[Vision2020] Food Price Increase: Oil Hits Record High Today: $104.50 Barrel

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/23471454

Garrett Clevenger wrote:

>
> The fact is, as fuel prices increase, food prices will
> increase.


Thanks for your analysis promoting local food production, and not paving and
developing prime farm land for a huge sprawling mass consumer oriented mall,
using huge amounts of local water supplies.  This approach only encourages
the long term unsustainable model of globalized depleting fossil fuels
powered, excessive consumer and resource extractive oriented lifestyle.

This model assumes food grown, fertilized, processed, packaged, shipped long
distances, and stored/preserved, with huge amounts of fossil fuel.  As
fossil fuel energy costs, and pressures on agriculture for biofuels,
increase, in the future the prime farm land on the Palouse being developed
may be missed.

Till we have practical affordable energy sources to substitute for oil and
coal, and the infrastructure in place for widespread utilization, the cheap
fossil fuel powered food system we have enjoyed from US bread baskets will
become increasingly expensive.  We may need to eat the wheat and lentils
grown locally more locally, or use local land for biofuel production.  And
using local water sources for food production, as Garrett advocates, rather
than supplying water to consumer sprawl malls selling huge amounts of goods
made in China, et. al.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/PB2ch2_ss3.htm

*THE OIL INTENSITY OF FOOD *
*From Chapter 2. Beyond the Oil Peak

Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a
Civilization in Trouble (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006). *


Modern agriculture depends heavily on the use of gasoline and diesel fuel in
tractors for plowing, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. Irrigation
pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, and coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer
production is also energy-intensive: the mining, manufacture, and
international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil. Natural
gas, however, is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in
nitrogen fertilizers. 16

In the United States, for which reliable historical data are available, the
combined use of gasoline and diesel fuel in agriculture has fallen from its
historical high of 7.7 billion gallons in 1973 to 4.6 billion in 2002, a
decline of 40 percent. For a broad sense of the fuel efficiency trend in U.S.
agriculture, the gallons of fuel used per ton of grain produced dropped from
33 in 1973 to 13 in 2002, an impressive decrease of 59 percent. 17

One reason for this was a shift to minimum and no-till cultural practices on
roughly two fifths of U.S. cropland. No-till cultural practices are now used
on roughly 95 million hectares worldwide, nearly all of them concentrated in
the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada. The United States—with 25
million hectares of minimum or no-till—leads the field, closely followed by
Brazil. 18

While U.S. agricultural use of gasoline and diesel has been declining, in
many developing countries it is rising as the shift from draft animals to
tractors continues. A generation ago, for example, cropland in China was
tilled largely by animals. Today much of the plowing is done with tractors.
19

Fertilizer accounts for 20 percent of U.S. farm energy use. Worldwide, the
figure may be slightly higher. On average, the world produces 13 tons of
grain for each ton of fertilizer used. But this varies widely among
countries. For example, in China a ton of fertilizer yields 9 tons of grain,
in India it yields 11 tons, and in the United States, 18 tons. 20

U.S. fertilizer efficiency is high because U.S. farmers routinely test their
soils to precisely determine crop nutrient needs and because the United
States is also the leading producer of soybeans, a leguminous crop that
fixes nitrogen in the soil. Soybeans, which rival corn for area planted in
the United States, are commonly grown in rotation with corn and, to a lesser
degree, with winter wheat. Since corn has a voracious appetite for nitrogen,
alternating corn and soybeans in a two-year rotation substantially reduces
the nitrogen fertilizer needed for the corn. 21

Urbanization increases demand for fertilizer. As rural people migrate to
cities, it becomes more difficult to recycle the nutrients in human waste
back into the soil. Beyond this, the growing international food trade can
separate producer and consumer by thousands of miles, further disrupting the
nutrient cycle. The United States, for example, exports some 80 million tons
of grain per year—grain that contains large quantities of basic plant
nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The ongoing export of these
nutrients would slowly drain the inherent fertility from U.S. cropland if
the nutrients were not replaced in chemical form. 22

Factory farms, like cities, tend to separate producer and consumer, making
it difficult to recycle nutrients. Indeed, the nutrients in animal waste
that are an asset to farmers become a liability in large feeding operations,
often with costly disposal. As oil, and thus fertilizer, become more costly,
the economics of factory farms may become less attractive.

Irrigation, another major energy claimant, is taking more and more energy
worldwide. In the United States, close to 19 percent of agricultural energy
use is for pumping water. In the other two large food producers—China and
India—the number is undoubtedly much higher, since irrigation figures so
prominently in both countries. 23

Since 1950 the world's irrigated area has tripled, climbing from 94 million
hectares to 277 million hectares in 2002. In addition, the shift from large
dams with gravity-fed canal systems that dominated the last century's third
quarter to drilled wells that tap underground water resources has also
boosted irrigation fuel use. 24

Some trends, such as the shift to no tillage, are making agriculture less
oil-intensive. But rising fertilizer use, the spread of farm mechanization,
and falling water tables are making food production more oil-dependent. This
helps explain why farmers are becoming involved in the production of
biofuels, both ethanol to replace gasoline and biodiesel to replace diesel.
(Renewed interest in these fuels is discussed later in this chapter.)

Although attention commonly focuses on energy use on the farm, this accounts
for only one fifth of total food system energy use in the United States.
Transport, processing, packaging, marketing, and kitchen preparation of food
account for nearly four fifths of food system energy use. Indeed, my
colleague Danielle Murray notes that the U.S. food economy uses as much
energy as France does in its entire economy. 25

The 14 percent of energy used in the food system to move goods from farmer
to consumer is roughly equal to two thirds of the energy used to produce the
food. And an estimated 16 percent of food system energy use is devoted to
processing—canning, freezing, and drying food—everything from frozen orange
juice concentrate to canned peas. 26

Food staples, such as wheat, have traditionally moved over long distances by
ship, traveling from the United States to Europe, for example. What is new
is the shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables over vast distances by air.
Few economic activities are more energy-intensive. 27

Food miles—the distance food travels from producer to consumer—have risen
with cheap oil. Among the longest hauls are the flights during the northern
hemisphere winter that carry fresh produce, such as blueberries from New
Zealand to the United Kingdom. At my local supermarket in downtown
Washington, D.C., the fresh grapes in winter typically come by plane from
Chile, traveling almost 5,000 miles. Occasionally they come from South
Africa, in which case the distance from grape arbor to dining room table is
8,000 miles, nearly a third of the way around the earth. 28

One of the most routine long-distance movements of fresh produce is from
California to the heavily populated U.S. East Coast. Most of this produce
moves by refrigerated trucks. In assessing the future of long-distance
produce transport, one oil analyst observed that the days of the 3,000-mile
Caesar salad may be numbered. 29

Packaging is also surprisingly energy-intensive, accounting for 7 percent of
food system energy use. It is not uncommon for the energy invested in
packaging to exceed that of the food it contains. And worse, nearly all the
packaging in a modern supermarket is designed to be discarded after one use.
30

The most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the kitchen. Much
more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare food in the home than is used
to produce it in the first place. The big energy user in the food system is
the kitchen refrigerator, not the farm tractor. 31

While the use of oil dominates the production end of the food system,
electricity (usually produced from coal or gas) dominates the consumption
end. The oil-intensive modern food system that evolved when oil was cheap
will not survive as it is now structured with higher energy prices. Among
the principal adjustments will be more local food production and movement
down the food chain as consumers react to rising food prices by buying fewer
high-cost livestock products.

--------------------------------------------

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080305/4c70bb88/attachment.html