Self Sufficiency - A Test Case

[biffvernon]

Are we not all living off the land today?

We're certainly not living off the land surface. We're living off the black-stuff from underground.

[kenneal - lagger]

As Biff says, we're living on oil and at a rate of between five and ten calories of oil and gas for every one calorie of food produced. The highly mechanised farming we practice, in the main, today uses gas to produce fertilizers and pesticides instead of human input; it uses oil powered machines for tillage operations instead of human input; it mass produces food commodities in centralised units requiring mass purchase instead of small scale local production methods feeding small scale local outlets; it transports food over huge distances instead producing locally; it uses packaging, cooling and chemicals to keep food for long periods instead of providing fresh food.

Once oil is scarce and/or expensive localised manual organic production will start to replace the use of oil as the fossil energy input reduces.

[vtsnowedin]

As Biff says, we're living on oil and at a rate of between five and ten calories of oil and gas for every one calorie of food produced. The highly mechanised farming we practice, in the main, today uses gas to produce fertilizers and pesticides instead of human input; it uses oil powered machines for tillage operations instead of human input; it mass produces food commodities in centralised units requiring mass purchase instead of small scale local production methods feeding small scale local outlets; it transports food over huge distances instead producing locally; it uses packaging, cooling and chemicals to keep food for long periods instead of providing fresh food.

Once oil is scarce and/or expensive localised manual organic production will start to replace the use of oil as the fossil energy input reduces.

As soon as fossil energy input is reduced there will be a reduction in yield and famine will begin followed by a significant dieoff down to the level that can be fed by local manual organic means.
Oil is a product of the land by the way.

[biffvernon]

As soon as fossil energy input is reduced there will be a reduction in yield and famine will begin followed by a significant dieoff down to the level that can be fed by local manual organic means.

Why so?

[vtsnowedin]

As soon as fossil energy input is reduced there will be a reduction in yield and famine will begin followed by a significant dieoff down to the level that can be fed by local manual organic means.

Why so?

Yield per acre.

[kenneal - lagger]

Current oil based farming practices are the most efficient way of producing food on a labour input basis. Labour input is offset by oil input. The most efficient method of food production on an output per acre basis is intensive gardening but this involves a high labour input so is frowned upon as inefficient! With a shortage of oil and a high unemployment level gardening might see a huge comeback.

It would require a change of diet to a more balanced vegetable based diet but we would be healthier as a result. Meat production could continue but on a much smaller scale. people might resort to, once again, keeping a few rabbits in a hutch in the garden fed on garden waste. The same would happen with chickens and pigs. Meat would once again be an expensive luxury as a grain based diet for cattle, pigs and poultry became too expensive.

[vtsnowedin]

Current oil based farming practices are the most efficient way of producing food on a labour input basis. Labour input is offset by oil input. The most efficient method of food production on an output per acre basis is intensive gardening but this involves a high labour input so is frowned upon as inefficient! With a shortage of oil and a high unemployment level gardening might see a huge comeback.

It would require a change of diet to a more balanced vegetable based diet but we would be healthier as a result. Meat production could continue but on a much smaller scale. people might resort to, once again, keeping a few rabbits in a hutch in the garden fed on garden waste. The same would happen with chickens and pigs. Meat would once again be an expensive luxury as a grain based diet for cattle, pigs and poultry became too expensive.

The statement contradicts itself. Even if you replace efficient with productive you would have to show me the data where they took into account the productivity lost to foot paths and access lanes people use to reach the garden soil they are intensively managing. The full section corn field 640 acres has just the one access point and a full 30,000 seeds per acre are planted and harvested with just three passes of the tractor and combine yielding 130,000 bushels of corn. It will take a lot of snap peas and radishes to equal that.

[RenewableCandy]

How about footpaths overhung with fruit/nut trees? There's one leading to the RenewablePlot that's very like that, actually.

