Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

"The food sector will be affected in two ways. Food will become more costly
as higher oil prices drive up production costs. As oil costs rise, diets
will be altered as people move down the food chain and as they consume more
local, seasonally produced food. Diets will thus become more closely
attuned to local products and more seasonal in nature.

"At the same time, rising oil prices will also be drawing agricultural
resources into the production of fuel crops, either ethanol or biodiesel.
Higher oil prices are thus setting up competition between affluent
motorists and low-income food consumers for food resources, presenting the
world with a complex new ethical issue.
...
"Cities will be hard hit by the coming decline in oil production, but
suburbs will be hit even harder. People living in poorly designed suburbs
not only depend on importing everything, they are also often isolated
geographically from their jobs and shops. They must drive for virtually
everything they need, even to get a loaf of bread or a quart of milk."

Adapted from Chapter 2, "Beyond the Oil Peak", in Lester R. Brown, Plan B
2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006),
http://www.relocalize.net/node/3517

Lester R. Brown is Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute. The
Washington Post has called him "one of the world's most influential
thinkers."
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm


paul tradingpost@lobo.net