Frantic adaptation in any species or group, when their local carrying capacity has been exceeded, can temporarily stave off population collapse (many species, gerbils and some other rodents being prime examples, will resort to cannibalism in the face of severe overshoot). It ultimately deepens the catastrophe, however, when the inevitable can no longer be avoided. Of all the living species on this planet man has consistently proven, through our brief history, to be arguably the most adaptable species on earth. We have achieved this by adopting a strategy very different from that forced on other species by instinct. Where other species are instinctively compelled to adapt to their environment we intellectually adapt that environment to fit our needs.
Despite our ingenuity, however, we, like all other species, are ultimately subject to and constrained by the same finitude of the resources upon which we rely and which support our existence. Unlike other species, though, we have cleverly manipulated the game so that we are not individually constrained by the availability of resources in our local environment. We have taken survival of the species to a whole new level. The survival of our entire species, unlike any other, is limited not by the local environment in which we individually live but upon the collective resources of the entire planet. We are the first and, thus far, the only truly global species, not forgetting, of course, the other species we have domesticated and taken along with us on our march to dominate the globe.
We move things from one place to another depending on the abundance or scarcity of those things in different places. If an area is short of water we build a pipeline to bring in water from another area. Our individual food consumption is not limited to what can be grown in our local area. Millions of tons of food are moved around the planet on a daily basis, moving from areas where we can produce a surplus to those areas in need or want of that surplus. Where other carnivores rely on the availability of game in their territory we have domesticated and bred our game to ensure we always have it close at hand. If one nation has a surplus of population and another can or will absorb some of that surplus people leave and immigrate into other nations. Areas that can produce cotton or wool or silk supply the raw materials to clothe people throughout the world.
Unlike other species, we can and do ignore local shortages because we know that those shortages can be made up from surpluses elsewhere, anywhere in the world. And when we move through or into areas that are deficient in the resources we need or want we, unlike any other species, take those resources with us to compensate for those deficiencies.
All of this has, especially over these past two or three centuries, given us the false impression that we humans have no limits, that the resources that sustain us are infinite and the ability of the human population to grow is equally infinite. Yet we, of all species, know with absolute certainty that this is not true. We know we live on a finite world. And we know what happens to a species when it is in overshoot and is exceeding the carrying capacity of its environment.
Man is the only species with the vision to foresee its own possible extinction, the intellect to bring it about, the intelligence to avoid it, and the stupidity to let it happen anyway. The epitaph on our species tombstone may read: We knew we could destroy ourselves and now, by God, we've proven it. That's the problem with disasters. They're never quite as believable when avoided as when they happen.
We have a cultural aversion to individual murder and suicide and moreso mass murder, like that in the WWII holocaust or in the Rwanda genocide, or group suicide such as that in Jonestown. Odd that we seem not to have the same aversion to species murder and suicide. Like the hopeless addict, we adamantly cling to the very practices that we do or should know are destined to destroy us. Like the terminal addict, we may well go to our collective grave looking for that next fix believing it to be the salvation that came too late.
Our human population is in serious overshoot. There is not enough carrying capacity to sustain us all naturally. The appearance that our population is sustainable is a hologram maintained by massive amounts of fossil fuels. We have, for at least the last couple of centuries, been living in a virtual world. We consume virtual food each calorie of which requires 10 calories of fossil fuel energy. We wear virtual clothing made from a variety of fibers derived from oil. We sustain ourselves with virtual work, ride to work on virtual horses, live in virtual tribes in virtual communities. Everything about, in and from our human world is virtual. We have, we mistakenly believe, cut ourselves off from the natural world, see it only as a resource to be turned into virtual stuff in our virtual world.
It takes countless trillions of calories of fossil fuel energy every day to maintain the illusion of our virtual world. We consume, globally, over eighty-four million barrels of oil every day to maintain the illusion that our population is sustainable. And we are destroying the real, natural world, like a black hole devouring stars, to support our illusion.
Our virtual world, our illusion of reality, our illusion of sustainability, is totally dependent on the natural world against which we do constant, destructive battle. While the population of our virtual world continues to grow the resources of that natural world on which our existence is critically dependent are rapidly racing toward depletion. We have not just temporarily avoided the consequences of overshoot by adapting, which occurred when our global human population surpassed 1-2 billion. We have continued to breed like rabbits, growing our numbers to 4-7 times the real carrying capacity of the planet.
At the same time we have been rapidly destroying and reducing that real carrying capacity. We are destroying and polluting our sources of water, destroying millions of tons of life-supporting topsoil annually, narrowing the genetic diversity and the global gene pool that supports evolution, destroying the atmosphere we breath with air-borne toxins, destroying the natural cycles, rhythms, and systems that maintain the delicate planetary life-support system.
