geological formation and lack of suitability for a septic system.

Most farms are large enough, 75 acres and up, to qualify for government support and protection and therefore must "register" with the USDA. Because we are so small, we don't qualify for the government programs and are therefore "unregistered."

I know of several other farms who are in the same category. One is owned by a man from Bangladesh who farms 15 acres planting just two crops of which he saves his own seeds. He sells his produce on the street in Queens. In the winter he farms in Florida and ships his produce to New York. He is definitely not on the USDA radar screen. Another is a couple who grows 3 acres of vegetables and herbs in their backyard and sells via a farm stand by their house and a 25-member CSA -- also "unregistered."

Many of the farms who are traditional "onion" farmers (25% of US onions are grown here in Orange County, NY) are now diversifying into vegetables and selling via Farmer's Markets, farm stands and CSA because they can make more money on fewer acres in a more satisfying way.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Jason Bradford on January 21, 2008 - 11:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is interesting. I just started a new, very little farm, and know that my little operation is off the radar for USDA and suspected it might be the case for others.

You can register via the ag census, which is due soon:

http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Help/Report_Form_&_Instructions/2007_Report...

Farms that get government assistance or have submitted this in the past automatically receive a form in the mail. Otherwise, you have to know about it. And as you say, small farms might not be eligible for the subsidies and so aren't in the loop.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

432 comments on The Fallacy of Reversibility

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version