More on food and energy

[GliderGuider]

A while ago I posted a chart comparing food prices and oil prices:



This morning I got interested in how tightly global food production is tied to fossil fuels. I used Lester Brown's USDA data for global grain production and summed BP's data for oil, NG and coal. Here's what I got:



Note the correlation coefficient of 0.976. Here's how I read our situation:

• The correlation of fossil fuel and food production strongly implies that if FF availability begins to fall, food production will probably begin to decline within a couple of years.
  
• We have been on an oil production plateau for five years. Production has stagnated.
  
• The world's net oil exports have begun to fall.
  
• This stagnation in oil production is driving oil prices up, which drives up food prices.
  
• As oil production begins to fall and exports continue to decline, food production will begin to fall.
  
• Falling food production and rising oil prices will combine to create havoc in the global food market.
  
• We are on the brink now, and the effects will probably begin materialize late this year.

I don't see any good outcome for this. It's probably time to secure your personal food supply, and it may be past time to address the problem in insecure regions of the world.

[CoffeeCat]

1. I'd like to learn more, and I'm sure others...

...would like to as well.

Do you envision food shortages, due to falling food production--ultimately due to the high prices or low production of oil?

As far as a personal food supply. What do you and others suggest this consists of?

Grocery-store prices are completely through the roof. I pay attention to prices, more than most people. I'm a "couponer"--one
of those people who uses coupons to save 50-75 percent at the grocery store. It's crazy how fast and how high food
prices have risen, especially fresh produce and other healthy foods such as fresh seafood, whole-grain breads, organic, etc.

Here's a tip for anyone who is interested: I spread out the ads for three local grocery stores. Every store has "loss
leaders"--foods that they price very low to entice you into the store. I identify these cheap foods at each store. I take
half a day and go to all three stores--stockpiling these loss leaders. You save SO much money doing this. When you first
begin stockpiling--your grocery budget increases--but as your stockpile grows and you buy less (and you're spending less
for the food because you're buying cheap stuff) the grocery bill drastically decreases. This really works!

Also, clip out those coupons from the Sunday paper. Especially now--many companies offer coupons for healthy food this
time of year--because people are trying to lose weight/eat healthy. I have awesome coupons for hummus, Diamond Almonds,
Kraft Cheese, peanut butter, almond milk, etc. When these items go on sale--and you combine the coupon savings, you can get very cheap food.

I hope this thread ends up being a great resource on this topic. We can all learn from each other--and I know that I have lots
of questions about this situation! I worry about our family with regard to this issue.

Thank you for this thread GliderGuider. :)

[GliderGuider]

2. My thoughts

This is a global problem, so we may not see frank shortages for quite a while because we live in a rich nation. What we will see is continually rising prices, as will everyone else in the world. General food shortages will only appear at the lower end of the economic spectrum, where poor people and nations can't afford to outbid others. There are likely to be localized shortages for one food or another (wheat, rice, corn, meat, oils etc) based on local conditions, but those shortages will become more severe and widespread over time.

In terms of what we can do to protect ourselves, my first advice is always the same: wherever possible begin to grow some of your own food however you can. If you can't do this, you are at the mercy of the markets. In that case join a food co-op if you can find one, to take advantage of combined buying power. Other than that, get used to eating lower on the food chain (the world is about to embrace vegetarianism in a big way), get used to eating lower quality food, buy as much of your food in bulk as you can, and shift to food that doesn't spoil easily.

[GliderGuider]

3. A more complete treatment is here:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Food_Energy.html

[happyslug]

4. The invention of the three point hitch in 1939, made tractors superior to the horse

Even today, if you have less then 50 acres to farm, you are better off using a horse then a tractor (more cost effective), but the profits today from a 50 acres farm will barely pay the taxes on such a piece of property. Thus horses were phased out in most of the world as the primary farming "power" by the 1960s (Some horses stayed on till this day, but are marginal usefulness).

Tractors increase the productivity of each farmer based on hours the farmer put it. Horses restricted what the farmer could do, do to the need of the horse for a rest. Tractors can plow/harvest much more per hour then a horse AND stay working long after a horse would have been put in the barn to sleep.

