Will we bring back the Victory Gardens through depaving and planting
food in lawns?
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Written by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #189, June 20, 2008
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=1
<http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=1
>
*The empire of cheap food is crumbling*
You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any
more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for
petroleum-induced famine.
We have "innocently" accommodated rising population with greater and
greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we
have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe
limitations -- major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss.
The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see
with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.
We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly
brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap
energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy
arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations,
Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute,
and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is
offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth
that are simple extrapolations of historical trends.
No one can say with certainty that the worst effects of today's crisis
will occur tomorrow or by any particular date. But it is irrational to
assume there will only be gradual tightening of supplies until some
solutions miraculously come to our aid. One ought to at least admit that
one year ago few people thought we'd be going in the direction we're
going in, this fast, today.
Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, i.e.,
for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have plummeted:
"Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in 30 years," according to
Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital Signs. This is exacerbated
by increasingly weirder weather, compounded by the oil price/supply
pressure on food. What can interfere with the three-day situation are
truckers on strike (as in Europe), extended/repeated power outages, and
the inability of the work force to commute to work.
I asked Chris Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, about the
escalating crisis that I assumed he was quite worried about. He told me
on Wednesday,
"A lot will depend on the crop year and the weather. There is slack
in food supply system from meat consumption, for example. One
steak's energy requirement is the same as one gallon of ethanol. I
see the glass half full and don't have an apocalyptic view. We're
seeing fuel economy improvements and other self-correcting
mechanisms. There's $100 billion in renewable energy investment this
year. We needed this crisis to start changing toward conservation.
The pendulum is swinging again, as it did in the 1970s. We're not
going off the end of the cliff on peak oil. Production declines will
be gradual." I sent him my thoughts on the latter, with my thanks. I
sure was surprised that he wasn't half as worried as I am. Maybe he
does not see as much of a problem the fact that the nation's
infrastructure being petroleum-based. He probably would not agree
with me that the Earth is being murdered along with us human beings.
Zap! A global-warming heat wave kills many thousands in a U.S. city.
Other cities take note, realizing their own cities are "like the one
that got zapped last weekend." Between the water supply problems, energy
overload for air conditioning, rising prices for food, water and
gasoline, people try to escape the urban heat island effect. Too many
consumers stocking up and trying to split town exacerbated the tragedy.
When cities run out of food, and people want to leave en masse, they
will get stuck in traffic jams the way fleeing (potential) victims of
Hurricane Rita did in 2005. Will survivors be the ones who had the
fullest gas tanks? Will these survivors also require guns to obtain food
outside the city, whether by hunting or sticking up some hapless or
well-armed locals?
Culture Change's reports do not intend to add to hysteria. Indeed, if
only there were no reason to be alarmed. But looking at our collective
situation, it is difficult to see how wrenching shortages are avoidable.
The consequence of reactions to these shortages will not be pretty.
Without facing this, and taking action to prevent it, our Ship of Fools
is on a course to hit the rocks.
Whether you are relatively "set" -- with local food supply, not just
money -- or you are living from paycheck to paycheck and thus depend on
the trucks coming into the supermarket without a hitch, you will not be
immune to some interruption or limitation on the food you have probably
taken for granted. As petroleum is in fast-dwindling supply and is
relied upon for mass producing our food, shipping it (on average 1,500
miles for North Americans), packaging it and preparing it, we are up
against a petroleum-induced famine of our own making. What evil-doer
will we blame instead of ourselves?
The good news is that creative ways to obtain wild food are alive and
well. Acorns and insects, however, are frowned upon -- by the
conventional consumer well fed for now. Is it time to stop cutting down
oak trees? Poisoning snails that are the escargot species? Wasting our
nitrogen-rich urine by flushing it into our water supply instead of
feeding it to fruit trees? Let us go over other options that we have:
Will we bring back the Victory Gardens through depaving and planting
food in lawns? Until the food pops up for harvest, what will we eat
-- cats and rats? None of these sudden strategies can feed millions
of hungry people in cities that don't have pro-active leadership as
yet. Yet, pedal power feeds millions in many a Chinese city
surrounded by small farms. But every day the global economy plugs
along, China is more fossil-fuel dependent, using far more coal than
the U.S. and the U.K. combined.