Very soon, in natural terms, the energy that drives and supports our virtual world and our ceaseless growth, is going to go into terminal decline. Oil, natural gas, coal, the uranium for nuclear power, new rivers for more hydro-electric production, the metals from which we produce stuff like cars, planes, ships and more, are all at, past or nearing peak. The quantity of these available to support our virtual world can no longer keep pace with our insatiable demands. Our virtual world is about to go into terminal contraction. There will soon be no pockets of surplus food that can be moved around the planet, insufficient energy to continue to move that food around our globalized model of community, no nations with the surplus virtual carrying capacity to allow them to absorb immigrants, no surplus natural resources to support the continued or existing population of our virtual world.
The sustainable carrying capacity of the real world is estimated to be 1-2 billion. The population of our virtual human world is 6.7 billion and still growing. That virtual world is about to be shut down due to a terminal power failure. We are soon going to have to scramble, fight, claw, cheat and steal for an existence within the 1-2 billion carrying capacity of the real world.
I don't have any answers as to how that will happen. I don't believe there are answers. I don't imagine it can possibly be pretty. It's going to be very nasty. Ultimately we will not be in control of how that unfolds. Nature, that natural world from which we have tried to divorce ourselves, only has so much carrying capacity with which to absorb those humans seeking to come back to her embrace. Those who make it are going to have to live by her very strict rules. My suspicion is she will be a harsh mistress.
Showing posts with label peak oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peak oil. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes after Peak Oil
As we progress beyond peak oil and the world finds itself having to reinvent and adapt to a low energy existence once again, one of the key focal points is going to have to be rethinking community. At the moment we, at least we in the developed world, have the unrealistic and historically unique luxury, because of our energy-dependent technology, of not having to concern ourselves on a day-to-day basis about the source of the water we use. Once we pass peak oil, however, and readily-available, cheap energy becomes a thing of the past, all issues dealing with water will become critical to our very survival. They will also become increasingly and restrictively local.
The Great Lakes shared by the U.S. and Canada is the largest single depository of fresh water on the planet. It contains a full one fifth of the fresh surface water in the world. With the St Lawrence Seaway system ocean-going ships can navigate nearly 2500 miles inland to Thunder Bay at the middle of the continent. Both the US and Canada have built up their industrial and manufacturing heartland along the shores of the Great Lakes.
Managing flow levels
The water levels in both the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River are maintained by a significant amount of man-made technology and infrastructure. Principally Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence flow control is achieved through a series of three dams;
1) the international Moses-Saunders Hydro-Electric Dam at Cornwall Ontario and Messina New York,
2) the Long Sault Dam at Long Sault, Ontario which acts as a spillway when outflows are larger than the capacity of the power dam, and
3) the Iroquois Ice Dam at Iroquois, Ontario which is principally used to help form a stable ice cover and regulate water levels at the power dam.
There are also a number of additional dikes, levies and flood control channels and canals such as the 17km Beauharnois Canal which bypasses the Soulanges rapids and carries 84% of the water flow of the river to the Beauharnois power station.
The focus in and objective of all of this technology and infrastructure, however, has been to maintain the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes as a viable shipping route between the Atlantic Ocean and the lake head. This is to facilitate and speed the outbound distribution to the world's customers of crops, particularly grains, from North America's agricultural heartland, and for outflow of manufactured goods from the industrial and manufacturing heartland built up along the shores of the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes as a source of potable water
The importance of the Great Lakes as a source of clean, fresh water has largely been ignored. Not because it isn't important. It has been ignored because of the vastness of the lakes themselves. We have cavalierly acted as though the lakes are so huge that we could not possibly pollute them to the point that they were unusable as a source of potable water. Only recently have we woken up not only to that possibility but that reality.
International Joint Commission
The International Joint Commission (IJC) established by the governments of the United States and Canada is charged with oversight responsibility for boundary waters shared by the two nations, most importantly including the Great Lakes/St Lawrence basin. It is arguably a model for international water rights agreements and control mechanisms. Part of their mandate is to, through controlling the flow through these various facilities, "regulate Lake Ontario within a target range from 74.2 to 75.4 metres (243.3 to 247.3 feet) above sea level." This involves, unfortunately, a number of variables over which the IJC has no control;
* Global warming is already causing a slight rise in global sea levels and is expected to cause significant rises in sea levels over the coming century, particularly with the anticipated partial or complete melt of the Greenland ice cap and the Antarctic ice cap. Does the IJC then continue to maintain Lake Ontario water levels relative to rising sea levels or does it "fix" the sea level relative to which Lake Ontario levels are maintained?
