Care to explain why a command economy is unlikely? If oil soars to $200 a barrel and commerce is brought to a grinding halt, you can bet your bottom dollar that the government will be doing something to solve the problem (even if it is truly unsolvable). I can easily see the government nationalizing all energy resources and doling it out via a rationing system, and finding a way to "recapture" the extremely high prices being paid for energy to meet the population's need for food, housing, etc.

Due to population demographics we can expect the population to continue to grow for 50 more years at zero population growth. Each couple has two kids.



Maybe lots of motivation, but few jobs due to conservation, deflation, and a lack of capital for investment with less than zero for a savings rate. We would have to borrow from the Chinese to fund the transition or hyperinflate the currency by printing it.

OK, you guys tell me. Is the USA ready to embrace socialism?

Can you tell me why we wouldn't find a way to "recapture" the vast amount of monies going into the oil sector? I mean, that money does have to go somewhere, right?

But oil money or no, I think printing dollars to pay for massive alternative energy projects will be the way to go...inflation be damned. Solves the peasky problem of all those danged mortgage and debt payments, too. Another thing that I see that the US might attempt doing is convincing other major economies (Japan, Europe) to inflate their currencies in lockstep with ours, creating some sort of "false equibrium" that could enable the transition off of fossil fuels even in the face of global economic contraction.

(Just trying to put an optimistic spin on things, is all )

I think they will once they realize that the "forever growth" paradigm of the free-marketers is kaput. That's not to say that my hypthothetical Mr. L. Faire wouldn't ever be elected President, but if that were to happen, it's time to start singin' the doomer blues...

Well, we can start with a report on historical crop yields per acre that's on the USDA website. I've got a copy of it and the URL on my laptop, but I don't have time to fire it up right now and configure it for my home network. I'll post it tomorrow if you can't find it.

Anyway, the data goes back to 1860 (when industrialization was already underway). What you see, especially when correlated with increased usage of nitrogen fertilizer (data also available on the USDA website), is that crop yields have increased between 400%-700% since that time. I've seen European data that was actually more telling, especially for Eastern Europe, but I do not know at this time where to find it again. IIRC, though, the crop yield increase there was substantial as a result of industrialized agriculture--roughly an 8-fold increase.

The correlation does not hold when looking at hybridization tables, or other such data. The reasonable conclusion, then, is that nitrogen fertilizer usage is primarily responsible for increased crop yields, and that once it becomes impossible for us to make those fertilizers artificially, our crop yields will decline significantly, leading to shortages of food and fibers for textiles.

Organic agriculture offers some hope on a small scale, but since I work in that industry, I can tell you that it's not scalable. It's impossible to farm large fields organically without the use of heavy machines and lots of under-the-table labor. One of the things that studies done on research farms don't usually tell you is that all of the well known farms have bunches of free labor in the form of students doing an internship. Without free labor, the farms would not exist as purely organic farms.

Getting the same yields through organic agriculture on, say, a 2 or 3 acre field is possible, but it is very difficult, and often it relies on leaving more to chance than is widely reported. Pesticides, especially, become important. If we posit that the really effective chemical pesticides will become unavailable sometime post-peak (as it seems reasonable to do), then we're left with using natural pesticides made of marigolds, tobacco, capsaicin, etc. Those work in a much more limited fashion, and in years with a heavy infestation of pest insects or fungi, crop yields must decline in Organic agriculture.

Not that I'm bashing organic methods. It's obvious that we must adopt them, and soon. But what we will find is that the promising studies to do with high crop yields were not done objectively, and that we will not be able to sustain the crop yields that we have now--especially when you consider the up-chain petroleum inputs. Biological controls do not occur naturally everywhere. On my garden, for instance, I'm getting ready to bring in some ladybugs from a distant source. They'll have to be shipped using petroleum. Once it becomes necessary to use such mechanisms to control pests on a wide scale, not only will we have immense difficulty finding enough of a given biological agent, we'll also have to ship it far and wide at great expense.

