You think that food prices are bad now, wait a few years, they could get much worse. [View All]

[MadHound]

Food prices are rapidly rising in part due to the fact that we're using food crops to provide fuel, namely ethanol. Corn prices have risen at almost a geometric rate over the past few years, and approximately one third of our corn harvest is being used to make ethanol.

Since we use corn in everything from livestock feed to high fructose corn syrup, the effects of these price hikes ripple throughout our food economy, and prices of everything from candy bars to steak are jacked up. With more and more acreage being devoted to corn, hey, farmers are going to jump on any bandwagon that makes them money, less and less acreage is being devoted to other crops ranging from alfalfa hay to wheat, soybeans to vegetables. This also puts upward pressure on food prices.

But one thing that nobody is looking at is the complete collapse of our farmland.

Corn is hard on soil, it suck up nitrogen and other nutrients at a prodigious rate. Cotton, tobacco and sunflowers are the only other comparable food crops that leech out the soil at the rate that corn does. Normally, a farmer would do a three or four year crop rotation with his land, following up corn with crops that were beneficial to the soil, like soybeans, and following up by letting his land lie fallow for a year, or having it manured by his livestock.

But for the past few years, year in, year out, ever since the beginning of this ethanol boom, farmers have continued to plant corn. They have put every acre they have into production, in some cases cutting down windbreaks or plowing up land that was in the CRP bank(ie they were getting paid to grow trees).

This simply isn't sustainable. Our soil is already thin, average depth of top soil has steadily decreased over the past hundred years. Worse yet, our ongoing poisoning of the soil with pesticides and herbicides, the so called "Green Revolution" of the fifties and sixties, has left our soil depleted of the nutrients needed to fully produce crops.

Growing corn year after year is not just going to exacerbate this situation, it could very well collapse our ability to grow anything, perhaps for years, perhaps for decades. There is only a finite amount of fertilizer you can use to try and make your crop grow. As we continue to grow corn, we are quickly approaching this limit. At some point in the relatively near future the soil is simply going to collapse, suddenly, completely, disastrously. Then we're going to face real problems, and food shortages just won't be the problem of third world countries, but it will also be a problem here at home.

Once your soil collapses, it takes years, decades to bring it back. Let me give you an example. I moved out to my little mini farm seven years ago. It was a mash up of various other original plots put together to make up my twenty acre parcel. The soil on the front plot is good growing soil, rich black earth, good for growing anything. This is where I put my orchard and staked out my garden.

However, being the conscientious grower that I am, I immediately started looking around for other garden plots that I could use in rotation. The other place that was ideally suited for a large garden was on the back side, on what was originally a plot of actual cropland that was later used as pasture. The land had been overworked, overfarmed, and finally overgrazed. The soil, instead of being dark, almost black, was a weak, brownish-gray color, and wasn't suited for anything besides growing weeds.

I have set about revitalizing this soil. I have spread manure, grown cover crops of "green manure'(soybeans, winter rye), composted on it, and after six seasons, the ground is still not ready, though it has gotten better. I might be able to put my garden in around five years from now, maybe ten.

The point of this is that it takes time, time and effort to bring soil back to productivity. If we continue to grow crop after crop of corn, year in, year out, our soil is going to suffer. And one year, here in the relatively near future, our soil will simply give out, become infertile. And it will take years, perhaps decades, to bring that soil back.

Then what?

This is the greatest danger that we are facing from this ethanol/corn madness. This is what is coming down the pike, and I suggest you get ready. If you have even a little land of your own, just a backyard, I suggest you start thinking about getting it ready to garden. Even if you have just a balcony where you can only place pots, get ready. Because it doesn't look like we're going to stop growing corn anytime soon, and as we grow more and more corn, year in, year out, our soil will give out, and we will be screwed.

Just thought you might want to know.