Now, if we look at TOTAL production per acre (as opposes to one crop per acre), horse and man powered farming is more productive (Mostly do to the fact you can do multiple crops per acre if you use manual farming techniques, tractors and their implements restrict crops to one crop per field and the larger the field the more productive the farmer up to a limit (Which has constantly gone up over the last 50 years as tractors have become larger).

I go into the above, to show how much food production is based on fossil fuel usage and as long as that is the case the above chart will stay about the same i.e. food cost will follow oil costs. Now sooner or later a break in the connection will take place, but that would require one of two things, First would be a new way to provide energy to tractors at a cost savings. Example of this could be a electric tractor. The problem with electric Tractors is the power a tractor needs to do its job, how many batteries would be needed to provide the power needed? Lithium batteries would do a great deal on this, but then how do you recharge them? We are talking of Rural American and Co-op electric companies, marginal electric producers when it comes to providing power when you compare them to the big boys of electric power, the traditional public electric companies.

The second method, while NOT incompatible with the first above (i.e. we may see both) is better understood, i.e. return to the horse. Farms will become smaller do how many acres a horse can do (and given the electric batteries need for re-charging, the difference may NOT be that great). Productivity per crop per acre will fall, but this will be more then off set by increase productivity per acre if you count the ability to do multi crops per acre as you return to manual methods.

Notice, both will only occur as the price of oil goes up and up and the above two options become more and more viable. Smaller farms nearer the urban areas will be the first to go to either method (With abandon suburbs going the electric route, while large farms are broken up as to maximize the use of the horse).

Larger farms will try to stay with conventional tractors, even as their look to bio-diesel as the solution to the increasing cost of oil. The problem is sooner or later the price of oil will force such farmers to park their tractors and either try to use an electric Tractor or return to horses.

Just a comment on why these two sets of numbers seem to match up, and why they will continue to do so until the price of oil gets so high that farmers embrace other technology (Even if the other technology is NOT as productive per acre). That is a few years away (Maybe 20 years, if the worse case scenario of peak oil comes true). It will NOT occur over night, for even if all of the oil in the US is diverted to the Military (for any reason), farmers will just have stop growing crops, for the above two alternatives can not be introduced except over a five to ten year period. It took Stalin over five years to collectivized the farms of the former Soviet Union, and that was by force. The change will be driven by economics and as such people will do everything else first, thus five to ten years is a Minimum, I suspect a longer 20-30 year period.

Now, while I foresee a return to smaller farms as the price of food goes up do to the above, technical ownership of the former large farm for decades afterward may stay in the hands of the former large farm owner. The real owners of the farms could some sort of long "lease" from such legal owner that is automatically renewed forever, much like how Feudal Europe operated i.e the lords had a "Freehold" in the land from the King, but the peasants held a "Copyhold" on the same land from the lord who held the "Freehold". For all practical purposes the "Copyhold" was just as valid as a "Freehold" and could be enforced by the peasant, but the "Copyhold" was from the lord instead of the king (And you went to the Lord's court not the king's court to enforce your right under the Copy hold).

I point out copyholds for it was a solution to how to keep large farms together when smaller farmers were needed and more cost effective. Another method was the adoption of Share Cropping in the South After the Civil War. Sharecropping was another attempt to make large farms as productive as smaller farms, while making farms larger and larger. Not as nice as Copyholds (Sharecroppers had less rights) but the sharecropper had the right to farm his lot of land using horses, he just had to pay a share of his crop to his landlord as his rent for the use of the land.

The problem of the need to break up large farms have occurred in the past, and Copyholds and Sharecropping were two solution on how to do that while keeping the image of maintaining one large farm. Some similar method may be adopted as the price of oil goes through the roof and oil based farming is no longer possible.

[GliderGuider]

6. This will require a massive movement back to the land.

Not too long ago, over 90% of the world's population was engaged in agriculture. The idea of recreating such a situation raises a host of questions: How do we replace lost skills quickly enough, how do we encourage people to make the shift, how do we redistribute the land that has been consolidated into large privately held parcels, where do we find the horses, what happens when a quarter to a third of the land is used for producing horse feed?

The critical factor is the time frame over which this happens. if it's a generation or two, we may be able to do it. If it's 20 years, all bets are off.