For proper number-crunching, including paths, roads etc, there's a report "Can Britain Feed Itself" I think it's by Simon Fairlie. It does in fact say we'll have to ease-off rather a lot on the meat, but it also says that this is physically possible. As does "Zero Carbon Britain" by the CAT.

[vtsnowedin]

How about footpaths overhung with fruit/nut trees? There's one leading to the RenewablePlot that's very like that, actually.

For proper number-crunching, including paths, roads etc, there's a report "Can Britain Feed Itself" I think it's by Simon Fairlie. It does in fact say we'll have to ease-off rather a lot on the meat, but it also says that this is physically possible. As does "Zero Carbon Britain" by the CAT.

There was a piece in the local paper here yesterday that discussed this of all things. One tidbit was that 43% of the energy used in conventional farming was for the nitrogen fertilizer which they happily went on to say could be replaced with cow manure and legume crops plowed under. The fact that it takes energy to grow and plow under legume crops and that a reduced use of beef would lead to a reduced supply of cow manure seem to totally escape them. Never even got to the energy consumption of the extra field workers and their families needed to do the work manually and organic. I expect this debate to go on until fuel prices rise and large scale attempts at alternatives to conventional farming are tried and the true yields are known.

[Catweazle]

It's worth remembering that when a machine does 10 man-hours work in one hour, the man it replaces often spends 9 hours watching TV. So, as oil-powered machines fade man-powered machines can, to an extent, replace them.

[westcoastreticence]

There are large areas of the UK which no longer carry livestock as it is 'uneconomic'.
It is however 'economic', while oil is relatively cheap, to ship meat from Brazil or Austrailia where regulations are more lax than in the UK.
This will turn and I think that this ground will act as a cushion in the short term regarding meat consumption as its no use for anything else. We will need to adapt our 'taste' back to pre 1950s mutton, Irish stew, flank etc.
We have moved in recent decades over to eating chicken (grain fed) as a weekday food, beef as a snack (hi nitrogen input silage fed) and pork hi concentrate fed. Rather than eating naturally raised low input meats in smaller quantities.
So I would agree we have in the UK a pretty large scope for feeding ourselves a lot more locally than we do presently.
Reduce obesity
more homegrown veg, chickens rabbits etc
restart use of low value land for extensive meat production.
course fishing will cease.
waste reduction of food will cease.

Anyone calculated UK food production + imports - exports - food waste -calories above what a body requires and added potential from unused/underused land?

[biffvernon]

Reduce obesity

Now there's a thing. Quite a lot of people in the UK would be more healthy if they ate less food.

[kenneal - lagger]

......... planted and harvested with just three passes of the tractor and combine

What about all the oil based herbicides and pesticides? There's a lot more oil in that.

On a gardening scale you would get two crops a year some years and far less soil erosion.

[vtsnowedin]

......... planted and harvested with just three passes of the tractor and combine

What about all the oil based herbicides and pesticides? There's a lot more oil in that.

On a gardening scale you would get two crops a year some years and far less soil erosion.

Fertilizer is applied in the same "no-til" pass that plants the seed. Herbicides and pesticides are applied on the second pass and the third pass is the combine doing the harvesting. Soil erosion is kept to a minimum by leaving the corn stalks in the field or by a cover crop of rye planted after harvest that takes up any left over nitrogen.
One crop or two per year makes no difference if the total production for two crops doesn't exceed that of the one crop. It comes down to the growing degree days per year and the sum of the available water, sunlight and nutrients. If one crop uses it all efficiently going to two gains you nothing and probably losses the turn around time needed to plant the second crop and wait for the seeds to germinate. This would happen in mid summer when daylight was at it's maximum and sufficient moisture to germinate seeds might be lacking.
Again we cannot feed seven billion people on a gardening scale.

[emordnilap]

Again we cannot feed seven billion people on a gardening scale.

Only because we don't want to. Every able-bodied person should garden. The richer they are, they more they should garden. Maybe national service/conscription for gardening is the answer.