* Global warming could, additionally, have serious impact over rainfall and snow levels over the Great Lakes basin and the full area that drains into the basin. In this past decade alone precipitation levels in the region have changed significantly. Although the IJC charter allows for significant changes in future weather patterns and inflows, the specifics of how the IJC will respond have not been spelled out.
* The Great Lakes basin drains nearly half a continent. The IJC has no jurisdiction over rivers and tributaries feeding the Great Lakes basin which are wholly contained within either the U.S.A. or Canada, a significant shortcoming of the existing IJC mandate. These waterways, and any infrastructure on them that could affect Great Lakes inflow, fall under the jurisdiction of a hodge-podge of state, provincial, federal, county and municipal governments and their agencies.
* Controlling the levels of Lake Ontario does not automatically control the flow through the St. Lawrence. That is dependent on inflows to the Great Lakes. But St. Lawrence river levels are also affected by other major inflows downstream from the control infrastructure, such as the Ottawa River and Richelieu River.
Post-Peak Infrastructure maintenance
Worrisome from a post Peak oil perspective is the long-term viability and maintenance of this massive water-control infrastructure. This concern has been expressed by the IJC itself. In a recent IJC report entitled Unsafe Dams? the IJC stated "In recent years, the Commission has reviewed the terms of some of its Orders of Approval for the construction of such structures. It has become aware that some of its Regulated Facilities are in need of repair and that some existing programs have not ensured that these repairs were made. ..... Existing legislation, regulations, practices and government oversight are insufficient to ensure that Regulated Facilities are safe." Specifically included in this concern are the three dams through which Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River water levels are managed.
These facilities have now been in existence for several decades. This presents an obvious concern which the IJC have echoed, "Some Regulated Facilities were built early in the century. With aging facilities, maintenance programs are an absolute necessity. Continuing maintenance programs are being implemented in some cases. Monies that owners budget for maintenance work are, however, sometimes not spent." In the case of the U.S. portion of the Moses/Saunders hydroelectric facility, much of the electricity generated is sold off to two key industries; the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) and General Motors Corporation (GM Powertrain). Most of the rest is sold off at cost to electric supply utilities across New York State. Should either or both of ALCOA or GM fail (GM's survival is even now in serious question again as a consequence of the 2008 global recession), considering that maintenance and inspection are even now questionable, where will the economic motivation be to maintain the facility?
It is important to note that, at this time, the Canadian Federal government and the Ontario Provincial government have no established Dam Safety Program, though the Ontario Government is said to be working on one. Many of the major river systems feeding into Lake Ontario and the rest of the Great Lakes are controlled by a series of dams. The Trent River system feeding into Lake Ontario at Belleville/Trenton is a good example. In the lower reaches of the Trent River alone, from Frankford down to the Bay of Quinte, there are more than half a dozen major dams. Each of these dams holds back from 30 feet of water or more. Should any one of these dams fail, especially a dam further upstream, the volume of water released would simply inundate any dams further downstream, possibly leading to a domino/cascade collapse of dam after dam (see my article; Cascade Failure in River Systems with Multiple Dams). The impact on Belleville, Trenton and all of the low-lying areas of Prince Edward County would be devastated.
Whether the Ontario Government is working on establishing a Dam Safety Program is, of course, a moot point in the face of a pending peak in global oil production and the potential severe impact on the global, American and Canadian economies. All dams, especially as they age, require significant ongoing maintenance and regular inspection. This is particularly so in a cold climate such as that in the Great Lakes basin with its severe seasonal variations and stresses on infrastructure, particularly dams. Whether the funds for inspecting and maintaining such infrastructure will be available in a collapsing economy is a reasonable question. Whether what funds are available will be spent on the appropriate inspection and maintenance is just as fair a question. Maintenance is always one of the first things to suffer when budgets get tight. There's no profit in maintenance.
In my article The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance, I explored the potential of future infrastructure maintenance problems on a broad range of societal infrastructure. Nowhere, in my opinion, is this more critical than with regard to dams and other water management infrastructure. The Great Lakes contain a full 18% of the total surface freshwater on the planet. All of that water is kept in check by hundreds of dams controlling both outflow and inflow. That is a tremendous amount of aging infrastructure that will need increasing amounts of energy-intensive maintenance to remain viable. The energy that was available during the era when all that infrastructure was built won't be available when it all has to be replaced or decommissioned. The results could be catastrophic.
