Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>]

Future of Organic Farming

Posted by: "mukeshvarma" mukeshvarma@yahoo.com  

Wed Dec 5, 2007 6:31 am (PST)

Please read what an oil expert has to say on the future of organic
farming.

– MUKESH VARMA

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All farming will be `organic' 100 years from now -- oil expert -
November 30, 2007

An alarming vision of how the world will look after the oil runs out
— but also of a crucial role for organic farming — has been
given by a leading `peak oil' expert.

Richard Heinberg, one of the world's leading experts on oil reserves,
used last week's Soil Association Lady Eve Balfour Lecture to warn
that the lives of billions of people are threatened by a food crisis
caused by our dependence on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

Peak oil, explained Heinberg, is simply the point at which global oil
reserves reach their maximum output and start to decline. Some experts
believe we have already reached peak oil, others say it is 10 or 20
years off.

Heinberg claimed that a combination of factors — higher oil prices,
the loss of farmland to biofuel crops, climate change and the loss of
natural resources — exacerbated by population growth, would lead to
an unprecedented food shortage.

The only way to avert a global food crisis, he said, was a planned and
swift reduction in the use of fossil fuel use and a switch to organic or
other zero petro-chemical input farming systems.

He said: "Climate change is undoubtedly the biggest threat to
mankind ever seen. But in the short-term, peak oil is going to hit
economies and communities harder and faster. If we don't do anything
to deal with our addiction to oil over the next few years, economies
will be in chaos and tatters — and they won't be in a position
to manage the huge challenges that confront us globally.

"The transition away from oil is inevitable. And it's going to
lead to huge changes in our food production systems. The critical thing
is that we manage and plan the transition. This is an unavoidable,
immediate, and immense challenge that will call for unprecedented levels
of creativity at all levels of society.

"A hundred years from now, everyone will be eating what we today
would define as organic food, whether or not we act.

"But what we do now will determine how many will be eating, what
state of health will be enjoyed by those future generations, and whether
they will live in a ruined cinder of a world, or one that is in the
process of being renewed and replenished. "

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