Over the past two weeks we prepared the land in the Kentucky State University Energy Farm Study for planting. We started with a freshly-cut hay field that has grown an alfalfa and grass mixture for the past three years. It is rich in organic matter and naturally-fixed nitrogen, so we chose not to add additional fertilizer in the first year of the study. The soil preparation process differed between our three production systems:

1. Biointensive plots were cleared with a hoe, then double dug with a spade, spading fork, and broadfork. All labor was done by hand over the course of a week.
   
   
2. Market garden plots were prepared with two passes of a roto-tiller attached to a 13 hp BCS 852 walk-behind tractor, fueled by gasoline. The roto-tiller passes were spaced two weeks apart to allow sod to decompose after the initial cultivation.
   
   
3. Small farm plots were prepared with a single pass of a moldboard plow attached to an 89 hp John Deere 5520 tractor, fueled by diesel. The plow was followed, two weeks later, with two passes of a roto-tiller, pulled by the same tractor.
   
   

The following charts show the amount of labor and energy used to complete the soil preparation process at each of the three farm scales. Labor use is in minutes per square meter of land. Energy use is in megajoules per square meter of land (1 megajoule = 239 food calories). Error bars show the standard error, which is a measure of the variability between plots that were treated the same way.

The small farm plots cover about 40 times as much land as the biointensive plots, and 6.5 times as much as the market garden plots. (A previous blog post showed relative plot size on an aerial photograph of the site.)

We spent 20 hours clearing sod and double digging the biointensive plots, 2.5 hours using the walk-behind tractor in the market garden plots, and 3.0 hours on the 4-wheeled tractor in the small farm plots. The walk-behind tractor consumed 3.7 liters (1.0 gallon) of gasoline and the 4-wheeled tractor consumed 34.5 liters (9.1 gallons) of diesel fuel.

Michael Bomford provides research and extension services related to organic agriculture and small-scale renewable energy production through Kentucky State University's Land Grant Program. He thanks Brian Geier, John Rodgers, Hank Schweickart and Tony Silvernail for their help with preparing the land for planting.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that Americans consumed about 105 exajoules (EJ) in 2006, and predicts that energy consumption will exceed 120 EJ by 2025. That projection looks unrealistic. Here's my attempt to do better.

EIA records show that US energy consumption has increased almost every year for a long time. A look at the period between 1950 and 1973 shows each year's increase in energy consumption was even greater than the year before.

High energy prices caused energy use to decline between 1973 and '75 and again between 1979 and '83. When growth resumed after the second energy crisis there was a difference: Each year's increase was less than the year before.

If the trend established in 1980-2006 were to continue then US energy consumption would crest around 2015 before starting to decline. Consumption in 2025 would be about the same as in 2006. This projection is much lower than the EIA's, but I still think it unrealistically high. A more likely scenario is an immediate reduction in energy consumption in response to high energy prices, as occurred in the previous energy crises. A 1.2% annual decline in energy consumption, sustained until 2025, would bring the nation back to consumption levels of the mid-1980s.

Renewable sources currently provide just 7% of the nation's energy. The EIA predicts this will be up to 11% by 2025. Just as the EIA appears to have overestimated the availability of non-renewable energy sources in the near future, it appears to have underestimated the contribution of renewables.

A coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups is calling for plans to increase renewable energy production to meet 25% of the nation's energy consumption by 2025. The 25 by '25 vision has its opponents, particularly now that the corn ethanol push is widely recognized as an environmental, social, and financial disaster. Sooner or later, though, the nation and the planet must return to 100% renewable energy.

What might a 17 year transition to a 25% renewable energy economy look like? One scenario would involve a 30% reduction in non-renewable energy use coupled with a doubling of hydro, biomass and geothermal energy use and 12 and 24-fold increases in wind and solar energy use, respectively. That might have some pretty serious economic, environmental and social ramifications, but it would get us to 25%. The rate of decline in renewable energy use would be pretty similar to the rate of increase that got us where we stand today.

The Kentucky State University Energy Farm project is just beginning its first field season. We grew vegetables through the winter in our solar-heated high tunnel; now we are beginning to move outdoors, where a thick winter cover crop of rye and hairy vetch has been building soil organic matter and nitrogen levels. Temperatures still sometimes dip below freezing at night (we had frost on Tuesday!), but the first of our cool-season vegetables -- like peas, lettuce, and kale -- have been braving the temperature swings outside for the past month.

Our project will incorporate both food and energy crops: The energy crops -- sweet sorghum, sweet potato, corn, and soybean -- are all warm-season crops that will be planted in late May. Each of these crops is high in carbohydrates, making them either high-calorie food for humans or a source of sugars, starches, or oils that could be used for biofuel production.

We will grow our energy crops at three different scales. The smallest scale will be a biointensive system, in which only hand tools are used. Our medium scale will be a market garden system, using a combination of hand tools and a walk-behind tractor with attachments. The largest scale system will be tractor-based. We will measure the land, labor and energy use efficiency of production at each of these scales.

Plots representing "Biointensive," "Market Garden" and "Small Farm" scales are replicated four times. Each plot will grow the same mix of multi-use crops. The smallest ("Biointensive") plots will be managed with hand tools; the largest ("Small Farm") will be managed with conventional tractors and attachments. (Image prepared by Tony Silvernail).

The data collected from this experiment will allow us to analyze effects of farm scale on resource use efficiency, and to answer questions about farmer motivation to dedicate multi-use crops to food or fuel production under a range of possible future scenarios for land, labor and energy pricing.

• • Manufacturing the materials for a plastic-covered house requires energy. I estimate the embodied energy in our structure to be about 6 GJ per year, over the lifetime of the materials we used. We have opted for two layers of plastic, held apart by a 60 W blower fan that operates continuously. The air pocket between the layers improves the insulating capacity of the tunnel, but producing the electricity to run the blower fan consumes another 6 GJ, assuming the coal-fired power plant that generated the electricity was 30% efficient. For that kind of energy investment we could truck lettuce to Kentucky from California.
  • High tunnels are cool and humid through the winter, creating ideal conditions for the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, which attacks many of our cool season crops we grow. Finding tactics to combat S. sclerotiorum that are compatible with organic standards has become a major research focus for us.
  • Because it never rains in a high tunnel, salts that accumulate near the soil surface don't leach away. We don't use synthetic fertilizers that tend leave salt deposits, but we have used some fertilizer derived from feather meal. Animal byproducts tend to lead to more salt accumulation than plant-based composts.

