[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.

Mon Jun 23 19:34:03 MDT 2008

The empire of cheap food is crumbling

by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter #189 (June 20 2008)

You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any
more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for
petroleum-induced famine.

We have "innocently" accommodated rising population with greater and
greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we
have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe
limitations - major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss.
The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see
with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.

We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly
brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap
energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy
arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations,
Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute,
and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is
offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth
that are simple extrapolations of historical trends.

No one can say with certainty that the worst effects of today's crisis
will occur tomorrow or by any particular date. But it is irrational to
assume there will only be gradual tightening of supplies until some
solutions miraculously come to our aid. One ought to at least admit that
one year ago few people thought we'd be going in the direction we're
going in, this fast, today.

Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, that
is, for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have
plummeted: "Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in thirty
years", according to Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital
Signs. This is exacerbated by increasingly weirder weather, compounded
by the oil price/supply pressure on food. What can interfere with the
three-day situation are truckers on strike (as in Europe),
extended/repeated power outages, and the inability of the work force to
commute to work.

I asked Chris Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, about the
escalating crisis that I assumed he was quite worried about. He told me
on Wednesday,

"A lot will depend on the crop year and the weather. There is slack in
the food supply system from meat consumption, for example. One steak's
energy requirement is the same as one gallon of ethanol. I see the glass
half full and don't have an apocalyptic view. We're seeing fuel economy
improvements and other self-correcting mechanisms. There's $100 billion
in renewable energy investment this year. We needed this crisis to start
changing toward conservation. The pendulum is swinging again, as it did
in the 1970s. We're not going off the end of the cliff on peak oil.
Production declines will be gradual."

I sent him my thoughts on the latter, with my thanks. I sure was
surprised that he wasn't half as worried as I am. Maybe he does not see
as much of a problem the fact that the nation's infrastructure is
petroleum-based. He probably would not agree with me that the Earth is
being murdered along with us human beings.

Zap! A global-warming heat wave kills many thousands in a US city. Other
cities take note, realizing their own cities are "like the one that got
zapped last weekend". Between the water supply problems, energy overload
for air conditioning, rising prices for food, water and gasoline, people
try to escape the urban heat island effect. Too many consumers stocking
up and trying to split town exacerbated the tragedy.

When cities run out of food, and people want to leave en masse, they
will get stuck in traffic jams the way fleeing (potential) victims of
Hurricane Rita did in 2005. Will survivors be the ones who had the
fullest gas tanks? Will these survivors also require guns to obtain food
outside the city, whether by hunting or sticking up some hapless or
well-armed locals?

Culture Change's reports do not intend to add to hysteria. Indeed, if
only there were no reason to be alarmed. But looking at our collective
situation, it is difficult to see how wrenching shortages are avoidable.
The consequence of reactions to these shortages will not be pretty.
Without facing this, and taking action to prevent it, our Ship of Fools
is on a course to hit the rocks.

Whether you are relatively "set" - with local food supply, not just
money - or you are living from paycheck to paycheck and thus depend on
the trucks coming into the supermarket without a hitch, you will not be
immune to some interruption or limitation on the food you have probably
taken for granted. As petroleum is in fast-dwindling supply and is
relied upon for mass producing our food, shipping it (on average 1,500
miles for North Americans), packaging it and preparing it, we are up
against a petroleum-induced famine of our own making. What evil-doer
will we blame instead of ourselves?

The good news is that creative ways to obtain wild food are alive and
well. Acorns and insects, however, are frowned upon - by the
conventional consumer well fed for now. Is it time to stop cutting down
oak trees? Poisoning snalis that are the escargot species? Wasting our
nitrogen-rich urine by flushing it into our water supply instead of
feeding it to fruit trees? Let us go over other options that we have:

Will we bring back the Victory Gardens through depaving and planting
food in lawns? Until the food pops up for harvest, what will we eat -
cats and rats? None of these sudden strategies can feed millions of
hungry people in cities that don't have pro-active leadership as yet.
Yet, pedal power feeds millions in many a Chinese city surrounded by
small farms. But every day the global economy plugs along, China is more
fossil-fuel dependent, using far more coal than the US and the UK combined.

Progress has been illusory in the last half century, but the period has
been ballyhooed as amazing. "... the amount of grain produced per person
grew from 285 kilograms in 1961 to a peak of 376 kilograms in 1986".
Since then it has gone down to 350 kilograms. China's is 325 kilograms,
the US enjoys 1,230 kilograms, and in Zimbabwe - which Richard Heinberg
told me is a guide to US society after petrocollapse - is just ninety
kilograms per capita. [Worldwatch, 2008] Can the most modern in the
world really conserve the Earth suddenly?