Post-Peak use of the Great Lakes as a source of Drinking Water
As we progress beyond peak oil the importance of the St. Lawrence Seaway as an inland route for ocean-going ships will diminish drastically and, eventually, disappear. Ocean shipping is critically dependent on oil and other fossil fuels. Even recently, with the 2006-2008 rapid escalation in the price of oil the amount of trans-oceanic shipping declined dramatically. Once we start down the serious downslope in global fossil fuel supply trans-oceanic shipping will decline to a very expensive trickle. Traffic on the Great Lakes will become increasingly local and alternatively powered. We might even see the re-emergence of the freight canoe.
The importance of the Great Lakes as a source of fresh water for drinking and agricultural irrigation will, however, increase at the same time as life becomes more localized. It is probable the population growth along the shores of the Great Lakes will continue with an increased inflow of people wanting to be near a large, strong, reliable source of fresh water.
But the continued reliability of the Great Lakes as a source of fresh water should not be an assumption but rather a responsibility of those placing their reliance on it. The massive mechanical pumping systems that deliver that water from the lakes to nearby communities will either cease to function or have to be converted to an alternative power source. The massive sewage and water treatment plants that clean the waste from the massive communities along the Great Lakes shores before the cleansed water is released back into the lakes will either cease to function or have to be converted to some sustainable alternate power source. And the massive infrastructure that manages the inflow to and outflow from the Great Lakes will have to continue to be maintained or gradually and carefully decommissioned. Doing all of this without the cheap, abundant energy that we have come to take for granted will be a tremendous post-peak undertaking.
The inflow of toxins to the Great Lakes system will, fortunately, decline with the decline of fossil-fuel-driven industrialization. Over time the Great Lakes will cleanse themselves of those toxins. Until that time, however, continued care will have to be taken in the use of water from the lakes for sustenance and irrigation. The need to maintain lake levels for shipping may diminish but allowing lake levels to drop significantly increases the dangerous concentration of the built up toxins in the water used. The technologies and energy required to adequately filter and clean the water before it is used will, at best, be scarce and expensive.
Delivering that water any distance from the shores of the lakes is going to be a growing problem as energy supplies diminish. Great Lakes water is today often delivered by pump and pipeline hundreds of miles away from the lakes themselves. There is little likelihood of being able to continue this practice for very long into the future. Gravity is the low-energy system for moving water from one place to another. Gravity won't move water uphill. How will we move water to the top of 30, 40, 50 storey buildings with energy-dependent mechanical pumps?
Taken for Granted
Once we pass peak oil - realistically it should be the case today - we can no longer take for granted the availability and delivery of water, no matter the source of that water. It is not uncommon in dry, third-world countries for people to have to walk 5, 10 or more miles each day and carry home the water they need for their daily usage. You develop strategies, under such circumstances, to minimize your water usage.
As a boy I had to carry the family's daily water from a hand pump two blocks away on a neighbour's property. Two blocks was close enough I often made multiple trips per day, carrying two large buckets, one in each hand. Baths were taken in a galvanized tub on the kitchen floor with water from the rain barrels (melted snow in winter) heated on the large, kitchen wood stove. Believe me, I learned not to take water for granted and I can still connect to those feelings today of the importance and preciousness of water. It is a lesson that, as we pass peak oil and industrialized water systems become increasingly unreliable, that we are all going to learn. It will be a very difficult lesson for most.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Peak Oil IS About Peak Food
There is something that is very important for people to get their heads around. Peak oil is not about the oil, not about gasoline and diesel and heating oil and jet fuel. It's not about cars, SUVs, vans, trucks, buses, trains, planes or ships.
Peak oil is about food and our progressive inability, especially in the couple of decades after we pass the oil peak, to produce enough of it to feed our 6.5+ billion global population. Even now, every day over 40,000 people worldwide die of starvation, malnutrition and other nutrition related diseases. Each 1% gap between global demand and global supply will increase those deaths by 10-25%.
Food production in today's world is critically dependent on oil (for pesticides, herbicides, agrochemicals, agricultural irrigation and distribution fuels) and natural gas (for artificial fertilizers) and clean water from ever-scarcer and shrinking lakes and rivers and ever-shrinking underground aquifers. A shrinking global food supply is not just a problem for the third world. Everybody has to eat and we in the developed world tend to like to do that far more than those in the third world have the luxury of doing. Reversion to organic farming methods not dependent on artificial fertilizers and pesticides will not be as easy as the casual observer may think. Our commercial agricultural land is essentially toxic and sterile through our overuse of petrochemicals and limited-nutrient artificial fertilizers. Fertilizers are essentially Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus. Plants, like people, need a full spectrum of dozens of different minerals and soil nutrients.
