[DesuMaiden]

Do you think I will see the end of the age of oil, and the end of petro-chemical based agriculture?

yes, and no.

What do you mean by "yes" and "no".

[killJOY]

Do you think I will see the end of the age of oil, and the end of petro-chemical based agriculture?

Absolutely not.

There might be a more efficient petro-chemical-based agriculture, but it is not going away. This is one of the chief delusions of the peak oil cult: that we'll see "the end of oil" and have to "return" to a "more organic" system.

Fiddlesticks. The development of GMOs has just begun, and the possibilities are nearly endless.

[careinke]

Fiddlesticks. The development of GMOs has just begun, and the possibilities are nearly endless.

GMO crops are a dead end and will probably not be used commercially within five years. Here is why:

A. They are already banned in over 40 countries.
B. GMO corn is less productive per acre than conventional corn.
C. GMO crops are more expensive than conventional crops with most of the expense being up front.
D. Conventional (Non GMO) crops sell for a premium over GMO crops.

GMO crops were a scam to sell more roundup. With conventional crops, you sprayed the ditches and perimeter of the fields, but not your crop, because it would kill your crop. With GMO crops you spray the entire field, greatly increasing the use of round-up. Do the math, you will be surprised at the increased cost.

People are also realizing that the GMO crops absorb those pesticides leading to human consumption of the herbicides.

Five years max, and only idiots would even consider using GMO's

[Pops]

KillJoy! Man, what's bringing out the old peakers?

--
Actually, cost per bushel was falling before the oil price rise - even during the initial patent protected introduction of RR corn in 1998:


I've said over and over that food is so cheap now that a basic calorie ration would only cost $100-200 per YEAR. At least in the US I'd not be concerned about going hungry any time soon, be more concerned about staying out of debt and learning to cook staple food. Nothing wrong with learning to grow a kitchen garden to supplement your gruel tho ...

[Shaved Monkey]

Ive been watching wartime farm a BBC doco
Basically during the War UK had to grow its food as the imports were stopped.
Land that was used for meat animals was ploughed over for veg.
Dairy remained as it was considered important and so did chickens.
The government took over all food and issued ration cards.
They set up pig clubs were people would gather to fatten a pig with their waste
The government got half the pig and they shared the other half.
People in the country did quite well .
The rations in todays terms didnt seem that harsh 2 steaks per person a week(or the equivalent value more mince or offal or cheaper cuts)
2 rashers of bacon, some butter sugar and fat for cooking.
Bread was unlimited (if you could afford it)
But the diet then was more meat based than today.
Veg if you could grow it was unlimited.
Lots of organic agriculture some fuel for tractors as that was rationed and lots of hands on labour

I imagine similar things will happen but water and soil fertility and break down of society weren't a problem in wartime UK
Expectations were lower too.

[killJOY]

Show me the evidence that the "GMO revolution" has grown beyond Bt corn and roundup-resistant soybeans?

The best resource for the lay person is here: http://www.biofortified.org/

Also, try Googling Arctic apple; citrus greening spinach gene; Rainbow papaya; Golden Rice; rDNA Humulin; oh hell, just go here:

http://www.biofortified.org/resources/biotech-traits/

[killJOY]

KillJoy! Man, what's bringing out the old peakers?

Pops, I troll around periodically. I'm a (partially) reformed doomer. In 2009, I started watching the peaker/doomer set going crazy:

Bob Hirsch droning on about $500/barrel oil and publishing global warming "skepticism"
Matt Simmons talking about how the Gulf coast would have to be evacuated
Mike Ruppert shrieking about imminent die-off
The "Ass-druid" going on the radio to announce that people currently on medications "are going to die."
The Y2K art critic-turned-peaker, and that buttwipe Russian on a boat, and the astrologer/blogger at LATOC all droning on about the coming "swift" decline of oil and the natural gas "cliff" and other horseshit.

The reality has turned out to be quite different!

I just wanted to inform the young woman posting this thread that the peak has been greatly exaggerated.

[killJOY]

pstarr, if I recall correctly, the Flavr Savr was discontinued due to high costs and little market interest.

The strawberry thing is a hoax. Too bad. It would be a cool product!

http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2013/01/gmo- ... -from.html

[Loki]

KillJoy! Man, what's bringing out the old peakers?

