You think the UK politicians are less corrupt then those in the US? How quaint . It is like the 95% that reelect their representative every election because "We have a good one" while decrying the rest of congress as a pack of thieves. And again the UK more socially stable then the US? We already have 47 percent on food stamps and other support measures, What more do you want? It is when the governments, both yours and mine, can't keep up the payments that TSHTF.kenneal - lagger wrote:That's a big "if".vtsnowedin wrote:......... if priorities are properly allocated agriculture will be the last thing to run out of fuel while cruising down to the mall will soon be history.
There will be so many priorities such as the military, law and order and food manufacturing and distribution that have very high lobbying power that others will be forgotten about. Farms are spread out, difficult to guard and, so, vulnerable to theft so they will not be thought by increasingly pressurised authorities to be a good place for such a valuable commodity to be stored.
The food manufacturers and distributors are likely to put the conventional farmers out of business and take over the whole system as it must be "managed properly". Many farmers already have a high level of debt and when fuel prices rise quickly the price of their produce is unlikely to rise as fast, especially if Wallmart and Co have anything to do with it, so they will go even deeper into debt and probably go bust. This is much more likely in such a corrupt political system as the US than it would be here, especially if we have got out of the EU, which is just as corrupt but in a slightly more European, less competent, way.
Once fuel gets so expensive that the majority, the mall shoppers, can't afford it the whole system is likely to break down. The price of oil will swing as it has done recently but, in all probability, much more wildly. People will be put out of work on a massive scale and social disorder would be more likely in the US than here where we have a semblance of a social security system to take the mitigate the initial brunt of discontent.
Maintaining the supply of anything will be very difficult especially if there are highly armed gangs of people wandering around in sparsely populated and heavily built up areas. This is less likely to happen in Europe as we don't have a gun culture to add to the armed criminals.
If you don't rely on supplies of artificial fertilisers, agrochemicals and feed you are going to stand a chance of producing some food on a sustainable basis. Your soil is also likely to be in good heart to sustain production and your production methods will also allow you to carry on producing.
If you've been mining the soil of its fertility for years the second you're late with a fertiliser application you will lose your crop and all future crops. After seven years of fallow you might be able to start growing again but badly mined soils would probably need a lot longer than that to regain natural fertility. And then you would have to break ground again which would be very difficult without oil.
Coming up to an oil price shock I would be more confident of riding it out if I wasn't wholly or even partially dependent on supplies of oil based products.
Armed gangs of city dwellers with their pistols they have never had to a range for practice won't last long against the armed farmers with their deer and varmint rifles with the scopes sited in for two hundred yards. After the gangs have been added to the compost heap peace and tranquility will return to the countryside.
There is nothing "artificial" about commercial fertiliser. A nitrogen molecule is a nitrogen molecule etc. We should use them as long as they can be made. Now on the other hand the pesticides and there over use and misuse have sterilised much of the soil and returning the bacteria, insects and worms to it is a major task. How to do it without losing whole crops to the weeds and insect pest the chemicals were applied to control is the problem.
My fields have been fallow now for twenty years and have seen no pesticides. To return any of them to food production I will first have to deforest them as some of the emergent trees are now thirty feet tall and a foot thick at the stump. For now I plan on putting in a couple acres of food plots for the deer and wild turkeys and will work at building up the soil in those plots.
They really haven't a clue. They swallow the spin, the lies as well as the chemicals. Listen, I'm gonna die anyway - but I want to die healthy. I'm thinking of the apple tree I want planted on my grave.