Commercial agriculture is essentially an export business, exporting the nutrients from the soil on which we grow the crops and never re-importing those nutrients. If the agrochemicals on which commercial agriculture relies were to disappear tomorrow, it is reliably estimated that those same commercial soils will produce only between 5-20% of the crops they do today, assuming even then that there is sufficient fresh water to irrigate them. It is estimated that it would take 10-20 years or more to rebuild the natural fertility of those commercial soils. Without those agrochemicals that means a drop of 80-95% in the productivity of those soils until their natural fertility is restored.
The other key factor, of course, is crop pests. Without oil-derived pesticides crops will be susceptible to invasion by those pests in numbers possibly never seen before. We have, through our use of pesticides, helped those pests evolve unprecedented resistance. Commercial farmers today use 33 times as much pesticides as just three decades ago and yet lose 25% more of their crop to pests than they did then. We are already losing the battle against crop pests. When the pesticides are gone we will lose the war.
That same use of pesticides has also prevented our crops from evolving their own natural defences against pests. Our current crops generally have very low survival potential without those pesticides. All of this, of course, parallels our own weakened immune systems because of the overuse of antibiotics, vaccines and other modern medicines, all of which take over the immune response rather than strengthen the immune system.
People will not really get it about peak oil and its serious implications for their own and their children's survivability until they get their heads away from worrying about transportation fuels and understand the implications for food in our world of 6.5+ billion people. We cannot simply wait until we are well past peak oil and on the decline downslope to start adapting to our changed circumstances.
Our current ability to feed most of our 6.5+ billion population has become dependent on a virtual carrying capacity. Modern, industrial agriculture has become increasingly and critically dependent on the production and application annually of millions of tons of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, all derived from oil and natural gas. In the process we have destroyed the natural fertility of those soils. It will require decades of effort to rebuild that fertility to allow those soils to produce significant crops of food without those petrochemicals. If we wait until the feedstocks (oil and natural gas) for those agrochemicals are already in decline the tremendous loss of life while we rebuild the world's soil fertility will be unavoidable.
Peak oil is about food and our progressive inability, especially in the couple of decades after we pass the oil peak, to produce enough of it to feed our 6.5+ billion global population. Even now, every day over 40,000 people worldwide die of starvation, malnutrition and other nutrition related diseases. Each 1% gap between global demand and global supply will increase those deaths by 10-25%.
Food production in today's world is critically dependent on oil (for pesticides, herbicides, agrochemicals, agricultural irrigation and distribution fuels) and natural gas (for artificial fertilizers) and clean water from ever-scarcer and shrinking lakes and rivers and ever-shrinking underground aquifers. A shrinking global food supply is not just a problem for the third world. Everybody has to eat and we in the developed world tend to like to do that far more than those in the third world have the luxury of doing. Reversion to organic farming methods not dependent on artificial fertilizers and pesticides will not be as easy as the casual observer may think. Our commercial agricultural land is essentially toxic and sterile through our overuse of petrochemicals and limited-nutrient artificial fertilizers. Fertilizers are essentially Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus. Plants, like people, need a full spectrum of dozens of different minerals and soil nutrients.
Commercial agriculture is essentially an export business, exporting the nutrients from the soil on which we grow the crops and never re-importing those nutrients. If the agrochemicals on which commercial agriculture relies were to disappear tomorrow, it is reliably estimated that those same commercial soils will produce only between 5-20% of the crops they do today, assuming even then that there is sufficient fresh water to irrigate them. It is estimated that it would take 10-20 years or more to rebuild the natural fertility of those commercial soils. Without those agrochemicals that means a drop of 80-95% in the productivity of those soils until their natural fertility is restored.
The other key factor, of course, is crop pests. Without oil-derived pesticides crops will be susceptible to invasion by those pests in numbers possibly never seen before. We have, through our use of pesticides, helped those pests evolve unprecedented resistance. Commercial farmers today use 33 times as much pesticides as just three decades ago and yet lose 25% more of their crop to pests than they did then. We are already losing the battle against crop pests. When the pesticides are gone we will lose the war.
That same use of pesticides has also prevented our crops from evolving their own natural defences against pests. Our current crops generally have very low survival potential without those pesticides. All of this, of course, parallels our own weakened immune systems because of the overuse of antibiotics, vaccines and other modern medicines, all of which take over the immune response rather than strengthen the immune system.
People will not really get it about peak oil and its serious implications for their own and their children's survivability until they get their heads away from worrying about transportation fuels and understand the implications for food in our world of 6.5+ billion people. We cannot simply wait until we are well past peak oil and on the decline downslope to start adapting to our changed circumstances.