Nor will we be able to avail ourselves of clotches made of plastic, or of mulch fabrics made of the same, both of which are vital to high yield organic agriculture as it exists now. And there are plenty of other examples of vital inputs and devices that organic agriculture uses that rely on pretroleum. We won't have access to those at some point post-peak.



I don't know whether it will happen in the next ten thousand years or not. But I care about people, whether they're people I know or not. I care about the human race in general. Regardless of spatial or temporal separation from people, I care about what happens to them. Are you trying to insinuate that I should not?

I used to have a copy. For a variety of reasons, it's not practical for me to use his methods completely, but for others in different situations, he's definitely got valuable input. I recommend him as well; it's just not practical for my situation.

Not according to those who have studied the work of Masanobu Fukuoka, who achieved yields comprable to those in mechanised agriculture, using no- till "organic" methods.

Why would you need pesticides in organic agriculture?

I'd have to actually look at one of the studies to comment, but I'd be willing to bet that they suffer from at least one of the flaws I pointed out. No till agriculture is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned unless Fukuoka is doing something truly revolutionary. Again, it's not scalable.



What a weird question. Obviously, you can't use chemical pesticides in organic agriculture and still call it organic, which is the first part of the point. The second part of the point is that pests destroy crops. Surely you understand the implication.

Many practitioners of organic agriculture do not experience problems with "pests" and in fact don't recognise insects as "pests" but instead as indicators of unhealthy plants. Eliot Coleman has organically farmed successfully for decades in Vermont and Maine without use of pesticides.

You seem to expect these methods to somehow translate to industrial agriculture scale. Why? With less petroleum, industrial style agriculture won't be possible, probably. Our manner of growing food will simply have to change. This doesn't seem a bizarre concept to me, especially since people here on PO continually point out that in order to avoid the worst effects of peak oil our culture will have to drastically change. A basic part of our culture is how we grow food. Don't you think that would have to change too?

My parents stopped growing corn when they couldn't keep crows out of the corn in their organic garden.
Also as oil prices increase, you'll have a more difficult time ordering biological pesticides.

I think organic gardening is the only way to go in the future but it simply will not yield as many vegetables in the future. It'll cost more too and the vegetables won't be as attractive as the vegetables we see in store now.

Well, that's just not true. The Biointensive method yields are higher than industrial ag yields for vegetables.


http://www.growbiointensive.org/



These comments are very frustrating and make me sad. I feel you are well-meaning, caring people, but you are so set in your ideas, you won't accept information which is contrary to what you think you know.

Crows can be a problem with corn, they always have been. That didn't keep people from growing corn in the past. Personally, I have a lot of trouble from armadillos.

Thanks for the link. I think my parents have used some biointenisve methods (double dug raised beds and composting) and thanks for the link. There's a lot I need to learn. This looks like it'll work very well.

I am open to a lot of stuff as I'm aware there's a great deal I don't know.

I wonder if crows prefer prefer the supersweet kind of corn to the regular corn grown for corn bread and grits and such.

I wasn't able to grow sweet corn because racoons ate it, but I had no major "pest" or varmint problems growing field corn (specifically Tohono O'odham 60-day corn).

I hope that link will help some other folks. If I were able to help people learn more about growing food, I'd feel I was doing something of value. But here at PO.com, it doesn't go over very well, usually....

While I practice organic agriculture in my (very large) back yard, I disagree with this notion. A plant can be perfectly healthy and still be attacked by pests (which are, by definition, organisms that attack plants that humans are trying to grow). Pests will make the plant unhealthy, and thus host to even more pests. The only way to control this process is by limiting the number of pest organisms, which in turn requires either pesticides or biological controls. Organic agriculture relies on the latter, and I have argued that there won't be enough of them to go around.

Agriculture right now has such high yields because those yields are predicated, in part, on almost NO pest organisms. We spray such toxic chemicals on our food that the pest organisms die.



I've never heard of Elliot Coleman. But I'll take you at your word; my point is that his success, or Fukuoka's success, or Seeds of Change, or other such success stories, are not analyzed well enough. When you look at what it would take for everyone to try to follow their methods, you come quickly to understand that it just isn't going to happen. Sans fertilizers, pesticides, and water pumped via diesel engine pumps, the vast majority of Oklahoma (where I live) will become non-arable. Organic agriculture requires an immense input of manual labor, a little luck, and the right location. There aren't enough right locations to go around.