"Can
we rely on it that a ‘turning around' will be accomplished by enough people
quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but
whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer "yes" would lead to
complacency; the answer "no" to despair. It is desirable to leave these
perplexities behind us and get down to work." E.F. Schumacher, Small is
Beautiful

I would rather have titled this essay "Where the Hoe Meets
the Soil" but that phrase is not part of our cultural lexicon, which is itself
a symptom of the problem I am working to address. Setting aside any prolonged discussion of
whether or what about the modern world should be saved, this essay is primarily
about what it means to "get down to work" as Schumacher puts it. But very quickly, to me saving the modern
world means setting a goal for the human economy to be properly scaled relative
to the global ecology, and maintaining a sufficiency of social stability
necessary to manage a transition.

Before getting to work, I want to make sure the work I do is
useful. This is where a clear
understanding of the big picture helps.

Ecological Economics

The question of proper economic scale is examined by the field of ecological
economics. In the ecological economics
model, the human economy is a subset of the Earth system, and therefore the scale
of the human economy is ultimately limited.
The human economy depends upon the throughput or flow of materials
from and back into the Earth system.
Limits to the size of the human economy are imposed by the interactions
among three related natural processes:

(1) The capacity of the Earth system to supply inputs to the human economy
(Sources),

(2) The capacity of the Earth system to tolerate and process wastes from the
human economy (Sinks), and

(3) The negative impacts on the human economy and the resources it relies on
from various feedbacks caused by too much pollution.

Fig. 1. The ecological economics model
of the relationship between the human economy and the Earth system highlighting
the importance of sources, sinks, feedbacks and scale.[i]

For an expanded look at the relationship between our economy and the planet
see the engaging on-line film "The Story of Stuff."[ii]

One measure of whether the human economy is too large is the
ecological footprint (EF), which calculates on a nation-by-nation basis the
consumption of resources and the build-up of wastes relative to resource regeneration
rates and the waste-absorbing capacity of the environment. According to two independent EF analyses (which
I will call EF 1 and EF 2) the human economy (population plus consumption and
waste generation) is in a state of overshoot, meaning it is too large relative
to the long-term capacity of the planet to cope.[iii] The Earth can provide for us beyond its means
for a long time before the consequences become severe, just like a millionaire
can, for a time, live high on the principal in a savings account instead of the
interest. The degree to which we are
drawing down principal as opposed to living on interest is called our
"ecological debt."

Figure 2. Change in
ecological footprint over time according to EF 1 with our cumulative ecological
debt in blue.[iv]

Getting More Specific:
Fossil-fuel Depletion and Climate Change

Indicators like the ecological footprint are important for
understanding we have a problem and giving us a sense of the scale, but they
aren't very specific. In order to do
something about reducing our footprint, it would help to know what is causing
the ecological footprint to be so large.
A significant portion of the ecological footprint represents consumption
of fossil fuels and the resulting waste, mainly greenhouse gases. The "carbon" footprint component is about 52%
for EF 1 and the similar "energy land" is 88% for EF 2.[v] According to EF 2, "energy land" is 93% of
the North American footprint. A priority
on reducing fossil fuel consumption appears justified. The human ecological footprint can be lowered
below "1 Earth" only by eliminating the pollution from fossil fuel
combustion.

EF analysis uses the capacity of the environment to absorb
greenhouse gas emissions, which, as seen in the model shown in Fig. 1, means EF
measures "sink" capacity. The real
picture is more complex and more disturbing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, fossil fuel extraction is reaching
limits sooner than expected. Since we
have not been weaning our economy off fossil fuels steadily for the past few
decades, rapid energy price inflation will likely make it difficult to maintain
the kind of economic vitality and stability needed for a smooth transition to
renewable energy alternatives. Secondly,
recent evidence suggests that climate change is happening faster than
expected. Ice sheet destabilization is
one major indicator that the Earth system is more sensitive to greenhouse
emissions than most scientists and policy-makers have presumed. Recent articles by Kurt Cobb[vi]
and Richard Heinberg[vii]
review all these points, and the "Climate Code Red" report[viii]
goes into truly excruciating detail so I won't elaborate further here.

The bottom line is that every measure must be taken to
rapidly eliminate fossil fuel consumption and dependency in every component of
our lives. The key word is
"rapidly." Don't passively assume
inexpensive alternative energy substitutes will arrive to replace fossil fuels-we
may have waited too long to respond to have a smooth transition. Therefore, focus most attention on reducing
energy demand rather than substituting a new energy supply. And finally, in the context of ecological
economics, fossil fuel depletion and climate change, ask whether what you do in
your life, vocation, hobbies, and habits, contributes to the long-term function
(or dysfunction) of society.

The U.S.
Food System and Fossil Fuels

It would be hard to argue against a claim that a secure and
healthy food supply is indispensable to society. A widely known and troubling fact is that the
current food system in the U.S.
(and most highly industrialized nations) is very dependent upon fossil
fuels.

As far as I am aware, the most comprehensive study on the
topic of energy use in the U.S.
food system is by Heller and Keoleian of the University of Michigan's
Center for Sustainable Systems.[ix] The report is from 2000 and makes use of data
from the mid-1990s. Although the data
are about 10 years old, I don't believe the basic structure and function of the
U.S.
food system has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. In fact, current trends of increased
industrial meat consumption[x]
and biofuels[xi], which
both rely on grains, make the following case even stronger.