Our current ability to feed most of our 6.5+ billion population has become dependent on a virtual carrying capacity. Modern, industrial agriculture has become increasingly and critically dependent on the production and application annually of millions of tons of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, all derived from oil and natural gas. In the process we have destroyed the natural fertility of those soils. It will require decades of effort to rebuild that fertility to allow those soils to produce significant crops of food without those petrochemicals. If we wait until the feedstocks (oil and natural gas) for those agrochemicals are already in decline the tremendous loss of life while we rebuild the world's soil fertility will be unavoidable.
Agricultural Capacity and Utilization in a Post-Peak World
Agricultural Capacity is affected by a number of important variables; crop variety, water (both rainfall, sub-surface saturation and irrigation), natural soil fertility, artificial inputs, climate, and length of the growing season.
Of the total global land mass, about 35 percent is arable land, 31 percent forested and 34 percent is either desert, tundra and permafrost (permafrost areas are rapidly shrinking under the assault from global warming) or dedicated to other uses such as urbanization and other human activity such as mining. Globally there are about 7.8 billion acres that are potentially arable of which 3.5 billion acres are known to be productively in use producing food.
Subsistence Farming
Statistics are scanty from poor nations (statistics tend to focus on areas that are part of the global industrial/economic system) where the bulk of farming activity is at the subsistence level. The unused potential land is generally in areas lacking essential transport for moving product to market or infrastructure needed for the maintenance of commercial food production.(1)
An unknown portion of this is in use by indigenous peoples for subsistence agriculture. Subsistence farmers have a proud tradition and facility of making the most of often poor farming conditions; poor soil, poor climate, water insufficiency, unstable or even dangerous geopolitical climate and more.
There is a tendency to view subsistence farmers as staunch survivalists focused tightly on the survival and support of only themselves and their family. This is a serious misperception. Subsistence farmers generally are tightly integrated to the surrounding community of kindred subsistence farmers, always willing to lend a helping hand, willing to share with those fallen upon hard times and more. They very much appreciate that their survivability is far more certain as part of a sharing, self-reliant community. Often this cooperation includes some degree of individual crop specialization suited to individual farm potential and reciprocal sharing of the output from this specialization.
Expecting a significant movement toward subsistence farming in western nations ( a new "return to the land" movement) is, in my opinion, unrealistic in the present political climate. Governments and the legislation they pass have consistently moved in a direction that negates that possibility. (See my article The right to pursue powerdown: seeking alternative lifestyles post-peak http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2006/12/right-to-pursue-powerdown-seaking.html) in my blog Oil, Be Seeing You.) In order for that to happen there needs to be significant grassroots movement to convince all levels of government that the development of alternative, small scale agriculture is critical to our survivability and sustainability on the other side of peak oil.
That, of course, requires that we first get them to recognize, understand and accept the reality of peak oil. My sense is that the recognition is already there. My sense is that there may be a prevalent fear in politics of the implications of peak oil, that it is a crisis that must not be recognized or spoken of, that ignorance or at least publicly professed ignorance is preferable. To openly recognize and accept peak oil will, they probably believe, impose on our politicians an expectation of a solution, a solution they cannot see. The only course they are capable and willing to pursue is to proceed with business as usual, keep the wheels on the bus as long as possible and let the next government deal with the results and realities.
Global utilization of arable land
Of the 35 percent of the total global land mass that is arable or suitable for agriculture, 24 percent or about two thirds is pasture or meadowland used for animal production. Another 10 percent (about 350 million acres) is used for grain and cereal production (75 percent or about 270 million acres), much of that also used for animal production, and for annual root, tuber, vegetable and fruit crops (about 25 percent or 80 million acres). Despite the global attraction of and growth in permaculture, only 1 percent of arable land is dedicated to permanent crops such as fruits and nuts. Essentially, all of human food production, excluding meat, dairy and sea food, is grown on less than 400 million acres. Each of those acres is, therefore, feeding about 15-17 people.
All of our food crops are produced on about 400-million acres out of a total global land mass of about 20-billion acres. That is at once a very discomfiting statistic and a clear sign of hope for the post peak world. It is discomfiting knowing that the entire 6.6 billion human population is dependent on such a small portion this planet for producing its food. And we are systematically destroying the natural fertility of that land through unwise agricultural practices.
It is hopeful in that there are 4.3 billion acres of potentially arable land not currently in use under managed agricultural practices. If, as many experts generally concur, our agricultural productivity will, at least temporarily, be reduced to 10-20% of our current levels with the loss of fossil fuel based agrochemicals, there is cause for hope in that the land currently producing our non-animal foods is less than ten percent of the potentially arable land not currently in use for agricultural production. If we bring all of that land into agricultural production, however, with the same patterns as at present (85%+ for food-animal support) we would net very little additional food-production land (about 600 million acres) to offset the 80-90% drop in productivity on those current 400 million acres. This would barely allow us to absorb the impact of a 25% drop in productivity.