Progress has been illusory in the last half century, but the period has
been ballyhooed as amazing. "...the amount of grain produced per person
grew from 285 kilograms in 1961 to a peak of 376 kilograms in 1986."
Since then it has gone down to 350 kilograms. China's is 325 kilograms,
the U.S. enjoys 1,230 kilograms, and in Zimbabwe -- which Richard
Heinberg told me is a guide to U.S. society after petrocollapse -- is
just 90 kilograms per capita. [Worldwatch, 2008] Can the most modern in
the world really conserve the Earth suddenly?
There's no let-up on the horizon, but people fervently hope for relief,
as sure as tomorrow's newspapers will be printed. As sure as the July
4th fireworks will be another display of our powerful continuity. Is
this "Summer Driving Season" our last hurrah? Meanwhile, people are
hurting in the pocket book, and are buying less stuff because of the oil
price trend. So they look to blame someone, such as OPEC, the major oil
companies, George Bush, take your pick. Some await Barack Obama to take
over the White House and cleanse us of our woes, but even he says that
community action is where it's at.
Clearly, a half trillion dollar war on Iraq was not what our finances
needed. If all that money had not been wasted, oil prices and food would
be cheaper than they are. But what about the trickle-down of those
corporations profiting off the war? Surely those billions for the
contractors, and the fat salaries for those Americans so welcome in the
Land Between Two Rivers, aided our economy. Or did they? The war
profiteers and their friends in the corporate media expect everyone to
buy capitalist theory. But wouldn't you rather have had the half
trillion bucks go to more livable conditions in our towns, such as
community gardens, extended hours for libraries, better pay for
teachers, and preventive health care? Thought so.
Unfortunately, our socioeconomic problems are too deeply rooted in
disastrous treatment of Mother Nature, for even radical changes in
federal spending priorities to get us out of this. So, the big one is
coming. Looking at the fundamentals of our society and how it has
changed from The Great Depression of the 1930s, we are in for something
much worse than those days when the family farms were intact. What is
implied for the big one on the horizon, according to optimistic
activists such as Joanna Macy and David Korten, is "the great turning."
Doesn't sound too scary, so I hope they're right. They will be right,
but they seem to skip the unpleasant bit about collapse.
The empire is crumbling, but first we must go through end-stages as the
Romans and others had to: increasing debt, falling agricultural output,
over-extended military, growing urban population without much productive
purpose, etc. But we're the good guys! -- we call our empire's
philosophy "Democracy," and we are so clever with science. Really,
though, we've simply done better at distracting the populace and giving
them the carrot more often than the stick, apparently. This translates
to consumer freedom through more goods. The Big Gulp drink in disposable
plastic -- who could ask for more? We have had none other than The
Empire of Cheap Food. Cheap in the sense that cancer can be had at lower
prices than previous generations had to pay. Also, subsidized petroleum
(to this day as well) jacked up the food supply and the human numbers.
It's amazing how really intelligent people can be in dreamland over the
possibility of positive change coming to the rescue. It's not just
limited to the technofix. It's the general idea that people "are
becoming more aware," or "there are more and more people getting into
organic gardening, CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture),
permaculture" and the like.
To get an indication of which may be more valid -- (A) the trend for
salvation as indicated by the growing phenomenon of gardening as noted
by the /New York Times/ last week, or (B) the inexorable, accelerating
crunch of dwindling resources for too many people no matter how positive
they may feel now -- let us consider the result of a test on the
community level.
This was very recently done in a most aware and progressive place.
The population is small but well educated, oriented to be sensitive
to world affairs, affluent, and active for local improvements.
Sustainability is a goal in the eyes of many.