There's no let-up on the horizon, but people fervently hope for relief,
as sure as tomorrow's newspapers will be printed. As sure as the July
4th fireworks will be another display of our powerful continuity. Is
this "Summer Driving Season" our last hurrah? Meanwhile, people are
hurting in the pocket book, and are buying less stuff because of the oil
price trend. So they look to blame someone, such as OPEC, the major oil
companies, George Bush, take your pick. Some await Barack Obama to take
over the White House and cleanse us of our woes, but even he says that
community action is where it's at.

Clearly, a half trillion dollar war on Iraq was not what our finances
needed. If all that money had not been wasted, oil prices and food would
be cheaper than they are. But what about the trickle-down of those
corporations profiting off the war? Surely those billions for the
contractors, and the fat salaries for those Americans so welcome in the
Land Between Two Rivers, aided our economy. Or did they? The war
profiteers and their friends in the corporate media expect everyone to
buy capitalist theory. But wouldn't you rather have had the half
trillion bucks go to more livable conditions in our towns, such as
community gardens, extended hours for libraries, better pay for
teachers, and preventive health care? Thought so.

Unfortunately, our socioeconomic problems are too deeply rooted in
disastrous treatment of Mother Nature, for even radical changes in
federal spending priorities to get us out of this. So, the big one is
coming. Looking at the fundamentals of our society and how it has
changed from The Great Depression of the 1930s, we are in for something
much worse than those days when the family farms were intact. What is
implied for the big one on the horizon, according to optimistic
activists such as Joanna Macy and David Korten, is "the great turning".
Doesn't sound too scary, so I hope they're right. They will be right,
but they seem to skip the unpleasant bit about collapse.

The empire is crumbling, but first we must go through end-stages as the
Romans and others had to: increasing debt, falling agricultural output,
over-extended military, growing urban population without much productive
purpose, et cetera. But we're the good guys! - we call our empire's
philosophy "Democracy", and we are so clever with science. Really,
though, we've simply done better at distracting the populace and giving
them the carrot more often than the stick, apparently. This translates
to consumer freedom through more goods. The Big Gulp drink in disposable
plastic - who could ask for more? We have had none other than The Empire
of Cheap Food. Cheap in the sense that cancer can be had at lower prices
than previous generations had to pay. Also, subsidized petroleum (to
this day as well) jacked up the food supply and the human numbers.

It's amazing how really intelligent people can be in dreamland over the
possibility of positive change coming to the rescue. It's not just
limited to the technofix. It's the general idea that people "are
becoming more aware", or "there are more and more people getting into
organic gardening, CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture),
permaculture" and the like.

To get an indication of which may be more valid - (a) the trend for
salvation as indicated by the growing phenomenon of gardening as noted
by the New York Times last week, or (b) the inexorable, accelerating
crunch of dwindling resources for too many people no matter how positive
they may feel now - let us consider the result of a test on the
community level.

This was very recently done in a most aware and progressive place. The
population is small but well educated, oriented to be sensitive to world
affairs, affluent, and active for local improvements. Sustainability is
a goal in the eyes of many.

Here's what was found from a survey of small and/or organic farms: no
labor-help is needed at the beginning of the summer, nor for the whole
summer long. Not even free help, volunteering. The farms' production are
set and unchangeable, apparently. Too bad, when the amount of food
imported from afar is about 95% of what is eaten. One would think that
at a time of rising food prices and the awareness of the global energy
picture, such as peak oil, and when climate change makes the growing of
food far more chancy, there'd be a discernible interest in upping the
output and adding to community involvement of local farming. But the
fact that people are (1) not anticipating any more demand for local and
organic food this year, compared to last year, and that (2) there is no
apparent need to gear up for greater production, seems ominous. It seems
to indicate that there needs to be a raving crisis to get people to
change their habits and plans.

Meanwhile, with a hundred-year flood on the Iowa corn fields - where
erosion on monocropped, depleted soil killed by petroleum pesticides and
fertilizer and mechanical tilling - we are in for a hell of a summer. Is
your food secure? Are you gardening, saving seeds, and protecting
precious land and water?

The food price increases have something to do with oil prices that have
doubled in a year. And the oil prices have something to do with peak
oil. And peak oil has something to do with wasting the Earth headlong
into deprivation and ecological destruction. And it's about civilization
as a runaway train. If you don't agree with the metaphor, just try
getting off. Crash must come, and come it will, and soon. I hope I'm
wrong that: You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.

That would be our concern when the price of oil can skyrocket (which it
is already doing) - if we were prudent. The price of oil is far too low
when there are still countless people driving cars unnecessarily.
Apparently these drivers don't find global warming to be as a big deal
as "the economy". Because it's money, and only money, that can change
some people - until they find they cannot eat their money.

Where I sit, the plants are crying out: It's near 100 degrees Fahrenheit
two days in a row in bone-dry San Francisco. It's the wild deviations
from the averages that are deadly to life.

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