Re: Food & Energy Exporters Trading With Each Other
IMO, the primary reason for this move by Saudi Arabia to save water is their continuing shortfall in natural gas production, which is causing their petroleum liquids consumption to skyrocket—which is why the Saudis have been discussing importing coal.
On one level of course, this is just an example of comparative advantage, but it does illustrate what I expect to be a quickly developing trend of bilateral trade between food and energy exporters. I expect energy BTU’s and food calories to become the new “coin of the realm” in world trade.
Of course, this would also be true within countries, like the US. It is not a good time to be both a net food and a net energy consumer.
Saudi Arabia’s plan to start importing wheat and end a massive grain self-sufficiency programme it launched more than two decades ago will weaken the Kingdom’s food security and aggravate a painful Arab farm gap. The Gulf Kingdom, the world’s richest in oil resources and one of the poorest in terms of water, said this week it would begin importing wheat at the start of 2009 and gradually eliminate a 25-year grain programme that has allowed it to be self sufficient but drained its scarce desert water wealth.
“We have decided that the first imported shipment of wheat will enter the country at the beginning of 2009,” said Saleh bin Mohammed Al Suleiman, director-general of Saudi’s Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organization. “We are working out arrangements for these imports and will select the best… the size of imports will initially depend on the domestic need and size of production… this year, there has been a decline in cultivated areas while wheat consumption is growing by around eight per cent annually.”
Maybe a decade ago, I heard an agronomist?/economist? on German radio discussing the fact that wheat exports are actually water exports. I can no longer remember the figure, but it was amazing - for some reason, I remember 7 in relation to one - my haziest best recollection is, 700 hundred tons of water for 1 ton of wheat, but it could also have been 7000 tons of water to 1 ton of wheat.
Which shows just how idiotic Saudi wheat growing truly is - for those that think ethanol is mind numbingly stupid.
...the fact that wheat exports are actually water exports.
If the moisture content of stored wheat is more than about 15% it molds. The figures you mention may represent the amount of water transpired by the growing wheat plant, but certainly aren't the amount exported along with the wheat. That water would have fallen as precipitation on dryland wheatfields anyway, or would have been evapotranspired elsewhere if not used to irrigate wheat. So saying that exporting wheat is actually exporting water is misleading.
What if you're pumping "fossil water" out of an aquifer to irrigate the wheat?
Good point! I've recently read two books about the dust bowl days of the 1930s and have become convinced that the dust bowl came to an end only because water from the Oglalla aquifer began to be applied to Southern Plains wheatfields on a large scale beginning in the '40s. At the rate the Oglalla is being depleted, dust bowl conditions are bound to return. My post didn't take into consideration irrigation water from aquifers being depleted faster than they can recharge. My own irrigation water comes from a largely snowmelt fed river. But even water from diminishing aquifers used to grow wheat isn't literally exported. I do get your point tho, and agree.
A relatively small amount of wheat or corn is irrigated.
Exporting corn is exporting energy as long as corn's price stays below it's energy content. Currently corn's energy content is in the area of $9-10/bushel when compared to LPG at retail. I know this is true because I heat with both.
When corn is exported the United States has to replace the lost energy content with more expensive energy imports which is stupid.
Corn exports should stop. It is in the self interest of the U.S..
Those who import corn usually use it as animal feed which is another big energy loser. Corn is more valuable for it's energy content that for animal feed at current prices. Corn is called a coarse grain because it is not suitable for human food except in the most desperate circumstances and then only relatively small amounts are needed.
Well, let's see; we can export a bushel of corn for $5.95, and import 2.8 gallons of gasoline at $7.56, and miss out on the opportunity to export 17 lbs of distillers grains ($1.70)
Net Loss: $1.61 + $1.70 = $3.31/bushel; Or, we can get our heads' out of our rearends, provide for our OWN people, and cut our exports of cattle feed to Communist Asian Countries by 60%.
$3.31 Lost for every bushel of cattle feed (corn) exported. This should be a "No-Brainer."
Your math may be spot on, so please don't tear me a new one, but are you saying that 1 bushel of corn produces the energy equivalent of 2.8 gallons of gasoline, or did I miss the point entirely?
Ethanol is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form. Robert Rapier has debunked you so often that I think he's given up. Yet you continue to spout "the big lie" over and over again, always looking for some new angle to push your agenda.
