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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 492123.ece
Who knows there's a food crisis? | Magnus Linklater - Times Online

Hi am a long term lurker here, Adam1 introduced me to peak oil just about a year ago...

I went down to this lecture on Tuesday as live just a couple of minutes walk from city university.

Some remarkable things that did not get reported from the lecture:

- If Britains food system were the norm everywhere we would need the resources of 6 planets just to feed us. He thought the food system was by far the biggest Green House Gas emitter in the UK. [N.B. Have heard elsewhere that one in three lorries on British roads are carrying food]

- This is the legacy of our empire where we built railways and ports to utalise other peoples land to feed ourselves. This remains to this day. "We are rich and parasitic".

- A statistic: since 1995 our UK self sufficiency (SS) has dropped by 21.5%

- He was also stunned that in health terms fruit and veg are being pushed for consumption but our self sufficiency is falling in these items. He took the example of fruit in this country 5- 10% SS as opposed to 90% for France, when "we have 2000 varietys of Apples in the National Apple collection - this is ridiculous".

- He is very ardently against using grains for feeding animals in order to feed us saying "we have enough food in the world and would be able to feed 9 billion and another 9 billion if we stopped feeding grain to animals".

- Further he said that Britain was 120% SS in Wheat but we still have to import Wheat since 60% of what we grow is fed to animals.

- In the case of China becoming more meat eating this was just a signal of "nutritional transition" whereby the richer a country gets the food it eats tends to become more meat oriented.

- He made quite a point that Britain could feed itself easily if we are prepared to change our diet, citing 2 recent studies, the Simon Farlie one 'can Britain feed itself' and the CAT report 'zero carbon Britain'.

- On food price inflation he cited 9% for UK in 2007 and said this is just going to continue and would "rocket" this year. The sustainable Development Commission did a study to see the food price impact on a rise of the oil price from 50-100 dollars. The results came out at 5-10%. Could be interesting to see how these figures shape up this year.

- A book called 'Forever War' was mentioned where the currency used was calories.

- he said that the embodied water is the decider in a world where aquifers are drying up and climate change is making rainfall less predictable. He was quite disparaging about the carbon content of crisps and thought that embodied carbon should be seen as on a par with embodied water. His example was for Kenyan fine green beans where each finger represents 4 litres of water.

- On Peak Oil it was only one of eight issues that needed to be addressed fully in a solution. Not even Organic agriculture fixes all of them. I didn't have time to write all these down but will google his handouts to find these.

- As we all know food is 95% dependent on fossil fuels.

- The aid agencies are getting priced out of grain for aid and thought that would have a severe effect on the countries needing aid.

In terms of solutions he said we need to do the following

- get more skills in growing food
- be less reliant on foreign labout to harvest food, particularly fruit
- Need to carefully think through the options and not act in haste
- need a change to the diet
- need to make government more joined up in its communications with agriculture and industry as opposed to the "leave it up to Tesco's, the current approach".

In questions after wards he was asked about the poorer regions of the world and how they might fare. His response was 'Dire.... Dire....Dire'.

Great post Tom.

I was speaking to the dairy farmer behind me, who grows a small amount of cereal crops and he has said the wheat prices are very high because there were poor harvests in 2006/2007 in a number of regions around the world and thus shortages.

He then said that loads of farmers were now growing cereals because of the "pick-up" in prices and that next year the prices would be likely back down again because of a potential over-supply situation.

I have spoken to him about Peak Oil and he has been receptive, but he has not really divulged his views. I know he is a very intelligent and aware man - studied in Trinity Uni, Dublin when he was young before having to take over the family farm.

I would be interested in others views of what the farmer said - farmers in these parts are felt to be very down to earth and on the ball.....

On the subject of wheat, there's a post on PO.com (http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic35694.html) about a particularly virulent wheat rust fungus, which has moved out of Africa and is currently spreading across Asia. I'm always a bit wary of stuff posted over there but given all the factors which are currently pushing up wheat prices, this doesn't look like good news. Does anyone here know anything more about this?

Gerontion wrote:On the subject of wheat, there's a post on PO.com (http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic35694.html) about a particularly virulent wheat rust fungus, which has moved out of Africa and is currently spreading across Asia. I'm always a bit wary of stuff posted over there but given all the factors which are currently pushing up wheat prices, this doesn't look like good news. Does anyone here know anything more about this?

Not Fusarium wilt is it???

Ah, it's Puccinia graminis. Sounds very nasty.

I guess the only way to weather the future is to plant as diversly as possible, and not to rely on one crop. We also need some clever breeding programs that will adapt our plants to a more variable climate.

New Scientist say:

The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere are resistant to it.

I had a look at wiki at the links on the PO thread and it looks potentially fairly serious stuff. On the other hand, for all I know, it might be another bird flu we're-all-going-to-die-by-next-Thursday type thing.

tomhitchman wrote:Hi am a long term lurker here, Adam1 introduced me to peak oil just about a year ago...

Sorry Tom, I always have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's great that you've found out about it but at the same time I feel a bit guilty.

It sounds like it was an interesting talk. Thanks for the report on it.

There is more and more in the media about our food situation. Today's Guardian has this article, reporting on the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference. The speech it is reporting on, by Prof. John Beddington, seemed to focus more on the economics and on how to maintain/increase yield by techno means, rather than the more fundamental (eco) analysis of the problem.

[edit - Vortex has already posted this link http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... 8601#58601 ]

Adam, thanks for the note. Education is certainly a double edged sword and this one has been a biggie for me indeed. But recently have been majoring on powerswitch and spending less time on energybulletin and theoildrum since, like the school kid, my brain got full! Am still indebted to you for letting me know about the Transition Towns (now initiatives) Movement which has so much promise.

Meanwhile this year is getting used to the wood stove and foraging for wood and getting my garden into some form of food growth.

Good luck with you Wales thing!

Tom