[happyslug]

7. The shorter the time period for the switch, the harder it will be

It can be made harder by the Government trying to "solve" the problem by every other method first (most farm owners will NOT want to give up the large farms they have built up since the 1930s) thus the farm owners will demand all types of "Aid" from the Government so they can continue as they have been since the 1930s.

As to move back to the rural areas, 20 years is about right. Most Farmers have relatives in Urban areas and as the price of food and fuel goes up, such farmers will contract their relatives and it will become clear to both sides that it is better for both sides if the urban relative return to the farm and get a share in the farm. The urban relative will also be able to bring with him or her some friends to help in the farm duties (According to Department of Labor statistics, something like 92% of all jobs are obtain through friends and relatives, in the shift back to rural America I suspect a similar pattern). When the urban relative can not earn enough to feed his or her family the move will be done quickly. When the friend is in a similar situation that friend will take up the offer quickly. The issue is when will the economy hit such a situation? 20 years after peak is about right, with some people starting the move within ten years of peak oil and the subsequent increase in fuel prices, then food prices followed by dropping employment levels.

The faster the price of oil goes up (and thus the faster the cost of food will go up) will restrict alternatives to horse drawn means of production (And even horses take 10 years to reach levels of reproduction that can sustain a large increase in horse use on farms). I can see the switch start occurring after about ten years and in 20 years in full swing, then slowly settling down as the criss pass (the price of food will stabilize as food production gets disconnected to fuel usage). Thus I lean to 20 years before most people see what is happening but it will start while before that time period.

Please note, our dispute as to time may be related to how the above occur, if it is present farmers to relatives and then those relatives friends, the training needed will be three step, present farmers learning how to use a horse (most never have), seeing that they need help and can afford paying for help, thus asking their urban relatives to move back and help them. Then finally after a few more years both the farmer and his urban relatives accepting the farm in to large for them, contacting the friend's relatives with offers of land in exchange for labor. 10-20 years sounds about right, remember after about a generation you loose contact with your parent's friends, thus if it takes more then 20 years the former urban relatives will no longer have friends to contact. Thus you will see a slow down at that point.

Just pointing out that 20 years sound about right, it is long enough to learn and educate oneself on the use of the "New" Technology of the horse, but it is short enough that urban relatives still be in contact with their friends and make an offer. Longer then 20 years the pool of people who has contact with will be reduced to who you had been in contact over the previous 20 years (Thus most contact with urban friends would have been lost). Just a comment how people find work for their friends and relatives and why you should try to be as sociable as possible is case you need to access that network of friends when you need a job.

[txlibdem]

8. We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

This OP only reinforces what I've long believed: that all knowledge and wisdom could be found at Woodstock.

"Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell where are you going?
This he told me

Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning.
Maybe it's the time of year.
Yes. And maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devils bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sH0uR2u7Hs

[GliderGuider]

9. Hey, we hippies were stoned, we weren't stupid.

The "back to the land" meme was about more than just hugging trees...

ETA: of course we were stoned, so that back to the land thing didn't work out so well the first time around. Except for all those "farmers" up in the hills of British Columbia of course...

[txlibdem]

10. It woulda worked if they'd all have stuck with it, instead of selling out

All the hippies became Capitalists and set about to destroy the world. How in the hell did that happen?!?

[GliderGuider]

11. How in the hell did that happen?

We had kids.
We didn't have the skills we needed for farming.
Back to the land was hard work, and we were a bit spoiled (and stoned).
The corporatist reeducation program initiated by the Powell Manifesto worked.
The CIA decided to drive out LSD and pot use by introducing cocaine in large quantities to replace it. Coke was expensive, and once we were hooked we needed jobs to afford it - preferably jobs close to the money flow, like stock-brokering.

Essentially, short-term thinking won the day. In our triune brains, the reptilian and limbic systems triumphed over the neocortex yet again.

[txlibdem]

12. In any case, the wrong side won the cold war

Too bad for us, the population of the world, and the future of the planet.

[GliderGuider]

13. ?

As far as I'm concerned it wouldn't have mattered which side "won". When you take a step back and look through Mother Nature's eyes there is little difference between modern human ideologies -- they are all the product of the same core value system, and end up in the same place eventually. Whether we think of Upper Silesia or Love Canal, Seversk or Hanford, Brazilian rain forests or Canadian old-growth boreal forests, the growth pathology afflicts us all.