According to some, the only thing that is sustainable is a world without humankind on it. Since I tend to like humans, being one of them, I consider this way of thinking to be terrifying.
I tend to think that local ethanol production beats foreign oil imports any day of the week. It doesn't drown us in debt and we don't have to spend $150 billion+ per year occupying the farm belt and securing the tanker lanes ;).
In the end, though, I think V2G is the way to go. Liquid fuels are too dangerous -- politically, environmentally, and ecologically. So a nod to RR on that count.
Solar+Wind+Nuclear with storage. To me, it's a no brainer. But some people seem to think the world can't run on anything other than dead microbes fermented in the ground millions of years.
It's 19th century thinking at best. At worst, it's a recipe for disaster.
You don't have to say, "how far can I drive my car on corn?" which is as nonsensical as it sounds. Just look for an easy substitute based on established off-the shelf technology. To figure out whether exporting corn is a bad deal, say: I can easily heat my house with the corn, and how much natural gas would that save that I could then easily use to run a car? Corn furnaces and natural gas cars are easy to get and don't require additional processing of either energy input.
Actually, Jeff Broin, CEO of Poet (refiners of 1.1 Billion gallons of ethanol/yr,) states that his company can turn out 435 gallons of ethanol from 150 bushels of corn.
Add this to DOE's estimate that, on average, you only lose one half of one percent efficiency when running E10 vs. Gasoline, and I felt I was on pretty safe ground.
55% of the energy and only a one half of one % hit on mileage? The ballsiness of these administration guys to lie never ceases to amaze me. My personal experience as an obsessive Prius driver is that 10% ethanol is a 5% hit on my mileage, which, funny enough, is exactly what the law of conservation of energy would indicate.
1 cubic meter of water is roughly equal to 1 tonne (1000 kilograms, not the same as the US "ton") so that is about 1300-1500 tonnes of water per tonne of wheat.
1 cubic meter = 1000 liters at 2.2 pounds (or 1 kg) per liter divided by 2,200 pounds per tonne. All numbers rounded where necessary for simplicity's sake but the decimal fraction wouldn't change much.
I really hate to go into the details of the metric system, but I'm going to.
The original definition of the gram was the mass of 1 cc of water at 0°C. However, while that temperature is easy to achieve, the mass of water is pretty unstable at that temperature (having the habit of freezing and thawing and all), so in 1798 it was redefined to be the mass of 1 cc of water at 4°C. Anyway, because it is really hard to purify water to get it pure enough that it weighs 1 gram/cc the powers that be decided to officially define the kilogram as the mass of a 39.17 mm right cylinder of 90% platinum 10% iridium. The mass of this cylinder is very slightly greater than the mass of 1 cc of super-pure water with a specified ratio of oxygen isotopes in the water molecules. The prototype kilogram is stored under 2 bell jars in a vault in France.
As a side note, the density of water at 25°C is 997 kg/m^3, which is a bit lower than 1 tonne/m^3.
Making 700 tons of water realistic, in a German context. Obviously, Saudi Arabia, being both desert and much further south, is going to have a higher need of water to grow wheat.
I'm not sure that the US is actually that dependent on food imports, from my own analysis and Pat Murphy's - yes, we are a net food importer, but most of our calorie foods are grown here and it wouldn't be that difficult to replace our vegetable foods. On the other hand, energy...
BTW, sorry to do this here, but Westexas, I can't find an email for you anywhere. I'm writing about the ELM for food in my book, and I wanted to ask you questions - any chance you could email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com?
Thanks, and sorry not to send this query privately.
"X" = World's largest net food exporter (anyone know which country this is?)
You and I are, on a micro scale, are analogous to "X" and Saudi Arbia on a macro basis--in food & energy terms.
I think that the new coin of the realm is energy BTU's and food calories. The emerging problem for net food and net energy importers and for net food and net energy consumers is coming up with valuable goods and/or services to trade for food and energy.
I think that small organic farmers like you and Jason are going to be in great demand--in much the same way that high tech gurus were once sought out for advice.
I think it will be interesting to see whether the US government comes to subsidize small farmers and gardeners simply because we can provide food to the populace in general while allowing grain exports to be traded for oil. John Michael Greer's two tier system seems potentially possible here.