We learn from the study that over 10% of the energy
consumption in the U.S.
can be attributed to the food system, and that about 20% of this occurs in the
agricultural production sector. Home
energy consumption (e.g., refrigeration and cooking) consume the largest share
at about 30%. Between the farm and the
home are everything else (transportation, processing, packaging and
retail). Much of this middle portion is
a function of the geographic disconnection between production and
consumption. Eating food out of season
either requires long-distance transportation or energy demanding
processing. Both transportation and
processing require investments in storage.

Sorting out the proper scale of operations for farms,
processing and transportation systems is very difficult, however, because optimization
for one factor (e.g., transportation), may be sub-optimal for another (e.g.,
heat intensive food processing). Within
a category, such as transportation, the technologies analyzed may be limited
too. A study comparing rail cars, large
semi-trucks and small produce trucks may conclude that bigger is better, but
what about hyper-local transportation systems using bikes, small electric
vehicles and bipedal locomotion? Another
complicating issue is that studies may assume the U.S. food system should be more or
less similar in its mix of products while lowering energy consumption. For example, tomatoes can be processed using
canning or drying. Canning lends itself
to centralized operations and so does drying if fossil fuels are used as heat
sources. But a naturally decentralized
and fossil-fuel free technique such as passive solar dehydration may not even
be considered. Large energy savings can
be found everywhere in the food system, but especially so if assumptions about scale
and consumer-level demand are allowed to change.

Fig. 3. The energy
inputs to the U.S.
food system are several times larger than the energy content of the food. A life-cycle analysis identifies how energy
consumption is partitioned among economic sectors.[xii]

Another graphic from the Heller and Keoleian report clearly
identifies a huge savings potential.
Over 50% of U.S.
grains are fed to domestic animals, and most export grains go to animal feed as
well. Overall, only 26% of U.S. grain
production in 1995 went to domestic human consumption.

Although poultry need grains, red meat and milk products
dominate the feed market and grains are not a natural part of their diets. If red meat and dairy production were reduced
to only what harvested hay and pasture could provide, perhaps half of annual U.S. grain
production could be eliminated. The
acreage out of food production could be used for green manure crops to build
soil and fix nitrogen. A 2004
Congressional Research Service report showed that fertilizers are the largest
part of farm energy use, and that natural gas to produce nitrogen comprised
75-90% of the fertilizer input (Fig. 5).[xiii] Fixing nitrogen naturally, therefore, saves
significant energy. Some of the vast
cropland area no longer producing grains could then be used for appropriately
scaled biofuels to power farm equipment instead of fossil fuels.

Fig.
4. A reprint of Fig. 3 from the Heller
and Keoleian report. See graph label
above.

Fig.
5. A reprint of Fig. 2 from a 2004
Congressional Research Service report.
See graph label above.

An older and less comprehensive on-line
review paper[xiv] titled "Energy Use in the U.S. Food System: a summary of existing research and
analysis" by John Hendrickson of the Center for
Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison concluded that:

"It appears that some of the greatest
saving can be realized by:

• reduced use of petroleum-based fertilizers and
  fuel on farms,
• a decline in the consumption of highly processed
  foods, meat, and sugar,
• a reduction in excessive and energy intensive
  packaging,
• more efficient practices by consumers in shopping
  and cooking at home,
• and a shift toward the production of some foods
  (such as fruits and vegetables) closer to their point of consumption."

Hendrickson's paper is helpful in republishing and comparing
tables from many previous studies, including "Table 5" reprinted here on the
energy consumption of home grown versus market-purchased fruit and
vegetables.

Taking Responsibility: Brookside Farm Examples

With this extensive background I introduce the project I
have been working on for about two years now, Brookside Farm. This is a 1-acre mini-farm in Willits, CA. It operates as a program of the non-profit
corporation North Coast Opportunities, functions as a working farm with a
community supported agricultural program serving 15 "shares" per year, exists
at an elementary school and is therefore open to classes and tours, and
conducts research and demonstrates aspects of a local food system with the collaboration
and support of Post Carbon Institute.[xv]

Brookside Farm thinks about food from a "farm to fork" and
back again perspective. Farmers create
artificial ecosystems, and we therefore look to ecology to guide our
practices. Highly productive and stable
ecological systems are noted for a diversity of species both in kinds and
functional forms. When these diverse
species interact effectively, they maximize the rates of productivity and
nutrient retention in the system using ambient energy sources. We view ourselves as human members of the farm
ecosystem with our labor and wastes as parts of the whole.

To get by on ambient energy as much as possible, we have
sought alternatives to fossil fuels in every aspect of the food system we
participate in. Table 1 considers each
type of work done on the farm, to the fork, and back again and contrasts how
fossil fuels are commonly used with the technologies we have applied.

Table 1. Feeding
people requires many kinds of work and all work entails energy. In most farm operations the main energy
sources are fossil fuels. By contrast,
Brookside Farm uses and develops renewable energy based alternatives.

Our use of food scraps to replace exported fertility also
reduces energy by diverting mass from the municipal waste stream. Solid Waste of Willits has a transfer station
in town but no local disposal site. Our
garbage is trucked to Sonoma
County about 100 miles to the south.
From there it may be sent to a rail yard and taken several hundred miles
away to an out of state land fill.

We are also planning to irrigate using an on-site well and a
photovoltaic system instead of treated municipal water or diesel-driven
pumps.

How much energy does Brookside Farm
save?

The complexity of the food system makes it difficult to
calculate how much energy Brookside Farm is saving. A research program at UC Davis now devoted to
just this sort of question is recently underway, but with few results to share
thus far.[xvi]

From previous studies we can find clues about the high
energy inputs to fruit and vegetable cultivation. From Fig. 4. above, we can see that fruits
and vegetables account for (102,370/921,590) 11% of crop production by weight. Table 3 (given below) of the Congressional
Research Service report shows that energy invested in fruit and vegetable
production is proportionally higher, accounting for (3759/18364) 20% of the
energy for crops at the farm level.

Much of the savings at Brookside Farm occurs off the farm by
replacing what would normally be imported, through passive solar preservation
and storage techniques, and by shifting consumer habits towards seasonally
fresh cuisine proportionally high in vegetables.

