Relocalisers bopped by Stuart Staniford (TOD)

[Vortex]

The yurt dwelling relocalisers take a bop on the nose!

Why Peak Oil Actually Helps Industrial Agriculture

A sizeable faction of the people who think peak oil is important, and happening soon enough to care about, think it has big implications for agriculture. And most of them agree on what those implications are: as a society, we are going to have to give up the big combine harvesters, the thunderous power of 275 horsepower tractors, and instead we will have to return to small-scale, hand-labor organic production. Rather than having 2-5% of the working population involved in agriculture, as in most western societies at present, most people will need to be involved in growing food. This is part of the agenda of the relocalization movement, which itself is a recent reincarnation of a long-standing movement for localism.

This argument has never really made sense to me, but my recent explorations of food prices and biofuels have sharpened up my conviction that the thinking behind this position is mistaken. In this piece, I'm going to first document that some influential peak-oilers do in fact believe this, then try to discuss what I think the reasoning is -- it's not usually made very explicit but it depends on something I'm calling the Fallacy of Reversibility. Finally, I'm going to lay out why I don't think things are going to go the way the proponents of relocalization expect, at least not any time soon.

Key quote:
.... clearly, farmers making money like that will not be selling out to hordes of the urban poor trying to go back to the land, nor will they need to employ them. Instead, the farmers will simply outbid the urban poor for the energy required to operate the farms (and in the US, the farm sector only uses 2.2% of all petroleum in the country).

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3481

As I have suggested before, it will take MANY decades for farming (and jet planes!) to disappear. Sure, the least energy efficent crops & farming techniques will be changed ... but Mr Mega Farmer will still be around .. perhaps with more government backing & protection.

The web designers & telephone sanitisers will however be in a world of hurt ...

[Totally_Baffled]

Agreed.

And remember that US agricultural production is many times more energy intensive than the rest of the world.

If I remember correctly, the UK and Europe agricultural sectors use nearer 1%. Something to do with farms being closer to markets, less irrigation, less fertilizer etc.

[MacG]

I agree strongly with this view. What might happen as food prices rise is that some people might start allotments for pure economical and quality-of-life reasons, replacing maybe 20-30% of their purchased food with homegrown.

Most people will (for economic reasons) probably just reduce the amount of meat they eat, thus easing the crunch dramatically. They (we) will probably do this without even thinking about it, just by looking in our wallets.

Last figure i saw was in the 80's (sorry, no link) when some 70% of the harvested grain was used for animal feed, some 10-15% for things like pasta and other products, and only 15-20% was consumed by humans.

[Vortex]

Last figure i saw was in the 80's (sorry, no link) when some 70% of the harvested grain was used for animal feed, some 10-15% for things like pasta and other products, and only 15-20% was consumed by humans.

I do SO like pasta and other products ...

[JohnB]

Won't relocalisation start to happen on a country or regional scale? Bulk foods that are imported from the other side of the world will need to be grown nearer their market to reduce transport costs. So big farms in a particular country or region produce bulk crops for that region. And small farms, smallholders and gardeners produce high value, low volume and perishable products for local sale.

[chris25]

I disagree with this article.

With peak oil-

-the costs of machinery will increase (manufacturing requires barrels of the stuff, modern tractors are hugely complex)
-the cost of maintaining the equipment will increase
-fertilizer cost will increase (as discussed in article)
-transportation costs will increase (the item will need to be made near the market)
-pesticide cost will increase
-fungicide cost will increase
-oil shocks will threaten farm machinery oil supply

[chris25]

another thing this presumes is that we are all going to do our day-to-day business in a stable world.

NO

Recession and peak oil will bring instability and unemployment. Man will fight for food.

It's not a case of a bag of carrots costing ?1 one day then ?2 a bag the next, and the good old consumer paying up and the farmer (or agri-baron) rubbing his hands whilst sitting on his cash mountain.

What good is that if you havnt got a job because of high energy prices and inflation causing recession? How are you going to buy the carrots in the first place?

You need to secure your food source NOW

[Susukino]

What good is that if you havnt got a job because of high energy prices and inflation causing recession? How are you going to buy the carrots in the first place?
You need to secure your food source NOW

The Cuban experience doesn't seem to offer much support for your "man will fight for food" argument. Can you give us an example some time over the past 50 years of recession causing a collapse of societal fabric, such that a decent or perhaps indecent percentage of the population is murdered by the others just to get food? Can you then compare and contrast that society with that of our own here in the UK and give us some insights into how our situation differs?

Remember that food, water and shelter are the preconditions for survival. Without these three resources people cannot survive. For that reason I would expect individual people and society as a whole to redeploy (if necessary) every other resource into ensuring that these conditions are met. If need be, this means soup kitchens: for example the government might cut the defence budget in half and spend the money on feeding people. Or maybe it means rationing of the kind we saw in WWII.

For individuals it perhaps means that they can no longer spend money on plasma televisions or on two overseas holidays a year or cable TV or eating out or nice new clothes twice a year. There is a LOT of fat to cut there before we have to worry about food. At least for the foreseeable future I don't expect it to get to the point where were the average person cannot source the 1500 calories a day needed for survival.

I'm not saying that one cannot easily concoct a doomsday scenario, just that given current uncertainties there are as many ifs and buts involved in creating a dystopian scenario as there are involved in creating a utopian scenario. Which one you choose comes down to your temperament. If you've always been a gloomy person who suspects that this was all too good to last (and has done for thirty years) then you will incline to giving weight to the intellectual arguments in favour of complete collapse and reversion to the middle ages. If you're a kind of happy-go-lucky person who believes that things sort themselves out in the end you will find reasons to disagree with peak oil, or at least the touted damage that oil peak will cause.