The unused land isn't where the people are
But there is one other simpler and overriding problem. The unused potentially arable land is not in the same place as the 6.6 billion of us for whom it could reduce the impact of soil productivity loss following peak oil. That unused potentially arable land is not sitting there in some undiscovered country which can be populated by billions of food refugees. It exists in pockets within the boundaries of already sovereign nations throughout the world, nations which themselves may be impoverished and unable to currently produce enough food for their own people. Much of it may be in extremely isolated mountain valleys, in need of massive reclamation projects, in national parks and wildlife preserves, in areas where there are extreme water shortages. Much of it is in private holdings intentionally held back from agricultural production in order to facilitate future expansion.
For this land to be brought under agricultural production as a solution to the post-peak food crisis, assuming it is even possible to do so, without some form of global population redistribution, would still necessitate the maintenance of a heavily-energy-dependent global food distribution system (in an environment of declining energy availability) to move that food to the people who need it.
It is this same global food distribution system that is already taxed to the limit moving food from those few nations that can and do produce surpluses to the more than half the planet's countries that are seriously dependent on it for survival. To create and maintain the additional infrastructure that would be necessary to bring these additional lands into productivity would add considerable cost to the global production of food. In all likelihood, based on current patterns, developing these lands would far more likely be focused on high-profit crops such as corn, soy and sugar cane that can be used to produced bio-fuels in a world increasingly deficient in fossil fuel energy.
We are currently only at the leading edge of the conflict between using agricultural and to feed an ever-expanding population and using it to produce the fuels needed as the global production of oil goes into serious decline. As long as money and the economy are the driver of human activity; as long as we persist in trying to maintain our industrial western society; as long as western society attaches a different, much higher value to a life in western society compared to that in poorer, third-world nations; as long as there are greedy, despotic leaders and governments in those third-world nations that can be bought with western money, the demands on that agricultural land to produce fuel will probably trump the nutritional needs of the planet's poor and hungry.
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Additional reading:
1. Agribusiness in a Global Environment Comparing Global Agricultural Production Systems
http://www.ais.msstate.edu/age/Lesson2Print.pdf
2. Global Water Shortage Looms In New Century
http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm
3. To Fertilize or Not to Fertilize .. That is the Question
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/wfbg7088
4. Global study reveals new warning signals: Degraded agricultural lands threaten world's food production capacity
http://www.wri.org/newsroom/newsrelease_text.cfm?NewsReleaseID=76
Of the total global land mass, about 35 percent is arable land, 31 percent forested and 34 percent is either desert, tundra and permafrost (permafrost areas are rapidly shrinking under the assault from global warming) or dedicated to other uses such as urbanization and other human activity such as mining. Globally there are about 7.8 billion acres that are potentially arable of which 3.5 billion acres are known to be productively in use producing food.
Subsistence Farming
Statistics are scanty from poor nations (statistics tend to focus on areas that are part of the global industrial/economic system) where the bulk of farming activity is at the subsistence level. The unused potential land is generally in areas lacking essential transport for moving product to market or infrastructure needed for the maintenance of commercial food production.(1)
An unknown portion of this is in use by indigenous peoples for subsistence agriculture. Subsistence farmers have a proud tradition and facility of making the most of often poor farming conditions; poor soil, poor climate, water insufficiency, unstable or even dangerous geopolitical climate and more.
There is a tendency to view subsistence farmers as staunch survivalists focused tightly on the survival and support of only themselves and their family. This is a serious misperception. Subsistence farmers generally are tightly integrated to the surrounding community of kindred subsistence farmers, always willing to lend a helping hand, willing to share with those fallen upon hard times and more. They very much appreciate that their survivability is far more certain as part of a sharing, self-reliant community. Often this cooperation includes some degree of individual crop specialization suited to individual farm potential and reciprocal sharing of the output from this specialization.
Expecting a significant movement toward subsistence farming in western nations ( a new "return to the land" movement) is, in my opinion, unrealistic in the present political climate. Governments and the legislation they pass have consistently moved in a direction that negates that possibility. (See my article The right to pursue powerdown: seeking alternative lifestyles post-peak http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2006/12/right-to-pursue-powerdown-seaking.html) in my blog Oil, Be Seeing You.) In order for that to happen there needs to be significant grassroots movement to convince all levels of government that the development of alternative, small scale agriculture is critical to our survivability and sustainability on the other side of peak oil.