Does Brookside Farm Scale? Lawns to Food

Before it was Brookside Farm, it was a field of mostly grass
at an elementary school. The school
district watered and mowed it (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Brookside
Farm in early spring, 2007. The image
shows the farm site adjacent to the forest and bordered by grassy fields,
school buildings and a residential neighborhood. Arrows from a home contrast distance and
direction of food coming from the local Safeway supermarket and Brookside
Farm. The 1 acre Brookside Farm occupies
about a quarter of the available play field at Brookside Elementary School.

Using satellite imagery, the area of lawn in the United States
has recently been estimated:

"Even conservatively," Milesi says,
"I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn." This means
lawns-including residential and commercial lawns, golf courses, etc-could be
considered the single largest irrigated crop in America in terms of surface area,
covering about 128,000 square kilometers in all.[xvii]

The same study identifies where and how much water these
lawns require:

That means about 200 gallons of
fresh, usually drinking-quality water per person per day would be required to
keep up our nation's lawn surface area.

Let me put the area of lawn from this study into a food
perspective. The 128,000 square
kilometers of lawns is the same as 32 million acres. A generous portion of fruits and vegetables
for a person per year is 700 lbs, or about half the total weight of food
consumed in a year.[xviii] Modest yields in small farms and gardens would
be in the range of about 20,000 lbs per acre.[xix] Even with half the area set aside to grow
compost crops each year, simple math reveals that the entire U.S. population could be fed plenty
of vegetables and fruits using two thirds of the area currently in lawns.

Labor Compared to Hours of T.V.

For its members Brookside Farm's role is to provide a
substantial proportion of their yearly vegetable and fruit needs. Using our farming techniques, we estimate
that one person working full time could grow enough produce for ten to twenty
people. By contrast, an individual could
grow their personal vegetable and fruit needs on a very part-time basis,
probably half an hour per day, on average, working an area the size of a small home (700 sq ft in veggies and fruits plus 700 sq ft in cover crops).

American's complain that they feel cramped for time and
overworked. But is this really true or
just a function of addiction to a fast-paced media culture? According to Nielsen Media Research:[xx]

The total average time a household
watched television during the 2005-2006 television year was 8 hours and 14
minutes per day, a 3-minute increase from the 2004-2005 season and a record
high. The average amount of television watched by an individual viewer
increased 3 minutes per day to 4 hours and 35 minutes, also a record. (See
Table 1.)

So if we imagine families having the discipline to cut out a
single sitcom viewing per day, or one baseball or football game per weekend
during the growing season, that would free-up sufficient time to become
self-reliant in fruits and vegetables and likely improve overall health.[xxi]

(A note of caution though, an article from The Onion warns
"that viewing fewer than four hours of television a day severely inhibits a
person's ability to ridicule popular culture.")[xxii]

Conclusions

For those wanting to contribute to a lower-energy food
system, starting with fresh produce makes sense for several reasons:

(1) Significant production is possible in a small area,
often what people already have,

(2) Tools and equipment are simple, inexpensive and readily
available,

(3) Fruits and vegetables are heavy due to high water
content, and therefore energy-intensive to transport and process either by
canning or dehydrating,

(4) Growing vegetables and fruits is generally more energy
intensive than other crops because of high fertilizer and irrigation inputs,

(5) Quality declines rapidly after harvest, so home or
locally available food has higher nutritional value and usually tastes better,

(6) Labor, packaging and storage demands of fruits and
vegetables are high in mechanized production systems, making the investment in
home-grown produce financially competitive, and

(7) Gardening and small-scale fruit and vegetable farming
lend themselves to physical and social activities across generation and income
gaps that improve health and enhance a shared sense of purpose and fun.

[i] This
graphic was developed based on the principles discussed in Chapter 2 of Daly
and Farley "Ecological Economics:
Principles and Applications" (2004, Island Press)

[ii] http://www.storyofstuff.com/

[iii] http://www.footprintnetwork.org and
http://www.rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/about_ecological_footprint.htm;
the original ecological footprint analysis (EF1) is at the first reference, and
the second type (EF2) at the second. The
major difference between the two is that the second attempts to incorporate
aquatic systems (e.g., oceans), total terrestrial productivity, and
biodiversity reserves.

[iv] Graphic
from: http://www.footprintstandards.org/

[v] For the
50% figure see: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=global_footprint; for the greater than 90% and discussion of
differences between methods see: http://www.rprogress.org/publications/2006/Footprint%20of%20Nations%2020...

[vi] http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1397

[vii] http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_big_melt_meets_big_empty

[viii] http://www.climatecodered.net/

[ix] http://css.snre.umich.edu/main.php?control=detail_proj&pr_project_id=29

[x] See
especially Table 2. in: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/AC911E/ac911e05.htm

[xi] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431

[xii]
Graphic from: http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS01-06.pdf

[xiii] http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/04nov/RL32677.pdf

[xiv]
Although no date appears on this paper, it is clearly related to a 1994
conference and workshop: http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/energyuse.pdf;
http://www.cias.wisc.edu/archives/1994/01/01/energy_use_in_the_us_food_system_a_summary_of_existing_research_and_analysis/index.php

[xv] http://www.energyfarms.net/

[xvi] http://asi.ucdavis.edu/conferences/farmtofork/;
http://californiaagriculture.ucop.edu/0704OND/editover.html;
http://asi.ucdavis.edu/Research/ASI_Program_Proposal_Brief_-_Energy_Life_Cycle_Assessment_in_Food_Systems_9-13.pdf

[xvii] http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/

[xviii] http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodGuideIndex.htm

[xix] An
acre is ca. 43,000 sq ft. Our experience
at Brookside Farm suggests about 1 lb of produce per square foot of cultivated
space is to be expected, with infrastructure and paths requiring significant
area. Fruit orchards in Mendocino County yield about 20,000 lbs per
acre: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/agriculture/pdf/2006%20Crop%20Report.pdf

[xx]http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=4156527aacccd010VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD

[xxi] http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

[xxii] http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30863

Most institutions, such as the food aid NGOs or the US
Department of Agriculture, express concern about food security in terms of the
ability for poor people to purchase adequate food. The USDA, for example, measures food security
by asking households a series of
questions (http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsec/FILES/FSGuide.pdf), including:

Q1 Which of these statements best describes the food eaten
in your household in the last 12 months: we always have enough to eat and the
kinds of food we want; we have enough to eat but not always the kinds of food
we want; sometimes we don't have enough to eat; or often we don't have enough
to eat?