BTW, the US was the world's largest food exporter as of 2005, the last year for which I can find statistics. I think it unlikely that domestic ethanol production changed that number for 2007, but it is technically possible, and I can't find stats offhand. But with 40% of the world's grain exports, our impact is huge - the question is what will happen as food price rises effect the US as well.
1. I can't speak for anything on the Federal level, but in New Jersey, Governor Corzine is VERY seriously proposing the elimination of the State's Dept. of Agriculture for financial reasons. Besides this being the first state to announce this proposal, this act clearly shows how disconnected people in high places are from the necessities of daily living. To put what little is left of your food production at risk- .... I don't know.... (I don't think this country will ever develop a decent food or energy bill.)
2. I'm totally confused by food exports numbers. I've been told independently by many people that U.S. Grain is exported to China for milling and then re-imported to the U.S., it's supposedly cheaper. I thought it was an urban legend, but after talking with some specialty crop growers (spelt, organic dairy products, etc.) this may be true. So how are the export number counted?... I don't know.... So if you use data for your book, I suggest that you get the RAW DATA and make the conclusions yourself.
1. I agree with you that this situation hasn't even remotely penetrated - but that doesn't mean it won't. Think, for example, about peak oil two years ago vs. now - things can change quite rapidly, and given the food situation, almost certainly will. I don't claim that a two tier system is likely, but with the price of conventional food production going up, we are narrowing the gap between what small producers like me charge for food, vs. what the supermarkets charge. That's not to say I'm totally invulnerable to input costs - not at all, and I don't have the economies of scale, but I do have the ability to ignore many inputs, or replace them with natural system inputs.
A nation like the US with lots of food exports and a huge demand for oil is going to be doing a very complex dance in coming years, particularly as the percentage of our grain we use at home rises. Bringing millions of acres of lawn and public and private greenspace into production is one possible way of keeping the populace fed and also keeping imports coming in. My claim is not that this *will* happen but that it is one way it could play out.
2. Well, yes, of course, I'm working with the raw data - I just don't have all of 2007's yet ;-), so I can't swear we didn't keep more of our grain in place. It would have to be a huge change, though. As for exporting grain to mill in China, I believe we do that to an extent - I've not seen any data that suggests that this is a substantial issue, enough to make major shifts in the export data. As I understood the issue, the largest category of these exports was in rice and corn extracts for pet food - not a tiny market, but a drop in the comparative bucket.
1. I agree with you that this situation hasn't even remotely penetrated - but that doesn't mean it won't. Think, for example, about peak oil two years ago vs. now - things can change quite rapidly, and given the food situation, almost certainly will.
I don't know what you mean here. Recognition is perhaps more widespread, but there is no hint of this moving the top level of gov't to address the problem in any positive way. Yes, hunger will lead to recognition. But will anything be allowed to impinge on the interests of (big) agri-business?
Bringing millions of acres of lawn and public and private greenspace into production is one possible way of keeping the populace fed and also keeping imports coming in. My claim is not that this *will* happen but that it is one way it could play out.
Case in point. Rational? Yes. Doable? Over their dead bodies.
On a world-wide scale, there has been a massive migration from rural areas into urban slums ringing the big cities. There is no solution to spreading starvation unless this flow is reversed, and a way is found to reconnect people with the soil in way that is beneficial to the soil. (And even this is meaningless unless population is addressed also.) But corporate large-scale industrial agriculture is totally hostile to such talk.
. . . and a way is found to reconnect people with the soil in way that is beneficial to the soil.
Sharon and I were just talking about this. We both think that a crash program of small Victory gardens/farms is a win/win/win proposition. It makes business sense. The urban areas will need the food. And we are going to very badly need the jobs.
I suspect that the food and energy ELM effects may be reinforcing each other to some extent. If prices are set at the margin, by increasingly desperate food and energy importers bidding against each other, we may be looking at the beginning of a hyperbolic increase in food & energy prices. Who knows what the future holds, but in the past six months oil prices increased at a rate that would double the price every 18 months.
Couple your crash program of victory gardens (sustainable ones) and my crash program of household/community green build out and we've got ourselves damned close to a solution.... and all doable within a few years rather than decades.