The time for "the right side to win" was probably 8,000 years ago, and frankly I'm not sure it would have been possible even then.

[txlibdem]

14. Yea, that came out of left field I guess. Ties in with my other OP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x585971

Point taken: the environment definitely received its fair share of abuse from the USSR as well. I'm still pissed off that the inferior system won is all.

[caraher]

15. Really?

I agree that capitalism is pretty much a disaster for the environment, but I don't think the Soviet system had an environmental track record that was any better!

[txlibdem]

17. I acknowleded that in post 14

You're right. We can't go backwards. I don't know how fast the USSR might have improved things after defeating Global Capitalism. It's hard to even guess.

[pscot]

29. I remember a head shop I visited

in the Castro district back in '68 or so. The front end was all bongs and bhuddas, love beads and incense. The Back room was a t-shirt printing sweat shop where a bearded, tie-dyed Snidely Whipsnade supervised a bunch of intimidated young girls who were cranking out the product at a piece rate. It was unreconstructed hippy capitalism, red in tooth and claw, and it was a revelation.

[joshcryer]

18. "There's enough alcohol in one year's yeild of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery...

...necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years."

We ain't giving up machinery for agriculture pretty much ... ever. The labor savings along are incomprehensible. Manual cultivation is very very hard work.

[Terry in Austin]

22. Important condition

>> We ain't giving up machinery for agriculture pretty much ... ever.

True -- for as long as we have the option, that is.

[joshcryer]

25. Conservation of mass indicates that indeed that option will always exist.

If something breaks we recycle it. Unfortunately capitalism doesn't work that way, generally. If something breaks we toss it in to landfills. However, I've read some fun scifi that talks of landfills as our mines of the future.

[Bigmack]

5. K & R

[txlibdem]

16. We need to educate our children so they can figure out how to undo all the damage we've done

But we're squandering that resource as well, as stated in this OP:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x585971

[Nihil]

19. Nice post in that link btw. (n/t)

:toast:

[txlibdem]

20. Spaciba

Thanks for reading it, and posting on my OP.

[GliderGuider]

21. As long as we stay stuck in a culture that is based on power hierarchies this will be hard to do.

Some degree of sociopathy is inherent in the upper echelons of hierarchies, and may be essential to their operation. If one lacks empathy for their fellow man, how is one to feel it for the planet - which is, after all, just an insensate box of resources?

This is why I firmly believe that the only way we will be able to pull out of our death spiral is through a wholesale revolution of human consciousness. It's not enough to have the nuts and bolts of green technology, we must be able to feel in our bones and sinews our essential connection to the rest of the web of life. Without that awareness, we will persist in digging the hole we are in ever deeper with ever more efficient shovels.

My hope is that as our consciousness evolves (revolves?) our love of hierarchy will be seen for the impediment it is.

[Nihil]

23. Nicely phrased ...

> This is why I firmly believe that the only way we will be able to pull out of
> our death spiral is through a wholesale revolution of human consciousness.
> It's not enough to have the nuts and bolts of green technology, we must be able
> to feel in our bones and sinews our essential connection to the rest of the web
> of life. Without that awareness, we will persist in digging the hole we are in
> ever deeper with ever more efficient shovels.

It's a bit of an "all or nuthin'" summary but I'm not convinced it is wrong ...


:applause:

[GliderGuider]

24. Thanks...

I put it that way because I believe we're now in an "all or nuthin" situation.

[CRH]

27. OK, I see the correlation you are speaking of now, ...

not as a measure of efficiency but of volume.

With unregulated market speculation added into the demand metric, shortages are bound to provoke price spikes. However unlike the use of FF for energy, price does not destroy the demand for food. If we insist on mobility, we provoke starvation. Interesting dilemma, not to be won by morality or conscience.

[CRH]

26. Glider Guider, I have a question on your graph? ...

Grain Production vs Fossil Fuel Use _ ...

Your graph starts at 1965 and ends at 2009. If your graph started at 1970, wouldn't the differences be little and well within normal fluctuation? Meaning, that to this date there is no significant difference to correlate?

Or could it be surmised, that basically all the loss happened in the first five years, (1965-1970), and everything beyond is in a normal fluctuation.