Q1a (IF SOMETIMES
OR OFTEN NOT ENOUGH TO EAT) Here are some reasons why people don't
always have enough to eat. For each one, please tell me if that is a reason why
you don't always have enough to eat.

Not enough money for food

Too hard to get to the store

On a diet

No working stove available

Not able to cook or eat because of health problems

Income-based Food
Security

This is a valid way to think of food security. If food prices are high relative to income,
or if other compelling expenses such as housing, health care and transportation
also require a large portion of income, then securing adequate food on an individual or family level will be
problematical. I will refer to this kind
of food security as "income-based food security." Personal misfortunes or failings, structural
economic inequality, recessionary business cycles, and monetary crises are
examples of conditions that cause or exacerbate income-based food security. Asking heads of households is a proper way to
understand this class of food security.

In general, households don't actually produce food, nor do
they move food from producers to markets.
Given current environmental and resource trends, the income-based food
security perspective has some gaping blind spots. Instead of just asking food eaters questions,
should we also be querying food producers, distributors, fertilizer
manufacturers, supermarkets, energy experts and climatologists?

Distribution-based
Food Security

Globalization of food commodities has greatly distanced food
consumption from food production. Most
people in industrialized nations, and quite a few in poor but food importing
nations, are therefore highly dependent not only on the ability to pay, but on
the ability to distribute food from places of production, storage, and
processing to retail and home. Absent
either the liquid fuels for shipping vehicles, or sufficient roads, rails and
port infrastructure to carry and receive cargo, food becomes scarce no matter
how much money someone has in their wallet.
Examples include a place after a natural disaster or a war (Gulf coast
post-Katrina), a nation embargoed for political reasons (Cuba in the 1990s), and acute shortages of fuel
or trucks (UK trucker strike
in 2000, Italy
recently). With transportation
disruptions grocery store shelves can go bare within days. I will refer to this kind of food security as
"distribution-based food security." Just-in-time
delivery systems, oil depletion, violence in oil producing regions, and "acts
of god" threaten distribution-based food security.

Production-based Food
Security

Total food output has increased dramatically over the past
50 years, far outpacing even the rise in population. The reasons for this increase in production,
however, and the broader environmental costs incurred, suggest that food
production will flatten and perhaps decline in the coming decades. Productivity gains were driven principally by
increases in non-sustainable inputs, such as irrigation water from depleting
aquifers, nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas, and greater mechanization in
general requiring more fossil fuels. None
of these are sustainable solutions, meaning they are bound to fail in the end
without ample and timely substitutes.
Cultivation, irrigation, fertilization, herbicide and pesticide
practices have also led to massive erosion of topsoil, leading to a steady
decline in the quality of the land base supporting agriculture. Urbanization, severe erosion, and the long
history of forest clearing end up reaching the limit in the total quantity of
arable land as well. And finally, the
stable climate system upon which farmers, seeds, cultures and markets have
adapted to is wobbly. Expectations are
for extreme weather variance and a general decline in crop growth over
time. These related forces I term
"production-based food security."
Overall, the quantity of food is threatened by depletion of resource
stocks (fresh water, oil, natural gas, mineral fertilizers), degradation of
soils, and climate change. Many would
also add genetic diversity and aging farmers to this list.

These three classes of food security threats are not
unrelated, of course. Rising energy
costs impact the costs of production and distribution, which in turn lead to
food inflation. But by framing security
in these different ways, we can more clearly see the stresses in the food
system and their underlying causes. All
three classes of food security threats are occurring simultaneously, but at
different rates and severity among different populations. Social movements have arisen in response, and
their different emphases reflect the classes of threats summarized here. These movements also offer potential
strategies to deal with each situation (See Table 1).

The problems of our food system are so deep and connected to
so many other structures in our societies that only a multi-faceted approach
that recognizes these relationships offers meaningful, long-term change. Fortunately, many are aware of this. Take for example the Community Food Security
Coalition (http://www.foodsecurity.org/),
which describes itself as:

The Community Food Security
Coalition (CFSC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3), North American organization
dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that
ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for
all people at all times. We seek to develop self-reliance among all communities
in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing,
processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and
grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability. CFSC has over 200 member organizations - join
us!

The CFSC connects groups from across the spectra of social
organizations throughout North America. I think it would be wise for each community
to find their own set of players, from food banks to farmer's markets to
community farms, and work together.

Imagine, for example, providing stable income to a local,
organic community farm for growing food distributed to a school with many low
income children? There, in one set of
connections economic justice, decreased transportation, and sustainable
agriculture strategies are integrated and reinforced. Who wouldn't be in favor of that?

[Note: A slightly modified version of this is also available on The Oil Drum, with a couple hundred reader comments: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3415]

Among the cadre of folks
who think about food systems and sustainability in the U.S., there's a
concern about the number of farmers and their age. Only about two percent (5,802,000/29,5410,000
in 2004) of the U.S.
population is part of a farm family, and the average age of principal owners of
farms is about 60 years.[i] Since mechanization and the fuels that power
machines are what enable such a small agricultural labor force, is it reasonable
to assume that a decline in fossil fuels will require more farmers?

Others, such as peak oil
educators Richard Heinberg and Sharon Astyk, have suggested this will indeed be
the case, even going so far as to put a rough number on the future farmers of
America. Their estimates are based on
looking at the proportion of farmers in an early to pre-industrial economic
system in the United States,
when about a third of the population engaged in agriculture. They then adjust for current population size
to arrive at the admittedly tentative figure of 50 to 100 million farmers (or
members of farming families) needed to feed a population of 300 million.[ii]

As these authors point
out, not only is the absolute number very large compared to today, but given
the age of the current crop of farmers it implies that a rapid education of
youth will be required to keep bread on the table. Given the importance of this topic, I feel
that more diverse and sophisticated forms of analyses are needed. Just as we use multiple lines of evidence to
understand the evolution of life, oil depletion, and climate change, we need to
look for confirmation from many angles.
Furthermore, better knowledge potentially gets us closer to grasping the
scale and rate of change required to cope with the problem in the same way that
depletion rates in existing fields and net exports analyses do in the oil
situation, or the timing and consequences of melting ice sheets and release of
methane from warming permafrost do in the climate system.