I do not. I think they won't, and can't. That's my point.



Because if they do not, we're in a doomer scenario. Industrial agriculture is what supports the world's population. Without it, many billions are screwed.



No, not probably. It absolutely can't.



This reminds me of corporations cutting benefits but calling it a "benefits program change." Of course our methods will have to "change." Part of the "change" will entail growing about 1/6th to 1/8th less food than we grow now. Again, surely you understand the implications of this.



I'm glad.



I don't know how I can be any plainer. Of course it must "change." Again, that change will involve growing a lot less food. Which in turn will involve many many many people starving to death.

Let me ask you, Ludi, since you seem to be someone who grows food--where do you get your water for growing? Do you ever irrigate your crops from a municipal supply? Alternately, if you're near a body of water, do you think all farms are near enough water to make it without pumping water in? What would you do if there was a drought and you couldn't pump water in? Also, do you, or did you, use any machines driven by diesel or gasoline or something else derived from hydrocarbons to help with the food you grow? Are the tools you use hand made? If you have rain barrels or water reservoirs, are they made of plastic or metal? If metal, were they hand forged or milled? Do you grow heirloom or open-pollenated crops and save your seed year to year? How do you isolate your plants? Do you use plastic cages? What do you store your seed in? To ensure viability, do you put them in the icebox? Could you rebuild your refrigerator with materials you could find locally, in your fields? Could you do so without electricity? If you were to be transplanted to, say, Alberta Canada, would you be able to have the same growing season without some 6-mil plastic? Do you have any biological controls (like Praying Mantis egg cases, ladybugs, beneficial nematodes or bacteria or fungi) shipped to you to help your garden? What about bees? Have you ever? Have you ever cleared an overgrown plot by hand, without the use of any kind of machinery other than those driven by your own exertions or the exertions of animals? Have you raised those animals without the use of antibiotics, vaccinations, etc. which are usually prepared in labs powered by hydrocarbon generated electricity?

These aren't idle questions, and if you can answer them all, I've got hundreds more. I'm not trying to be insulting or rude; but I want there to be complete honesty in this conversation. The point I'm making is that the organic farmers that get their favorable-sounding yields do so with lots of petroleum inputs, lots of free labor, water that's pumped via a municipal and petroleum driven water distribution system, etc. etc. Moreover, the fertilizer and pesticides/ biological controls they use are shipped to them via power generated by petroleum. None of that will be an option at some point post-peak. Let me repeat that: NONE OF THAT WILL BE AN OPTION AT SOME POINT POST-PEAK. The studies that report yields similar to non-organic agriculture assume certain infrastructure remaining in place, but global oil peak will gradually take that infrastructure away. Once that happens, those yields will sink to pre-industrial levels. Now, if you've got serious suggestions about replacing those inputs post-peak, I'd love to hear them. But absent solid ideas, I would maintain that there are reasons why, prior to the industrial revolution, there was quite a bit less arable land than there is now. There are solid reasons why yields were as low as they were.

Right now, I'm begining the process of figuring out how to create a completely sustainable agriculture in Central Oklahoma. What I'm learning is that basically everything that's been written about sustainable methods are horse puckey. Organic farmers still harvest their grain with combines, and spread fish emulsion with gasoline powered machines. Take that away, and those farmers will be able to grow much, much less.

Have I made my point clear yet? Is this starting to sink in? When you go out into your garden/ field/ whatever next year, try to cultivate using nothing that gets shipped to you, no tools that you didn't make by hand from materials you personally found, and using no machines that are powered by anything other than nuclear/ wind/ solar power. Maybe then, you'll begin to get my drift. We won't be reduced to that overnight post-peak. But we will eventually come to that, or very close to it. The challenge is to figure out what to do from that starting line. Because, make no mistake, that will be the starting line. I expect the starting pistol to go off sometime soon.