During the second world war in the UK, lawns and public parks were turned over to allotments. Even Bowling Greens and Cathederal lawns - some of which were hundreds of years old, were turned over to grow vegetables.
Some of it was gesture politics or propaganda, but it had the effect of keeping a lawn to be seen as socially unacceptable.
I've been mulling over this issue of the small farmer... maybe some organization similar to The Grange of the late 19th Century Mid-West could give the small farmer some influence and recognition that currently doesn't exist.
The National Grange still exists. As a current member of a community grange, I can tell you that many of us are willing to take on this role. The job is huge and with membership down, it's tough to get much done. A chicken or the egg kind of thing.
Currently, a large portion of the membership is made up of 60-90 year olds, who having been members most of their lives are the ones in leadership roles. They don't buy peak oil or climate change. I'm trying to change that in my corner of Oregon.
The Grange organization has a long history of legislative action and still has a lobbyist. National headquarters are in DC.
I am a grange member and a huge shift is happening in the granges around this county. Enrollment is up, and they are focusing attention on local food security--holding harvest festivals, supporting local farms, hosting events.
According to this, New Jersey "agriculture" is less than $1 billion p.a., 2% of GDP, with the bulk of it essentially ornamental and recreational in nature (e.g. greenhouse/nursery, horses/mules.) So, in a time of tight money, and with food production so utterly trivial as to be virtually beneath notice, it seems to me that a few desks in Consumer Affairs or somewhere else would suffice. I wouldn't want to try to make a case that New Jersey needs a full-fledged stand-alone agriculture department beyond that, since its only job would be to warm extra chairs in Trenton.
Re: Food & Energy Exporters Trading With Each Other
IMO, the primary reason for this move by Saudi Arabia to save water is their continuing shortfall in natural gas production, which is causing their petroleum liquids consumption to skyrocket—which is why the Saudis have been discussing importing coal.
On one level of course, this is just an example of comparative advantage, but it does illustrate what I expect to be a quickly developing trend of bilateral trade between food and energy exporters. I expect energy BTU’s and food calories to become the new “coin of the realm” in world trade.
Of course, this would also be true within countries, like the US. It is not a good time to be both a net food and a net energy consumer.
http://www.business24-7.ae/cs/article_show_mainh1_story.aspx?HeadlineID=...
Saudi plans to import wheat to save water
By Nadim Kawach on Thursday, April 3 , 2008
Maybe a decade ago, I heard an agronomist?/economist? on German radio discussing the fact that wheat exports are actually water exports. I can no longer remember the figure, but it was amazing - for some reason, I remember 7 in relation to one - my haziest best recollection is, 700 hundred tons of water for 1 ton of wheat, but it could also have been 7000 tons of water to 1 ton of wheat.
Which shows just how idiotic Saudi wheat growing truly is - for those that think ethanol is mind numbingly stupid.
If the moisture content of stored wheat is more than about 15% it molds. The figures you mention may represent the amount of water transpired by the growing wheat plant, but certainly aren't the amount exported along with the wheat. That water would have fallen as precipitation on dryland wheatfields anyway, or would have been evapotranspired elsewhere if not used to irrigate wheat. So saying that exporting wheat is actually exporting water is misleading.
What if you're pumping "fossil water" out of an aquifer to irrigate the wheat?
Good point! I've recently read two books about the dust bowl days of the 1930s and have become convinced that the dust bowl came to an end only because water from the Oglalla aquifer began to be applied to Southern Plains wheatfields on a large scale beginning in the '40s. At the rate the Oglalla is being depleted, dust bowl conditions are bound to return. My post didn't take into consideration irrigation water from aquifers being depleted faster than they can recharge. My own irrigation water comes from a largely snowmelt fed river. But even water from diminishing aquifers used to grow wheat isn't literally exported. I do get your point tho, and agree.
A relatively small amount of wheat or corn is irrigated.
Exporting corn is exporting energy as long as corn's price stays below it's energy content. Currently corn's energy content is in the area of $9-10/bushel when compared to LPG at retail. I know this is true because I heat with both.
When corn is exported the United States has to replace the lost energy content with more expensive energy imports which is stupid.
Corn exports should stop. It is in the self interest of the U.S..
Those who import corn usually use it as animal feed which is another big energy loser. Corn is more valuable for it's energy content that for animal feed at current prices. Corn is called a coarse grain because it is not suitable for human food except in the most desperate circumstances and then only relatively small amounts are needed.