Perhaps we can validate
or refute this scenario by further use of the comparative method. The comparative method is what Heinberg and
Astyk used in their analyses-comparing a future scenario to a potentially
analogous historic past. In the analysis
presented here, I take as a given that the United States (and other high
energy consuming industrial countries) will have less energy available in the
future. The comparison I use is not
historic, but contemporary. I know that
today some nations have much less energy consumption than others and
anecdotally I am aware that poorer countries tend to be more agrarian. If nations with less energy consumption have
more farmers, it would support the notion that a reduction in energy
consumption in the U.S.
(and other industrialized countries) will lead to an increase in farmers.

So let's take a
look: Is there a discernable inverse
relationship between energy consumption and agricultural populations among
nations?

First, I had to find
total population by nation and agricultural population (which I believe means
farmers and their immediate dependents) by nation. These data can be downloaded from the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (http://faostat.fao.org/site/550/default.aspx).

Simply dividing the
agricultural population by the total population gives the percentage that live
an agricultural life. The range of this
figure is huge, from essentially zero for places like Singapore to over 90% for places like Bhutan. I really don't know how accurate censuses
data are from the 204 countries used (not all places are fully independent
nations, e.g., Puerto Rico is separated from the U.S. in these data sets), but
assume figures are in the ballpark.
Certainly citizens of Bhutan
and Singapore
have vastly different livelihoods.
According to 2004 FAO data, overall about 41% of the world's people
still live in families who work in agriculture (2.6 billion out of 6.4
billion).

Most nations (about 70%) have 40% or less of their
population in agriculture. This means
that the fewer countries with high percentages of agricultural workers have
large populations, e.g., China
and India
are 64% and 52% respectively and equal about a third of the total world
population. In all likelihood, large
populations correlate with high population density. As a 1997 paper by Conforti and Giampietro showed, economic forces in poorer nations
with dense populations tend to retain farmers.[iii]

Second, I had to find
energy consumption data. It is difficult
to locate data on use of wood, animal dung, etc., but for commercial energy
such as oil, natural gas, coal, and electricity the Energy Information Administration
(EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy has available spreadsheets for download
(see table E.1 http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/wecbtu.html).

While this doesn't include
all forms of energy, it does cover the forms most readily usable in an
industrial agricultural system.

I had to do some work to
harmonize the two data sets, which meant using 2004 data and limiting the
analysis to 204 nations-which I figure is fairly complete. Then I plotted percent agricultural population
as a potential response to per capita energy consumption and got the figure
below.

As expected, nations with
relatively little commercial energy consumption tend to have lots of
farmers. But the relationship doesn't
appear linear (perhaps putting energy on a log scale would change that, the X
axis ranges from 0-1000 and the Y axis from 0-100) and is not very tight. While supportive of the general hypothesis, I
find it impossible to use this method and these data alone to get at the scale
and rate of change questions.

What might it mean, for
example, for the U.S.
to be using 3/4 less energy by 2050?
Many places today are already using that much less energy and have just
as small of an agricultural population as the U.S., but surveying the spreadsheet
it appears that many could be considered special cases, such as small islands
swarming with tourists or tax havens for the wealthy, which can simply afford
to purchase most of their food.

Other questions that
arise include: Whether U.S. farming can
remain as energy intensive as it is today by taking a larger share of resources
from other sectors of the economy? Because
no modern economy can survive without them, I would expect extraction and
production sectors, such as mining, agriculture and manufacturing to decline at
a slower rate than, for example, finance, tourism, and real estate. Are dramatic efficiency gains still to be had
in conventional U.S.
agriculture, or has the farm sector already been through enough energy and
financial dramas to have played out the easy options?

As in any good subject
for research, answering one simple question provokes a series of more difficult
ones.

Though I may have just
done so, I am mistrustful of studying this issue in isolation. Nagging at me is the question of whether the
globalized industrial system is inherently unstable in the face of multiple
challenges, including energy scarcity but also the converging crises spawned by
the surging weight of humanity. Climate
change, financial wobbles, violent conflicts and related spin-offs can
unpredictably disrupt the vast system of trade that moves fertilizers, seeds
and replacement parts that keep industrial agriculture humming. I think we are already seeing hints of this
scenario in the U.S.,
as farmers run short of diesel fuel during harvest season and end up leaving
crops in the ground.[iv]

While I would appreciate
more work towards the questions posed here (and contact me if you have ideas and
skills to help), I also caution against analysis paralysis. There are multiple reasons why agriculture
needs to undergo a profound shift and spending too much time trying to
circumscribe the problem may delay us moving towards appropriate
responses. I believe the broad vision of
what needs to be done already exists-food that is more local, organic,
produced, processed and distributed by renewable energy systems, and using cultivation
methods that put the soil health first. Making
that argument to those who are reluctant or suspicious, however, could use some
better research that connects the dots credibly between energy depletion,
climate change, food security, and demographics.

[i] Hollis, P. 10 May 2005. Demographics study reveals facts about farm
operators in U.S. . Farm Press. http://southeastfarmpress.com/news/051005-Farm-demographics/;
The cited article is based on primary data from the 2002 U.S. Census of
Agriculture (http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2002/index.asp). The average age of U.S. farmers being about 60, as
claimed today, is extrapolated from the 2002 data, with an update due from an
ongoing 2007 census.

