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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Peak Oil? Peak Soil!
  • Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:46:51 -0600


Peak Oil? Peak Soil!
CommonDreams.org (March 06 2008)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/06/7521/

You don't have to be a peak oil {1} news junkie to know that something's up
with the global oil supply. Yesterday, prices went above $104 for the first
time on the announcement from OPEC nations that they were quite satisfied
with the amount of available supply (and the price that supply is fetching),
rebuffing President Bush's request to open the spigot a little wider.

Reasonable people can disagree on the causes and the implications of rising
oil prices, but there seems to be a gathering consensus that the era of easy
and cheap oil is over. If you don't want to take my word on that, then take
it from an oil executive {2}.

What few people grasp is the connection between oil and the food supply. Put
simply, the food and farm economies of industrialized countries run on the
stuff. Oil and its derivatives are used to power farm equipment, to create
synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, to run food processing equipment, and
to transport food from field to fork, a journey of 1500 miles for the
average forkful.

It has been estimated that our highly-industrialized food system in the US
requires ten calories of fossil fuel energy to create one calorie of food
energy. Needless to say, that equation just doesn't compute in the long run.

Meanwhile, as we're depleting one natural resource, we're busy creating an
abundance of another: people. The UN estimates that the global population
will approach nine billion (up from the current 6.6 billion) by the year
2050. Last year, an article in the British paper The Guardian pointed out
the enormity of the challenge we face in feeding nine billion people. In
order to do this, we will need to produce more food over the course of the
next fifty years than we have produced in the past 10,000 years combined
{3}.

So, what's the solution? The answer to peak oil is peak soil. The more
people who have their hands in it and have a little of it under their
fingernails, the better placed we will be to feed our communities and,
indeed, the world.

There are different things you can do to be part of the solution. If you are
a gardener already, keep up the good work this spring and try to scale up
your growing, if your time and space allow. More importantly, try to bring
some non-gardeners into the fold this year, perhaps by organizing a backyard
or community gathering on Kitchen Garden Day {4}. If you're not a gardener,
this is the year to start.

If you can't garden because of where you live, make as direct a connection
as you can with someone in your area who's growing and selling food whether
it's through regular purchases at a farmer's market or membership in a
community supported agriculture (CSA) farm. Your support helps protect that
farmland from development and helps keep that farmer farming.

We can't change what President Bush or OPEC will do today, but we can change
our own actions and that's a good place to start.
_____

Roger Doiron is the Founding Director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a
nonprofit network of 5100 gardeners from ninety countries. He is currently
serving as a Food and Society Policy Fellow {5}.

Links

{1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

{2} http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/realissuesadtrillionbarrels.pdf

{3} http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/31/climatechange.food

{4} http://www.kitchengardenday.org/

{5} http://www.foodandsocietyfellows.org/





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