I'm having trouble with this graph showing anything definitive even considering a climate beginning to change, albeit a change only in its infancy.

Though there are some interesting questions raised by the price of oil and the price of food, could it also be suggested that much of that correlation could as well be effected by market speculation, as food price increases actually led the price of oil and the futures thereof? When it crashed, oil remained lower than the price of food because the demand for food far out striped the transportation needs of a global society in recession, with less shipping needed and less commuting realized. If this is the case, can any correlation be drawn from the existing data?

These are just a couple of points to reflect upon.

[GliderGuider]

28. My interpretation of that graph

is that it says that if our production of fossil fuels begins to decline then food production will go down as well. Basically, on a global aggregated basis we have expended about four tons of fossil fuel for every ton of grain we've produced at all times since 1965. Based on this consistency I would expect this graph to stay basically flat (i.e. the 4:1 ratio to remain unchanged) as long as we're using fossil fuels to grow food. That means that if (for example) Peak Oil results in a decline in aggregate fossil fuel use, we will see food production to fall as well in order to maintain the 4:1 ratio. I have no idea why the ratio is 4:1, or why there is so little fluctuation, but the fact that the graph is practically dead-nuts flat over 45 years is significant.

[CRH]

30. Yeah the first time I looked at the graph, ...

I misread the significance you were trying to point out, my bad. And I do agree the significance is hard to challenge.

It is interesting the incredible quantity of energy needed for calories provided by the quantity of grain produced. Though the figure of 10 calories of energy used for every calorie put on the dining room table, does allow for this expenditure, before shipping, packaging, driving to the market, and cooking the grain. There is much room for streamlining the supply chain, but currently no political will to challenge the globalization of food production and distribution, to give preference to subsidized or duty protected, local production.

Once again the burden placed upon the poor will be extreme, as fossil fuel for food competes with fuels for transportation, heating and cooling homes, and military exercises that protect the availability of energy, for the over consumption of the privileged few.

[FreeJoe]

31. Oil prices aren't expected to rise significantly this decade

Your correlation is interesting, but I don't find it very troubling. It does mean that we need to be cautious about how we raise the cost of CO2 so that we don't negatively impact people's ability to eat. That's why I prefer a carbon tax with some form of per-capita rebate. Everyone pays more for CO2 emission energy relative to everything else, but people as a whole don't have less money to spend.

I know that it is fashionable to predict that oil prices are about to go through the roof. The reality is that you can buy oil today to be delivered in the future, so we know the price that big oil producers and consumers are getting/paying for oil up to 10 years from now. Oil is trading for about $90/bbl today, $95/bbl this summer, and $100 +/- $3 for the rest of the decade. So if you really think that oil prices are heading up, buy some oil futures contracts. If you are right, you can sell them later to someone that needs to oil and pocket a nice fee for your services.

Why are oil prices in the future so low with increasing Chinese demand, peak oil, and all that stuff? I have no idea. It may be that people expect to move away from oil to other sources (either voluntarily or because of incentives). It may be that the incredible increase in natural gas production will cause it to be substituted more for oil. It currently costs about 30 cents for the same amount of energy in natural gas that a dollar will buy you in oil. It may be that the people selling oil futures are just plain wrong and are selling the stuff too cheaply today.

[txlibdem]

32. Oil not expected to rise in cost???

You're joking, right? The price of oil has already risen almost double since the crash in 2008, it is now back to where it was in early 2008 (which was just 4 months away from the all-time high).

[GliderGuider]

33. This is what happens when you listen to weather forecasts

instead of looking out the window.

Here's an article from the end December, 2007:

http://www.straightstocks.com/current-market-news/oil-price-predictions-and-break-even-prices/

The US Department of Energy “Annual Energy Outlook, 2008″ predicts that oil prices will decline to $58 by 2106, measured in constant 2006 dollars, in their most likely scenario. They predict real prices will rise from 2016 through 2030 to $72 in constant 2006 dollars.

Today’s West Texas Intermediate crude prices are about $93.

The Dept. of Energy is therefore predicting an approximate 38% decline in oil prices over the next 8 years.

Their short term prediction for 2007 back in 2006 was for crude to be around $57 — way off the mark.

Hope you own an umbrella...