Well, let's see; we can export a bushel of corn for $5.95, and import 2.8 gallons of gasoline at $7.56, and miss out on the opportunity to export 17 lbs of distillers grains ($1.70)
Net Loss: $1.61 + $1.70 = $3.31/bushel; Or, we can get our heads' out of our rearends, provide for our OWN people, and cut our exports of cattle feed to Communist Asian Countries by 60%.
$3.31 Lost for every bushel of cattle feed (corn) exported. This should be a "No-Brainer."
Your math may be spot on, so please don't tear me a new one, but are you saying that 1 bushel of corn produces the energy equivalent of 2.8 gallons of gasoline, or did I miss the point entirely?
Yes, and apparently he has found a way to stuff that bushel of corn in a gas tank with no processing. Beautiful!!
tstreet,
I think you've got me on that one. I suppose I would have to subtract a bit for the processing.
Let's whack off $0.25/gal ($0.75 total,) and call it even; okay?
$3.31 - $0.75 = $2.56 shot all to hell with every bushel exported. Still Silly.
Ethanol is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form. Robert Rapier has debunked you so often that I think he's given up. Yet you continue to spout "the big lie" over and over again, always looking for some new angle to push your agenda.
What is sustainable these days ? Agriculture ? Oil Drilling ?
According to some, the only thing that is sustainable is a world without humankind on it. Since I tend to like humans, being one of them, I consider this way of thinking to be terrifying.
I tend to think that local ethanol production beats foreign oil imports any day of the week. It doesn't drown us in debt and we don't have to spend $150 billion+ per year occupying the farm belt and securing the tanker lanes ;).
In the end, though, I think V2G is the way to go. Liquid fuels are too dangerous -- politically, environmentally, and ecologically. So a nod to RR on that count.
Solar+Wind+Nuclear with storage. To me, it's a no brainer. But some people seem to think the world can't run on anything other than dead microbes fermented in the ground millions of years.
It's 19th century thinking at best. At worst, it's a recipe for disaster.
Sorry, but this is entirely false. Not every civilization that has existed has raped and pillaged the world around them.
It is a choice we make.
Cheers
Then be careful who you indict -- a civilization or all of humankind.
You don't have to say, "how far can I drive my car on corn?" which is as nonsensical as it sounds. Just look for an easy substitute based on established off-the shelf technology. To figure out whether exporting corn is a bad deal, say: I can easily heat my house with the corn, and how much natural gas would that save that I could then easily use to run a car? Corn furnaces and natural gas cars are easy to get and don't require additional processing of either energy input.
BadgerB,
Actually, Jeff Broin, CEO of Poet (refiners of 1.1 Billion gallons of ethanol/yr,) states that his company can turn out 435 gallons of ethanol from 150 bushels of corn.
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2007/10/cellulosic-ethanol-running-cars-o...
That would be about 2.9 gallons per bushel.
Add this to DOE's estimate that, on average, you only lose one half of one percent efficiency when running E10 vs. Gasoline, and I felt I was on pretty safe ground.
55% of the energy and only a one half of one % hit on mileage? The ballsiness of these administration guys to lie never ceases to amaze me. My personal experience as an obsessive Prius driver is that 10% ethanol is a 5% hit on my mileage, which, funny enough, is exactly what the law of conservation of energy would indicate.
The dry fate can be avoided it seems:
http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/
You need to actually spend time watching how the water flows and add organic material to the land. Not exactly the present method of doing business.
The point was, it is easier to export a ton of wheat than to try to make up the amount of water needed in growing that wheat where water is lacking.
Of course, without going into picky details, Germany does not use irrigation at all to grow wheat - and certainly not in the region where I live.
I posted this article back in January:
Saudi Arabia scraps wheat growing to save water
1 cubic meter of water is roughly equal to 1 tonne (1000 kilograms, not the same as the US "ton") so that is about 1300-1500 tonnes of water per tonne of wheat.
1 cubic meter = 1000 liters at 2.2 pounds (or 1 kg) per liter divided by 2,200 pounds per tonne. All numbers rounded where necessary for simplicity's sake but the decimal fraction wouldn't change much.
