Thank you for this.

Like why in a post peak oil world agriculture will not be given priority. Are to believe that the auto centric life style will continue even as we starve to death? I don't think so.

We are close to a post peak oil world if not there, and agriculture is certainly not being given priority now. So unless there is a very quick reversal, we may well see starvation.

I'm not a farmer, so I'll listen to others on your other points. But if the direction pointed to in the film is not feasible, then it seems to me we are screwed. The energy won't be there. We are going to have to farm without fossil fuels and high energy at some point. How might it be done?

The one thing there will be is plenty of labor available, although untrained. That's the big problem I see. Millions must return to the soil, but they are like me: don't know what kind of tree carrots grow on. There's a huge learning curve ahead, even learning what's already known, never mind learning some of this stuff discussed in the video.

X,
It's good to see comments from a farmer. I estimate the US farmers use on the 340M cultivated acres about 5gallons diesel/year, which would be 120,000 boe/day, 4% of diesel use, <1 % of oil use. Easy to give that a priority not much behind hospitals, police, fire.

Does that sound about right? This is not including transport to and from farms( that a transport issue, also important but if push comes to shove we can use bicycles / trains/ etc.)

Not sure why the focus on "local food" when US and Canadian grain farmers are growing >100 Million tons of grain, and it uses less than 1gallon of diesel to move half a ton 900 miles by rail.
The oil gluttons are not farmers, but the rest of us, one days driving uses more gasoline/diesel than transport of a years food supply.

x,

Glad to see you still plugging for Monsanto, and when you misstate what the film said it reinforces my doubts about your intentions.

Make me feel better: watch it again and report back what she *actually* says about I-NPK and pesticides.

Why are you so concerned with people *not* needing to use I-NPK and fertilizers? Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't you be thrilled you can grow your food without either?

Re: the grain comments. We are, in fact, addicted to grain. Rather, carbohydrates. It's a major factor of obesity. Why pretend otherwise? She didn't say there should be no grains, but the one gardener did offer that nuts might be a good replacement. I like the idea, myself, but would still want to grow grains just because I like certain foods, such as wheat bread.

Also, can you back up your contention that very few American farmers plow their fields? I have serious doubts about this. Link?

Cheers

X

absolutely agree that agriculture would be prioritized as oil supplies decline although judging by current politics I think we would have to see a fairly major crisis (not just the prediction of one) before that happened. Last year in the UK during the price spike there didn't seem to be any move to stop farms going out of business - government were happy to leave it to market forces. Also the prioritization of farms for available FF won't be much of a help if an economically driven societal collapse scenario unfolds as many peakers believe is possible.

Fertilizer was the major cost that drove farmers out of business last year (like yourself, this is the major cost input to arable farms here in the UK). The price of NPK rose dangerously with the price of oil. I guess this is because the N is derived from natural gas which roughly tracks the price of oil (and most think is going to b peak not far behind oil and decline at a much faster rate post peak). Phosphate and potash are both mined in hugely fuel intensive open cast systems largely in north Africa and Canada respectively. Apart from the huge input of FF in mining and processing, from a British point of view (which was the subject of the film in question) these places are far enough away for transport fuel to be an issue. I think the film should have mentioned the phosphate peak but that would only have strengthened its argument for major agricultural change.

Again crop rotation can play a part in nitrogen fixing but obviously vastly reduces grain yields because of the fallow years (soya does not grow in the UK climate so we are left with field beans, alfalfa? or clover. In the UK we already import over 40% of our food and do not have the agricultural acreage per person to throw away production to clover without making things very tight.

It's worth baring in mind that diesel to run machinery is only the obvious use of FF in agriculture. I wonder how much is used in manufacturing that machinery in the first place. I recall reading a story recently about a shortage of tractor tyres in one region of the US with John Deere resorting to supplying tractors to dealers with no tyres. A tractor with no tyres is just a lump of metal. And regarding grain drying, clearly your climate is better suited to grin production than ours as grain drying (wheat, barley, oats etc) is commonplace in the UK. Last 2 years in particular as we had very wet summers that nearly put pay to a large part of the harvest.
The big yields from gardening as far as I am aware are designed to be staggered (particularly in permaculture) throughout the year. One big harvest to market (and subsequent grain storage) is very much part of industrial agriculture and is rarely the case in subsistence/small surplus farming which I believe is what the film was advocating. Even now in my home town there are many small scale gardener-farmers who supply salable quantities of many foodstuffs directly to the local shops many times throughout the year. That system could easily be extended.

Genetically modified crops are not legal to grow in Europe. I think the majority of Europeans would like to keep it that way (often for irrational uneducated reasons but equally because of legitimate concerns regarding food and environmental safety, farmers indebtedness to unscrupulous agri-giants and a complete lack of knowledge of the long-term implications. I think Europe is happy to make the USA our guinea pig on that one. The problem with plowing is that is kills the soil fauna which are essential to maintaining natural soil fertility - no till using herbicides and fungicides may reduce erosion but does not exactly encourage a thriving living soil.

I personally think the 12 miilion part-time growers feeding our 62million population is feasible and desirable (socially speaking) but also think it will require a collapse of the current system before we get round to doing it. That makes at least one season of very hungry Brits.

Hello X,

Your Quote: "..Phosphorous and phosphate do not come from oil."

I don't quite know where to begin to refute this again as you have been a TODer for sometime, and I am assuming that you have read most of my prior postings on this NPK subject.

I will just say that the mined Elements phosphorus[P] & potassium[K] come from massive amounts of applied energy [plus sulfur] and mega-billion$ infrastructure, much in the form of electricity [coal,natgas,nuke,hydro], plus the more direct embedded route of oil for transport movement.

To refute this to my satisfaction: I will happily accept posted photos of truly massive, modern day pick & shovel mining for P & K, predominant movement by wheelbarrow, draft animal, wind-sailing Clippership around the globe, and hand-sprinkling the I-NPK across mega-acres of wheat & corn versus tractor & tool fert-injection.