[ii] Heinberg,
R. 2006.
Fifty Million Farmers.
Twenty-Sixth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/publications/heinberg_06.html; Astyk, S.
2006.
http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-million-100-million-200-bazillion.html

[iii] Conforti, P and M. Giampietro. 1997. Fossil energy use in agriculture: an
international comparison. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 65
(1997) 231-243

[iv] Reuters. 12 September, 2007. "Not so Corny: Fuel Shortages May Hurt Corn
Harvesting."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296551,00.html

Yesterday I was reading
chapter 4 of the book "Limits to Growth:
A 30-Year Update," (http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X)
and came across this description (pages 170-171) of their Scenario 1 (or
baseline) model run:

As
non-renewable resources become harder to obtain in Scenario 1, capital is
diverted to producing more of them. That
leaves less industrial output to invest in sustaining the high agricultural
output and further industrial growth.
And finally, around 2020, investment in industrial capital no longer
keeps up with depreciation. (This is physical
investment and depreciation; in other words, wear and tear and
obsolescence, not monetary depreciation in accounting books.) The result is
industrial decline, which is hard to avoid in this situation, since the economy
cannot stop putting capital into the resource sector. If it did, the scarcity of materials and
fuels would restrict industrial production even more quickly.

The book and models
describe various ways in which the human economy can encounter limits, and
Scenario 1 demonstrates the impacts of resource constraints. Another way to express what the authors are
saying is that as more work is needed over time just to obtain the raw material
resources needed for economic production, cost inflation eventually leads to
industrial decline, followed by a shortfalls in food, medicine, and other basic
services like delivering water supplies.

Now for anyone who
follows the news in the sectors of construction, energy, or agriculture might
get chills reading that paragraph. Take
for example this item coming out of the central valley of California, one of the most important
agricultural regions in the world:

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=7175

 

Diesel
prices pick farmers' wallets

Fresno, Dec. 5, 2007

 

California farmers who are considering changing their
cropping patterns due to the state's water shortage are now looking at growing
crops that may also help them cushion the impact of the latest fuel crunch.

With diesel
prices at record highs, California
farmers and ranchers are trying to find ways to minimize fuel usage on the farm
without compromising production.

One way is to
farm crops that require less equipment usage, says Dan Errotabere, a Fresno County
diversified farmer who grows almonds, pistachios, processing tomatoes, cotton,
alfalfa, wheat and other crops.

....

Many farmers say
they have continually changed how they operate their farms to try to conserve
energy, and what they could do they've already done. What's left now is they
must absorb the higher costs of doing business, says Fresno County
farmer Russel Efird.

"I think
most of agriculture has already pared down all the fat," says Mr. Efird,
who grows grapes, nuts and tree fruit and has a commercial harvesting
operation. "My concern with this pinch right now is there's not any more
places to trim."

"Once
you've done all that, you've already cut down on your trips through the fields,
so now you're down to only the necessary trips," says Mr. Efird, president
of Fresno County Farm Bureau.

Having already
maximized his efficiencies, he says if he tries to cut back further, his crops
will suffer and that will cost him more money down the road.

....

While some
farmers have been able to adjust their practices on the farm to use less fuel, Sonoma County
dairyman Domenic Carinalli says there hasn't been much he can do in his
operation to curb his usage. Most everything on his dairy runs on diesel,
including tractors that clean the barn and trucks that haul feed in and haul
milk out.

 

So why are fuel prices so
high? Here's what some people in the
energy industry saying:

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=53040

 

Oil
Officials See Limit Looming on Production

Nov.
19, 2007

 

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are
endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical
limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

 

....

 

Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, a former head of
exploration and production at Saudi
Arabia's national oil company, has also gone
public with doubts. He said in London last month that he didn't believe there were
enough engineers or equipment to ramp up production fast enough to keep up with
the thirsty global economy. What's more, he said, new discoveries are tending
to be smaller and more complex to develop.

 

....

 

Oil companies have seen several years of bull-market prices, and thus of
trying to produce more. This has given their executives a better sense of what
is and isn't possible.

One limit: Many people think most of the world's giant fields already
have been discovered. By 1970, oil-industry explorers had discovered 10 giants
that could each produce more than 600,000 barrels a day, according to Matt
Simmons, chairman of energy investment banking firm Simmons & Co.
International. Exploration in the next 20 years, to 1990, yielded only two.
Since 1990, despite billions in new spending, the industry has found only one
field with the potential to top 500,000 barrels a day, Kazakhstan's Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea. And Mr. Simmons notes it is proving
expensive and difficult to extract.

....

Labor and construction bottlenecks also are making it difficult to
develop proven fields. One of the largest obstacles is the booming commodity
markets themselves: The prices of raw materials used in oil-field platforms and
equipment has escalated. And during the years of low or moderate oil prices in
the 1980s and 1990s, companies didn't develop enough geologists and other
skilled workers to supply today's needs. "Years of underinvestment in new
talent have led to a limited and aging pool of skilled workers," noted
Andrew Gould, the CEO of oil-service giant Schlumberger Ltd., last month.

High oil prices have also led to steep cost inflation for drilling rigs
and other equipment. Costs have soared so much that the industry is falling
behind in the investment needed to sate expected future demand. To meet demand
forecasts of 90 million barrels of oil a day in 2010, the industry needed to
have spent $350 billion on drilling and producing in 2005, argues Larry G.
Chorn, chief economist of Platts, the energy and commodities-information
division of McGraw-Hill Cos. But the International Energy Agency estimates that
spending on oil-field production in 2005 came to only about $225 billion, he
says.

A failure to spend enough in the past few years "may have already
put the industry behind the spending curve," Mr. Chorn says. As a result,
he predicts "temporary shortages over several years, causing debilitating
price spikes."

Compounding the problem: Most of the world's biggest fields are aging,
and production at them is declining rapidly. So, just to keep global production
at current levels, the industry needs to add new production of at least four
million daily barrels, every year. That need is roughly five times the daily
production of Alaska, with its big Prudhoe Bay field -- and it doesn't assume any demand
growth at all.

Mr. Simmons scoffs at estimates that production from proven fields will
decline only 4.5% a year. He thinks a more realistic rate of decline is 8% to
10% a year, especially because modern technology actually succeeds in depleting
fields faster.