Point for your next trivia night:
A tonne is, by definition, the weight of a cubic metre of water.
Likewise a kilogram is, by definition, the weight of a litre (10cm cube)of water. 1000 litres in a cubic metre, hence 1000 kilograms in a tonne.
...but GreyZone probably knows this already and just didn't want to get into a long and "fascinating" discussion of the metric system.
I really hate to go into the details of the metric system, but I'm going to.
The original definition of the gram was the mass of 1 cc of water at 0°C. However, while that temperature is easy to achieve, the mass of water is pretty unstable at that temperature (having the habit of freezing and thawing and all), so in 1798 it was redefined to be the mass of 1 cc of water at 4°C. Anyway, because it is really hard to purify water to get it pure enough that it weighs 1 gram/cc the powers that be decided to officially define the kilogram as the mass of a 39.17 mm right cylinder of 90% platinum 10% iridium. The mass of this cylinder is very slightly greater than the mass of 1 cc of super-pure water with a specified ratio of oxygen isotopes in the water molecules. The prototype kilogram is stored under 2 bell jars in a vault in France.
As a side note, the density of water at 25°C is 997 kg/m^3, which is a bit lower than 1 tonne/m^3.
Making 700 tons of water realistic, in a German context. Obviously, Saudi Arabia, being both desert and much further south, is going to have a higher need of water to grow wheat.
I'm not sure that the US is actually that dependent on food imports, from my own analysis and Pat Murphy's - yes, we are a net food importer, but most of our calorie foods are grown here and it wouldn't be that difficult to replace our vegetable foods. On the other hand, energy...
BTW, sorry to do this here, but Westexas, I can't find an email for you anywhere. I'm writing about the ELM for food in my book, and I wanted to ask you questions - any chance you could email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com?
Thanks, and sorry not to send this query privately.
Sharon Astyk
If you click on his username you see his e-mail.(spam protected yours is not)
Thank you Paulus - apparently I'm not very bright ;-).
Sharon
westexas at aol.com
"X" = World's largest net food exporter (anyone know which country this is?)
You and I are, on a micro scale, are analogous to "X" and Saudi Arbia on a macro basis--in food & energy terms.
I think that the new coin of the realm is energy BTU's and food calories. The emerging problem for net food and net energy importers and for net food and net energy consumers is coming up with valuable goods and/or services to trade for food and energy.
I think that small organic farmers like you and Jason are going to be in great demand--in much the same way that high tech gurus were once sought out for advice.
I think it will be interesting to see whether the US government comes to subsidize small farmers and gardeners simply because we can provide food to the populace in general while allowing grain exports to be traded for oil. John Michael Greer's two tier system seems potentially possible here.
BTW, the US was the world's largest food exporter as of 2005, the last year for which I can find statistics. I think it unlikely that domestic ethanol production changed that number for 2007, but it is technically possible, and I can't find stats offhand. But with 40% of the world's grain exports, our impact is huge - the question is what will happen as food price rises effect the US as well.
But yes, I agree with you.
Sharon
Jewishfarmer,
1. I can't speak for anything on the Federal level, but in New Jersey, Governor Corzine is VERY seriously proposing the elimination of the State's Dept. of Agriculture for financial reasons. Besides this being the first state to announce this proposal, this act clearly shows how disconnected people in high places are from the necessities of daily living. To put what little is left of your food production at risk- .... I don't know.... (I don't think this country will ever develop a decent food or energy bill.)
2. I'm totally confused by food exports numbers. I've been told independently by many people that U.S. Grain is exported to China for milling and then re-imported to the U.S., it's supposedly cheaper. I thought it was an urban legend, but after talking with some specialty crop growers (spelt, organic dairy products, etc.) this may be true. So how are the export number counted?... I don't know.... So if you use data for your book, I suggest that you get the RAW DATA and make the conclusions yourself.
1. I agree with you that this situation hasn't even remotely penetrated - but that doesn't mean it won't. Think, for example, about peak oil two years ago vs. now - things can change quite rapidly, and given the food situation, almost certainly will. I don't claim that a two tier system is likely, but with the price of conventional food production going up, we are narrowing the gap between what small producers like me charge for food, vs. what the supermarkets charge. That's not to say I'm totally invulnerable to input costs - not at all, and I don't have the economies of scale, but I do have the ability to ignore many inputs, or replace them with natural system inputs.