That, of course, requires that we first get them to recognize, understand and accept the reality of peak oil. My sense is that the recognition is already there. My sense is that there may be a prevalent fear in politics of the implications of peak oil, that it is a crisis that must not be recognized or spoken of, that ignorance or at least publicly professed ignorance is preferable. To openly recognize and accept peak oil will, they probably believe, impose on our politicians an expectation of a solution, a solution they cannot see. The only course they are capable and willing to pursue is to proceed with business as usual, keep the wheels on the bus as long as possible and let the next government deal with the results and realities.
Global utilization of arable land
Of the 35 percent of the total global land mass that is arable or suitable for agriculture, 24 percent or about two thirds is pasture or meadowland used for animal production. Another 10 percent (about 350 million acres) is used for grain and cereal production (75 percent or about 270 million acres), much of that also used for animal production, and for annual root, tuber, vegetable and fruit crops (about 25 percent or 80 million acres). Despite the global attraction of and growth in permaculture, only 1 percent of arable land is dedicated to permanent crops such as fruits and nuts. Essentially, all of human food production, excluding meat, dairy and sea food, is grown on less than 400 million acres. Each of those acres is, therefore, feeding about 15-17 people.
All of our food crops are produced on about 400-million acres out of a total global land mass of about 20-billion acres. That is at once a very discomfiting statistic and a clear sign of hope for the post peak world. It is discomfiting knowing that the entire 6.6 billion human population is dependent on such a small portion this planet for producing its food. And we are systematically destroying the natural fertility of that land through unwise agricultural practices.
It is hopeful in that there are 4.3 billion acres of potentially arable land not currently in use under managed agricultural practices. If, as many experts generally concur, our agricultural productivity will, at least temporarily, be reduced to 10-20% of our current levels with the loss of fossil fuel based agrochemicals, there is cause for hope in that the land currently producing our non-animal foods is less than ten percent of the potentially arable land not currently in use for agricultural production. If we bring all of that land into agricultural production, however, with the same patterns as at present (85%+ for food-animal support) we would net very little additional food-production land (about 600 million acres) to offset the 80-90% drop in productivity on those current 400 million acres. This would barely allow us to absorb the impact of a 25% drop in productivity.
The unused land isn't where the people are
But there is one other simpler and overriding problem. The unused potentially arable land is not in the same place as the 6.6 billion of us for whom it could reduce the impact of soil productivity loss following peak oil. That unused potentially arable land is not sitting there in some undiscovered country which can be populated by billions of food refugees. It exists in pockets within the boundaries of already sovereign nations throughout the world, nations which themselves may be impoverished and unable to currently produce enough food for their own people. Much of it may be in extremely isolated mountain valleys, in need of massive reclamation projects, in national parks and wildlife preserves, in areas where there are extreme water shortages. Much of it is in private holdings intentionally held back from agricultural production in order to facilitate future expansion.
For this land to be brought under agricultural production as a solution to the post-peak food crisis, assuming it is even possible to do so, without some form of global population redistribution, would still necessitate the maintenance of a heavily-energy-dependent global food distribution system (in an environment of declining energy availability) to move that food to the people who need it.
It is this same global food distribution system that is already taxed to the limit moving food from those few nations that can and do produce surpluses to the more than half the planet's countries that are seriously dependent on it for survival. To create and maintain the additional infrastructure that would be necessary to bring these additional lands into productivity would add considerable cost to the global production of food. In all likelihood, based on current patterns, developing these lands would far more likely be focused on high-profit crops such as corn, soy and sugar cane that can be used to produced bio-fuels in a world increasingly deficient in fossil fuel energy.
We are currently only at the leading edge of the conflict between using agricultural and to feed an ever-expanding population and using it to produce the fuels needed as the global production of oil goes into serious decline. As long as money and the economy are the driver of human activity; as long as we persist in trying to maintain our industrial western society; as long as western society attaches a different, much higher value to a life in western society compared to that in poorer, third-world nations; as long as there are greedy, despotic leaders and governments in those third-world nations that can be bought with western money, the demands on that agricultural land to produce fuel will probably trump the nutritional needs of the planet's poor and hungry.
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Additional reading:
1. Agribusiness in a Global Environment Comparing Global Agricultural Production Systems
http://www.ais.msstate.edu/age/Lesson2Print.pdf
2. Global Water Shortage Looms In New Century
http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm
3. To Fertilize or Not to Fertilize .. That is the Question
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/wfbg7088
4. Global study reveals new warning signals: Degraded agricultural lands threaten world's food production capacity
http://www.wri.org/newsroom/newsrelease_text.cfm?NewsReleaseID=76
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