And then you have people who recognise that there are so many factors involved and so few certainties at this point that extrapolating more than a year or two into the future (and unconditionally believing your own forecast) is a process more indicative of intellectual arrogance than anything else.

Suss

[SaturnV]

...the farm sector only uses 2.2% of all petroleum in the country.

This statement gives a false sense of security, as oil does not react according to the rules of orthodox economics, because it is a finite and declining resource, and our entire way of life is dependant on it. Claims that reduced dependency and rising efficiency make food production more resilient to market events is a tale that has been spun by the media and politicians for years. But tell me what comfort did this reduction in consumption provide when the fuel crisis hit Britain back in 2000?

?Food Distribution
Two factors reduced the availability of food for distribution during the fuel crisis. First, disruptions in the transportation sector prevented the shipment of food goods from producers to vendors. Similar to gasoline distributors, supermarkets rely on daily just-in-time deliveries rather than maintaining large stockpiles of goods. This mode of business proved to be highly vulnerable to transportation disruptions as there was very little stock to meet consumer demand when the supply of just-in-time goods was interrupted. Each day of the fuel protests further affected food deliveries, depleting the small reserves kept by supermarkets.

The second factor influencing shortages was increased demand and panic buying. The uncertainty of how long the fuel protests would disrupt food supplies caused consumers to alter their normal purchasing behaviour and attempt to acquire more goods than usual. The grocery chain Spar noted that its food sales had increased by 300 percent. The sight of empty shelves triggered some consumers to stockpile goods in sufficient volumes to endure a prolonged food supply shortage. Hence, by September 13 panic buying had commenced across Britain, some shops were bare of bread and milk, and a number of supermarkets began rationing food purchases?

Link

Even if food production and distribution accounted for no more than one percent of the total quantity of energy used, that sector is still 100% reliant on it, and therefore at the mercy of any disruptions to that supply.

[SunnyJim]

I think this is missing the point a little.

We are all agreed surely that the cost of food will increase? Then surely it follows that it will be more worthwhile growing some of your own food? i.e. salad leaves that are simple to grow, but expensive. Many kinds of veg are simple in the garden, and don't require much time. Similarly you could keep chickens simply and they would eat food scraps. Nothing would be wasted. It fits in with a good efficient post peak household economy where nothing is wasted. - So we may not be forced back to the land due to a lack of oil - in fact I doubt oil will ever really make it to the front of peoples minds over the coming world depression. No, things will simply get so expensive that econmics will give incentives to become more self-reliant.

Those in towns will grow in their back gardens or get allotments rather than have to move to the country to work on the land for agri-barons.

The key issue with large scale farms is this; They are only efficient when looked at from one perspective, that being number of people employed to food produced. They are horribly in-efficient when looking at productivity per acre. On that count small farms are far more efficient. As oil goes up in price and labour comes down in price, it makes sense in economic terms for more people to become employed on farms. Not due to a lack of oil, but due to the usual economic factors (caused by lack of oil).

[Susukino]

I think this is missing the point a little.....
No, things will simply get so expensive that econmics will give incentives to become more self-reliant.

Agreed. This might be seen by the survivalist fringe as a rather boring outcome but it seems far more likely to me than the early disentegration of society foreseen by some.

Suss

[chris25]

When it comes to expensive oil farmers and truckers are so often hit first. Hence why we had the 2000 oil protests.

Knowing many farmers and studying a degree which contains a large proportion on agriculture, I can esure you that whilst revenue has increased for farmers, as has every other single fixed cost. Overall profits have not increased on any large scale.

The reason I also dont think this will happen is due to sustainability. The whole system of processing food in this country is unsustainable. For instance my local Sainsburys supposedly "local" strawberries are grown in the south east in a heated greenhouse, trucked up to a processing plant miles up north, covered in plastic crap then brought back down south and stored in huge refrigeration units ready for the customer to get their greedy hands on them.

How any peak oilist can think that modern agriculture and food systems can continue using the energy consumption they use today, i dont know.

Through the recession you may be right, but once the figure at the bottom of the page starts creeping up you'll soon be thinking differently.

[Susukino]

How any peak oilist can think that modern agriculture and food systems can continue using the energy consumption they use today, i dont know.

I don't think anybody is saying that "modern agriculture and food systems can continue". I for one would be astonished if agriculture did not change in the face of rising oil costs, but that alone doesn't mean that millions of people will be fighting in the streets for food. OK, so there won't be strawberries in December any more. Ditto sweet corn from Israel or cherry tomatoes from Kenya. Is that really the end of the world? I would say not. People will complain, then shrug and get on with life.

Suss

[chris25]

As oil goes up in price and labour comes down in price, it makes sense in economic terms for more people to become employed on farms. Not due to a lack of oil, but due to the usual economic factors (caused by lack of oil).

Couldn't agree more. When unemployment increases people will do anything for a job.

Why would you put thousands of quids worth of diesel into your mega tractors, when you have a workforce who will willingly be employed for 1/10 of your machinery costs?

[chris25]

but that alone doesn't mean that millions of people will be fighting in the streets for food. OK, so there won't be strawberries in December any more. Ditto sweet corn from Israel or cherry tomatoes from Kenya. Is that really the end of the world? I would say not. People will complain, then shrug and get on with life.

Suss

By "fight" I dont mean physical fighting I just mean high competition/demand so people will "fight" for survival.