Pops, I troll around periodically. I'm a (partially) reformed doomer. In 2009, I started watching the peaker/doomer set going crazy:
...
Mike Ruppert shrieking about imminent die-off

Did a quick search of your posts and found this:

My ultimate view is the overshoot/dieooff view, and no amount of home canning will ensure survival because of the sheer incomprehension of how this event will transpire.

post920803.html#p920803

No longer a die-off hypothesist? I've never had much for the die off stuff, myself.

I mostly agree with your other posts in that thread, though. I work on an organic farm. This post is the harsh truth:

I WORK at an "organic" farm. It is heavily dependent on 1)diesel fuel to till, haul, cultivate; 2) plastic for mulch, piping, potting and greenhouse covers; 3) electricity for keeping seedlings warm, lighting, irrigation, fencing, etc.; 4) chemical industry for such PESTICIDES as Entrust, Diatech, Pyganic; for such FERTILIZERS as rock phosphate, lime, seed meals, greensand, etc.

Love to hear your thoughts on permaculture

[radon1]

Our current agricultural system is not sustainable.

"Our agricultural system" - the questions is, whose specifically?

In the context, ""our agricultural system" apparently means the industrial agricultural system, built is such way that a small percentage of the farmers feed the remainder. But this system incorporates a minority of the planet's population.

Vast numbers of people represent subsistence farmers, in places like China, India, Bangladesh and so on. They eat what they produce, and in this sense they run a self-sustainable agriculture. They might be getting occasional bits and pieces from the industrial system, such as tools, but these tools are fairly primitive and do not require the industrial system in full gear to be produced.

[ralfy]

The catch is not peak oil but peak oil, global warming, environmental damage, increasing population, increasing resource demand per capita, a peak for other resources, etc.

[killJOY]

Love to hear your thoughts on permaculture

My general rule is not to join anything that sounds like a club or "movement."

That being said...

“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.
—Bill Mollison”

Like "organics," the permacultists' central dogma is a version of the Appeal to Nature fallacy: If it's natural, it's good; if it's "unnatural," it's bad. ALL farmers work "against" nature. As soon as I planted the first apple tree in my orchard, I was working AGAINST the natural succession in the state of Maine. All farmers work with nature. When I choose apple varieties that endure cold conditions, I'm working with nature--wait. Those varieties were selected by humankind. Nevermind.

"...of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor." Here comes the first insulting straw man. You see, he's saying: if you're not a permacultist, you engage in protracted and thoughtless labor. Dumb farmers, all of you. Screw him.

"...of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system." Same deal: straw man. I'm not even sure what "treating any area as a single product system" means. Gobbledygook.

Sorry. I'll just call myself a grower.

[Shaved Monkey]

One trellis of Madagascar beans and 20 or so pigeon peas and I have all the protein I need.
They dont require much more than rain to water it or crap infertile soil to grow in.
It doesn't take up much more area than an average car park.
I also have a drumstick tree, same deal crap soil and just rain but you get all the nutrients you need too.
Just keep coppicing, eating the leaves and fruit.
I also have winged beans every part is edible down to the root.
Grow lots of herbs to make it interesting and you could survive sustainably for a very long time,while actually improving your soil as they are all nitrogen fixers and with no inputs and virtually no labour.

A rocket stove running on fallen twigs and it can be virtually free too.

[Newfie]

Desu,

I'm sorry you got such a blast here. Sometimes I think we are just a bunch of old cranks who just enjoy pissing on one another. Yet each a some good ideas.
Many seem to be scared of the realities.

i just read a few of your posts and questions in them. I think you already know the answer but don't much like it, neither do I.

In short, we don't create a sustainable agriculture for 7 billion. Can't happen. Must be a lower number, how low? I'm with Vtsnowedin, roundabouts 1 billion.

When will we get there? Who knows. Pops is a slow crasher, with good reason. I tend to think that on a global scale he may be right with the caveat that there can and will be localized fast crashes due to civil unrest. I think that is what you are now seeing in Syria, Ukraine, and other regions.

There remain possibilities that something can take us down faster, such as ebola. But that is not assured.

Our personal response to this, and we have had a long and blessed life, has been to build a network of alternatives. We live in a center city because that is where our work is. As long as BAU goes on we will ride it. We have a bug out place where we would be welcome by the community. Far away, remote. We have a way to get there by boat, which itself is a good short term bug out location.

But this is through a lifetime of accumulation and work.

As a young fellow I think it is good to listen to Ibon to try to develop a new world view that allows you to observe the events around you, bad as they might be, without getting drug down by them. A tall order indeed.

