The Oil Drum

This is a guest post on energy and our agricultural system, by Jason Bradford, who has written here previously on "Relocalization: A Strategic Response to Peak Oil and Climate Change". Jason has a Phd in Biology and has written/published on the topics of relocalization and ecological economics. He is the founder of Willits Economic Localization (WELL) and runs a CSA in Willits, CA. (He also has a biweekly radio show "The Reality Report", where next Monday at noon EST he and I will be discussing evolution, addiction and economics. His show can be heard streaming online at www.kzyx.org.)

Tom Philpott over at Gristmill has an interesting post on the sustainability of organic farming vs. big agribusiness and "industrial-organic" farming.

Philpott writes:

To an extent, the problem is one of semantics, centering on the definition of "sustainable." To many green types, places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats teem with "sustainably produced" stuff -- everything from T-shirts to apples, chicken and eggs, even versions of Twizzlers and TV dinners. But the great bulk of it falls under the rubric of industrial-organic -- like the wares on offer at Wal-Mart, only a little less so, these goods depend on a culture of cheap and plentiful crude oil and labor.

The cheap-oil problem has certainly gained traction among greens. Blogs devoted to "peak oil" abound; this very blog seems like one at times. Most of these discussions, though, devolve into sniping about biofuels and hybrids. It's important to wonder how we'd get around in an era of super-high oil prices.

But I don't understand why more people aren't worried about what we'd eat.