Here's what was found from a survey of small and/or organic farms:
no labor-help is needed at the beginning of the summer, nor for the
whole summer long. Not even free help, volunteering. The farms'
production are set and unchangeable, apparently. Too bad, when the
amount of food imported from afar is about 95% of what is eaten. One
would think that at a time of rising food prices and the awareness
of the global energy picture, such as peak oil, and when climate
change makes the growing of food far more chancy, there'd be a
discernible interest in upping the output and adding to community
involvement of local farming. But the fact that people are (1) not
anticipating any more demand for local and organic food this year,
compared to last year, and that (2) there is no apparent need to
gear up for greater production, seems ominous. It seems to indicate
that there needs to be a raving crisis to get people to change their
habits and plans.
Meanwhile, with a 100-year flood on the Iowa corn fields -- where
erosion on monocropped, depleted soil killed by petroleum pesticides and
fertilizer and mechanical tilling -- we are in for a hell of a summer.
Is your food secure? Are you gardening, saving seeds, and protecting
precious land and water?
The food price increases have something to do with oil prices that have
doubled in a year. And the oil prices have something to do with peak
oil. And peak oil has something to do with wasting the Earth headlong
into deprivation and ecological destruction. And it's about civilization
as a runaway train. If you don't agree with the metaphor, just try
getting off. Crash must come, and come it will, and soon. I hope I'm
wrong that: *You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.*
That would be our concern when the price of oil can skyrocket (which it
is already doing) -- if we were prudent. The price of oil is far too low
when there are still countless people driving cars unnecessarily.
Apparently these drivers don't find global warming to be as a big deal
as "the economy." Because it's money, and only money, that can change
some people -- until they find they cannot eat their money.
Where I sit, the plants are crying out: It's near 100 degrees Fahrenheit
two days in a row in bone-dry San Francisco. It's the wild deviations
from the averages that are deadly to life.
* * * * *
*Further reading:*
Pedal Power Produce is a prime means of coping with petrocollapse and
the growing food crisis (we ain't seen nothin' yet):
culturechange.org/pedalpowerproduce.html
<http://www.culturechange.org/pedalpowerproduce.html>
Royal Bank of Scotland issues global stock and credit crash alert By
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor June 19, 2008:
telegraph.co.uk
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/18/cnrbs118.xml
>
Mississippi region flood impact on food: "The Chicago Board of Trade
corn prices traded at a record $8.07 a bushel. The floods will mean more
food inflation, not only for U.S. consumers, but also for dozens of
countries that buy American grain. The United States exports 54 percent
of the world's corn..." from "Midwest Farmland Flooding Boosts Worldwide
Food Prices" by Nick Carey, Reuters, June 18, 2008:
truthout.org
<http://www.truthout.org/article/midwest-farmland-flooding-boosts-worldwide-food-prices
>
"Banking on Gardening" by Marian Burros, June 11, 2008:
nytimes.com
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/dining/11garden.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
>
Urban farm showcase, Pasadena, Calif.: pathtofreedom.com
<http://pathtofreedom.com/>
"Yes, We Will Have No Bananas" by Dan Koeppel, New York Times, June 18,
2008:
nytimes.com
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18koeppel.html?ref=opinion>
Peak oil background from one of the experts, Congressman Roscoe
Bartlett: bartlett.house.gov/energyupdates
<http://www.bartlett.house.gov/energyupdates/>
Worldwatch Institute's Vital Signs (newly updated online):
worldwatch.org <http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5539>
/The End of Food/ by Paul Roberts, Houghton Mifflin (2008). More info at
usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com
<http://usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/05/paul-roberts-end-of-food.html>
"Severe Weather to Increase as Earth Warms" by Juliet Eilperin,
Washington Post, June19, 2008:
truthout.org
<http://www.truthout.org/article/report-says-severe-weather-increase-earth-war
>
/Acknowledgments: Thanks to Peter Salonius, moth, and Albert Bates for
their excellent editorial input. - JL/
