Hungry for oil
Caroline Lucas, Guardian
Dwindling oil stocks could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the second world war.
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Over the weekend hundreds of people gathered in Wales for the Soil Association’s annual conference, now it seems a good time to reflect on the enormous vulnerability of our industrialised food system’s access to cheap oil. Dwindling stocks and EU trade and energy policies threaten food price hikes – and could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the second world war.
If you thought it was difficult getting used to high petrol prices on the supermarket forecourt – wait until the high cost and limited availability of oil results in food price hikes and possible shortages on the supermarket shelves. ..
Many industry experts predict that Peak Oil will happen by 2020: an increasing number argue we are close to, or have already passed, the peak of oil production. Already, world oil and gas production is declining at an average of 4 to 6% annually, while demand is growing at 2 to 3%. The last time more oil was discovered than used in a single year was a quarter of a century ago. ..
So what can we do about it?
The government has the primary responsibility to guarantee food and energy supplies – and meet its international obligations not to impact on other nations’ ability to do the same – and it must establish a Royal Commission on Food Security to raise awareness of the problem and examine possible solutions.
It would surely quickly reach the inevitable conclusion: that we must decouple the food and oil markets by cutting agriculture’s dependence on oil, by promoting local and organic food systems where possible and by reversing the UK’s growing dependence on imported food.
We should also be pushing to revise EU energy policies which could promote bio-fuel production at the expense of foodstuffs, and development policies which encourage production of food for export at the expense of local food security. ..
(29 Jan 2007)
Bio for Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for the UK.
Take to the fields
Jeremy Leggett, Guardian
The tipping point of global oil production will be accompanied by a dire energy shock, and we will have to redefine the concept of farming.
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On Friday and Saturday last week, a potentially historic meeting took place in the rather unpromising location of the CIA, otherwise known as the Cardiff International Arena. Britain’s organic farming community gathered en masse for the annual meeting of the Soil Association, and their theme was peak oil and farming in the post-petroleum era. Organisers and peak-oil whistleblowers alike thought that perhaps this was the first time an organisation in a critically affected sector has held a conference on the theme of peak oil.
If the peak-oil proposition is correct, the tipping point of global oil production will happen – largely unexpectedly – in this decade or early in the next, accompanied by a dire energy shock. The people in the room will be in the front rank of those first affected. They can also be in the vanguard of those who can offer a proactive vision of what a survivable post-shock future could look like.
Discussion ranged across many potential impacts and implications. Let me choose just two: the number of farmers, and where they farm.
So oil-dependent is modern industrial agriculture, and so relatively few are the people employed in it, that we will need to redefine the very concept of a farmer after the peak hits us.
Today our typical farmer might tend 500 acres with tractors and other expensive bits of oil-addicted kit. But in the post-peak era – with the oil price sky high, and oil supplies fast-shrinking and therefore probably rationed – our farmers will need to be tending an area of maybe one-tenth the size, using more human labour and strategic use of a tractor powered by something other than petroleum, plus good old-fashioned draft animals.
Many more people will need to be working the land if we are to feed ourselves. When the collapsing Soviet Union turned the oil taps off on Cuba, 15-25% of the population had to take to the fields in some form or other. (The good news is that they succeeded, to the extent that nobody starved.) Today in the UK, 1% of us farm. In 1900, before mass addiction to oil, fully 40% did.
Who is planning for this kind of counter-intuitive impact? Not governments, for certain, and very few individuals and organisations. There are oases of foresight. In the US, the City of Oakland has a target of growing 30% of its own food within the city boundaries by 2020. In the British Isles, community-level responses are underway in Kinsale, Totnes and other towns. The list is not long. Most people and institutions are either unaware of the coming tsunami, or in denial.
However, as became clear over the two days of discussion, there is much that organic farmers are doing that moves us away from oil and other fossil fuels. And there are many ideas on offer for what more could be done. As the director of the Soil Association, Patrick Holden, put it: “What I have found is that the prospect of developing a strategic plan to do everything we can to equip ourselves for a post-fossil fuels age is, strangely, an inspirational proposition.”
Let us hope it proves so to many people. Different it will surely be.
(29 Jan 2007)
On Eve of USDA’s Farm Bill Proposal, Group Proposes Dozen Fresh Ideas for Farm and Food Policy
Staff, Environmental Defence
Washington, DC – On the eve of the Farm Bill proposal by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Defense today proposed a dozen “Fresh Ideas” for federal farm and food policy that would help more farmers, consumers, communities and the environment.
Among the national environmental group’s proposals are: a major increase in USDA incentives to improve water quality and stabilize the climate, a transition from subsidies to income stabilization accounts, and more USDA resources to combat sprawl and to develop renewable energy on farms and ranchland.
“Renewal of federal farm and food programs in the 2007 Farm Bill creates a rare opportunity to boost the profitability of many more farmers and communities,” said Scott Faber, farm policy campaign director for Environmental Defense. “It also could provide consumers with more food and energy choices, and reward farmers and ranchers when they take steps to help meet the nation’s most pressing environmental challenges. The next Farm Bill should help many more farmers, consumers, communities and the environment.”
Specifically, Environmental Defense’s dozen “Fresh Ideas” proposals include:
· Farm policies dramatically increase USDA incentives to improve the stewardship of working lands, protect 10 millions acres of farm and ranchland from sprawl, and provide 20 percent of working lands funds to groups of producers meeting local environmental challenges through “cooperative conservation” agreements.
· Farm policies dramatically expand USDA grants and loans for renewable energy production on agricultural lands and link UDSA energy investments to an index of environmental benefits. ..
· Farm policies help farmers get ready for a cap on carbon emissions by supporting initiatives to measure and reduce on-farm emissions and carbon sequestration.
· Farm policies help farmers make the transition to organic food production and expand programs to promote healthy food choices, such as farm-to-school initiatives. ..
”Environmental Defence, a leading US nonprofit organization, represents more than 500,000 members.
(29 Jan 2007)