If he's right, the industry needs to add new daily production of at
least eight million barrels -- 10 times current Alaskan production -- just to
stay even.

Notice
the references to shortages of the necessary equipment needed to coordinate an
expansion of drilling activity. If more
oil rigs, well pipes, pumps, etc. are needed, industrial capacity may have to
be expanded, which relies on the construction sector. And yet, the construction sector is having
their own set of problems related to rising costs, which makes it difficult to
maintain and expand infrastructure:

http://www.agc.org/galleries/economics/CIA08.pdf

 

AGC's
Construction Inflation Alert:
Construction Costs: End of the Calm is Coming Soon

Oct.,
2007

 

After years of minimal cost increases, prices of many construction
materials skyrocketed from 2004 to mid-2006. Since mid-2006, some input prices
have moderated, while others have fallen. But the cumulative increase in the
producer price index (PPI) for construction inputs since December 2003 (28
percent through August 2007) remains more than double the 13 percent increase
in the most common measure of overall inflation, the consumer price index (CPI)
for all urban consumers. Labor costs, in contrast, have risen at similar rates
for construction and for the private sector as a whole.

 

The cumulative difference matters because the estimates for many
projects now being bid, especially public facilities, were prepared in
2003-2005 under the assumption that construction costs would escalate at the
same rate as the CPI. That divergence explains why some projects are being
canceled, delayed or redesigned.

 

In the next several months, the PPI for construction inputs, which
covers items used up in construction such as diesel fuel as well as materials
that go into a project, is expected to accelerate to a 3-5 percent annual rate
of increase from the recent 1.5-3 percent range. By the end of 2008, and
indefinitely thereafter, construction input costs are likely to be rising at
6-8 percent. Labor cost increases could top 5 percent by the end of 2007 and
5-6 percent in subsequent years.

As
the previous articles make clear, it takes energy to find and develop energy
supplies. It takes energy to build the
tools and run the machinery that develop energy supples. And it takes energy to house, transport and
feed the workers that develop energy supplies.

Our
current living arrangement appears to be entering a stage of rapidly diminishing
returns, and there is much wringing of hands over it by people who don't
understand why it is so, or that it is an inevitable consequence of a growth
phase reaching its limits. I recommend
reading the work of the authors who saw this happening long ago, because the
worst thing we can do is keep behaving as we always have and expect things to
get better. Change will be forced upon
us, but if we get ahead of the curve we have a better chance at a decent
outcome.

While a bulk of the focus in 2007 has been to establish an Energy Farm
Demonstration Site at Brookside Elementary School, in Willits, CA; we realize
that intense vegetable production is a piece of the larger picture in the
attempt to reduce the high
energy inputs to the food and agricultural system. In addition to building
and testing post-petrol tools and methodologies for intense vegetable
production we are duly interested in conducting research and developing
templates for grain, oilseed, and livestock production. As always, farm
products will be produced locally for local consumers with the aim of
promoting both local food and energy security.

This been said, I would like to share a project proposal
titled: Steps toward Local Food Security—Little Lake Valley Grain Production.
We have been shopping this proposal around the community of Willits and many
people seem interested in fostering the development of a local food system and
very excited about the tools and methods we seek to employ.

Steps toward Local Food Security—Little Lake Valley
Grain Production

WELL, and other local
organizations, have undertaken several studies
and workshops on local food security in the 95490 zip code, with a population
of approximately 13,500. Based on historic production data, a key initial
conclusion of one study suggests that if a localized agricultural system
would grow a diverse supply of food for this population, then
approximately all of the 4000 acres of prime agricultural land in Willits would
be needed for crops. Research noted
both a demand and supply gap related to local grains. Also lacking is the
processing and storage equipment needed to carry out successful grain
operations.

In response to this
research, we are seeking 3-6 acres in the Little Lake Valley to perform a
dryland (i.e., non-irrigated) grain demonstration. This project seeks to
“Ground-Truth” a number of assumptions related to yields, time investment,
labor, required tools and infrastructure, and consumer relationships as they
pertain to localized grain production. A dryland grain demonstration is
important to local food security because grains have high caloric value, ease
of storage, and can be grown in a manner that does not rely on energy dependent
irrigation infrastructure.

We will test an electric
tractor, whose recent repair is being provided by the Post Carbon Institute, to
sow grains. This tool is not only quiet and light on the environment (little
greenhouse gas emission), but it easy to drive, powered by renewable energy,
and is assembled in Mendocino County. A
special feature of the electric tractor is that it is capable of powering many
small electric devices in the field such as portable threshers and winnowers.

Key project goals include:

- Test Steve Heckeroth’s ET-7 electric tractor at a
significant scale

- Deeply investigate the methodology of dryland
cultivation

- Re-invigorate and strengthen agricultural
relationships in the community

- Inspire community members to support a local food
system

- Enroll youth and experience into the formation of a
local food system in Willits

- Save seeds for the most successful varieties of oats,
wheat, barley, and triticale

- Test the effect of companion planting and the use of
mycorrhizal fungi in small grain production

- Demonstrate the opportunities to create localized
agriculture within the United States
and create templates for replication

- Watch for vulnerabilities in agriculture in relation
to future energy scarcity and global climate change

To fulfill the aims of this project we are looking to secure the following resources:

- Land --We
are seeking 3-6 acres suitable for agricultural development (Class I or II). No
irrigation infrastructure is necessary for land to be approved for the project.

- Equipment --
Much of the equipment we need already exists in Willits and may not be fully
utilized. If you want to lend, donate, or trade for the use of a disc, harrow,
and/or a seeder we would be very interested in cooperation.

The goal of this blog is to introduce the reader to an
excellent factsheet produced by the University
of Michigan related to energy use in
the total U.S.
food system. This fact sheet is a distillation of a larger paper by Heller and
Keoleian that assesses the sustainability of the U.S. food system. After taking a look at data related to the U.S
food system the authors’ suggest that eating locally, eating organic, eating
less meat, and using less refrigeration are steps toward sustainability.

Click here to view the fact
sheet.