A nation like the US with lots of food exports and a huge demand for oil is going to be doing a very complex dance in coming years, particularly as the percentage of our grain we use at home rises. Bringing millions of acres of lawn and public and private greenspace into production is one possible way of keeping the populace fed and also keeping imports coming in. My claim is not that this *will* happen but that it is one way it could play out.
2. Well, yes, of course, I'm working with the raw data - I just don't have all of 2007's yet ;-), so I can't swear we didn't keep more of our grain in place. It would have to be a huge change, though. As for exporting grain to mill in China, I believe we do that to an extent - I've not seen any data that suggests that this is a substantial issue, enough to make major shifts in the export data. As I understood the issue, the largest category of these exports was in rice and corn extracts for pet food - not a tiny market, but a drop in the comparative bucket.
Sharon
Sharon,
I don't know what you mean here. Recognition is perhaps more widespread, but there is no hint of this moving the top level of gov't to address the problem in any positive way. Yes, hunger will lead to recognition. But will anything be allowed to impinge on the interests of (big) agri-business?
Case in point. Rational? Yes. Doable? Over their dead bodies.
On a world-wide scale, there has been a massive migration from rural areas into urban slums ringing the big cities. There is no solution to spreading starvation unless this flow is reversed, and a way is found to reconnect people with the soil in way that is beneficial to the soil. (And even this is meaningless unless population is addressed also.) But corporate large-scale industrial agriculture is totally hostile to such talk.
Sharon and I were just talking about this. We both think that a crash program of small Victory gardens/farms is a win/win/win proposition. It makes business sense. The urban areas will need the food. And we are going to very badly need the jobs.
I suspect that the food and energy ELM effects may be reinforcing each other to some extent. If prices are set at the margin, by increasingly desperate food and energy importers bidding against each other, we may be looking at the beginning of a hyperbolic increase in food & energy prices. Who knows what the future holds, but in the past six months oil prices increased at a rate that would double the price every 18 months.
Couple your crash program of victory gardens (sustainable ones) and my crash program of household/community green build out and we've got ourselves damned close to a solution.... and all doable within a few years rather than decades.
Cheers
'over their dead bodies'.
'Dig for Victory!'
During the second world war in the UK, lawns and public parks were turned over to allotments. Even Bowling Greens and Cathederal lawns - some of which were hundreds of years old, were turned over to grow vegetables.
Some of it was gesture politics or propaganda, but it had the effect of keeping a lawn to be seen as socially unacceptable.
Permablitz: Near Instant Permaculture for the ‘Burbs
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/permablitz-urban-permaculture.ph...
Sharon,
I've been mulling over this issue of the small farmer... maybe some organization similar to The Grange of the late 19th Century Mid-West could give the small farmer some influence and recognition that currently doesn't exist.
I glanced at the story about the Polish farmers. The EU is pushing for farming "efficiency". Gee, doesn't "efficiency" mean NO SPARE CAPACITY?
The National Grange still exists. As a current member of a community grange, I can tell you that many of us are willing to take on this role. The job is huge and with membership down, it's tough to get much done. A chicken or the egg kind of thing.
Currently, a large portion of the membership is made up of 60-90 year olds, who having been members most of their lives are the ones in leadership roles. They don't buy peak oil or climate change. I'm trying to change that in my corner of Oregon.
The Grange organization has a long history of legislative action and still has a lobbyist. National headquarters are in DC.
http://www.nationalgrange.org/
I believe John Michael Greer and Jason Bradford are Grange members. Are there any other folks out there that are members?
I am a grange member and a huge shift is happening in the granges around this county. Enrollment is up, and they are focusing attention on local food security--holding harvest festivals, supporting local farms, hosting events.
According to this, New Jersey "agriculture" is less than $1 billion p.a., 2% of GDP, with the bulk of it essentially ornamental and recreational in nature (e.g. greenhouse/nursery, horses/mules.) So, in a time of tight money, and with food production so utterly trivial as to be virtually beneath notice, it seems to me that a few desks in Consumer Affairs or somewhere else would suffice. I wouldn't want to try to make a case that New Jersey needs a full-fledged stand-alone agriculture department beyond that, since its only job would be to warm extra chairs in Trenton.