We are living through a great extermination. The cause of the extermination is, to a large degree, not material. None of us can change it, some of us can accept it. That is the real trick, to find a path through for yourself that doesn't make you crazy. It is possible.

[KaiserJeep]

Actually, don't save your apple seeds. Apples do not breed true to seed, each apple tree grown from seed is unique and many do not even bear fruit, and those that do most often bear small, bad tasting "Crab Apples". Which is why for centuries, mankind has propagated a disease-resistant variety of apple tree for the roots, then grafted on the fruit-bearing upper branches from the rare apple varieties that we enjoy eating. Of course this results in apple orchards full of clones and reduced resistance to disease.

Then you would have to learn how to prune apple trees to promote fruits, and how to care for them, including schemes for suppressing all the endemic diseases that apples suffer from in the area you are living in. Which care does in fact include the application of manure, preferably not from humans, and hopefully composted into a rich organic mixture. Then you would have to learn the difference between tree apples and ground apples. Any apple you pluck from a tree may be healthy and nutritious for humans, but should be carefully inspected for insect pests. Those apples that have touched the ground are only fit for animal feed or compost, because that composted manure frequently contains "E-Coli" bacteria, the cause of deadly human food contamination.

I took the time to write those two paragraphs above to communicate the fact to you that growing human food on a farm is in fact a skilled occupation. You will never learn how to do it at the PO.com Forum, and you should not even try. We do in fact have people who have been farming for years on this Forum, and who could offer good advice, but if you are serious about growing your own food, you need to move away from home, and start by getting an education in farming - either as a course of study or by working on a functioning farm, and preferably BOTH. Then you would know enough to buy the right piece of land and how to prepare it for the approximately one-hundred-odd plant and animal species you would have to grow to feed yourself year round. In truth, nobody can even tell you how many acres you need, or what specific crops to attempt, because no two farms are the same - and each plot of land has unique requirements.

The statistics about this are quite bitter. Farming is a skilled profession that most people fail at - even those who were born and raised on farms. America is filled with charming little under-10-acre "hobby farms" with old farmhouses and outbuildings. Each represents a failed farmer, who sold his croplands to the local corporate farm and his home and outbuildings and machinery to others. Then he moved to the city and started buying food at the market like most of us.

"Buying the Farm" is a euphemism for dying where I come from, which is a military family. It callously describes what happens to young and inexperienced airplane pilots - they crash into the ground and the airplane burns and contaminates a portion of cropland, which the Commanding Officer then compensates the farmer for, he "buys the farm".

Time for a reality check. We are not getting out of the mess we are in by going back to the land. All the "Doomies" here at PO.com who are now attempting or have plans to someday become subsistence level farmers, are in fact doomed. Not only do you need at least a decade of intensive education and effort to learn how to do that, you also need freedom from marauding human predators and access to medicine and technology. YOU cannot drill a well or manufacture a wind turbine, or even produce new rubber seals for Mason jars, nor can you be a successful subsistence farmer without these things and hundreds more. Look at how many colonies were lost trying to live in what became the USA, and understand that nobody alive today possesses the knowledge of 17th century farming practices, which is what is actually needed.

There are 7.3 billion humans today, and we cannot even say if the world population will peak at 9, 12, or 20 Billion before the crash. The Earth is believed to have the capacity to support somewhere between 125 million and 1 billion humans in a sustainable fashion. The 125M lower bound assumes no knowledge or technology beyond what we know today, sustainable agrarian tech we already understand. The 1 billion upper bound assumes reasonable progress and discovery continues for some decades in the future, and we acquire the knowledge and tech base to successfully emulate our 17th century forebears.

Either way, anybody asking basic questions today had best not plan on being one of the few survivors. The human genome project found evidence that there were once as few as 30 thousand humans - Cro-Magnon subspecies - at the end of one Ice Age in the Northern hemisphere. We are all of us their descendants.

I myself am a member of a minority here at PO.com, who believes that there will be no fall of civilization, and no return of the Dark Ages. I believe that knowledge recorded on digital media will never be lost again. I believe that the Earth is a temporary residence before we spread beyond this planet. I believe that the "Doomies" are wrong, and that those that are most talented and prepared will in the end die as the other billions of less prepared humans ravage the planet in search of another meal.

Those fat Doomies will be the next meal for those lean and hungry human predators, the few survivors of the Darwinian selection from the billions of city dwellers.