Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

The Local Food and Farming Revolution
Mar 08, 2010 by Michael Brownlee
http://transition-times.com/blog/2010/03/08/the-local-food-and-farming-revolution/
[Note: This presentation was developed for the Colorado Agriculture "Big and 
Small" Conference in Brighton, Colorado, on Feb. 26, 2010]

Before I get into the presentation, a few words about where I’m coming from. 
As it happens, I grew up in a little farming community in northeastern 
Colorado—Yuma—where my family owned the local drug store (complete with soda 
fountain).

I’m a journalist and communicator at heart, and I started working for the 
local newspaper in Yuma when I was in the sixth grade. I watched the 
landscape and the town change with deep changes in agriculture.

For nearly the last five years I’ve been working on relocalization in Boulder 
County and more recently across the state, working towards our communities 
being able to meet their essential needs locally, and in the process to 
become more resilient and self-reliant.

To begin this presentation, I’m going to give the briefest possible summary I 
can of the situation, our potential response, and what’s possible—maybe five 
minutes—then back it up with some details. Then I’ll talk about the 
involvement of the Transition movement in food and agriculture, along with 
some of the things we’re working on in Boulder County. Afterwards, I hope we 
can discuss all this together for a little while.

I’m probably going to step on a few landmines here, maybe break some taboos. 
But I ask for your patience.

Here’s my quick, thumbnail sketch of the situation, the highly condensed 
version:

Because the way we eat and the way we grow our food is a major contributor to 
climate change and global warming…

Because industrial food production is so energy-intensive and so dependent on 
oil for fertilizer, pesticides, planting and harvesting, processing, 
packaging, and transportation…

Because global oil production likely peaked in July 2008, which means that 
energy will be increasingly expensive in the future…

Because the age of cheap fossil fuels has come to an end…

Because the economy has been based on an abundant supply of cheap fossil 
fuels…

Because therefore food prices will soon increase dramatically, and food 
shortages will begin to happen—even here—perhaps in the next couple of years…

Because the U.S. is becoming a net food importer…

Because humanity is now consuming more food than we are producing…

Because industrial agriculture—like the globalized economy—is at a crossroads 
and is about to go into an unexpected decline…

Because much of the food that industrial agriculture produces is destroying 
our national’s health …

Because the way we grow much of our food is destroying and washing away our 
precious topsoil…

Because we can no longer conscionably support a food system that causes 
hunger, starvation, and disease in other parts of the world…

Because the way we eat is destroying our connection with the earth, with the 
natural processes and cycles of earth and sky, with those who grow our food, 
with the essence of life…

Because the way we eat has seriously weakened our communities…

Because maybe less than one percent of our current diet is local…

Because in Colorado we spend more than ten billion dollars on food each year, 
almost all of which is fleeing outside the state, lost to our local economies…

And because we know all this…

We must learn everything we can about our food predicament. We must all learn 
to grow at least some of our own food. We must all support the revitalization 
of local agriculture. We must end our dependence on fossil fuels, chemical 
fertilizers, and mechanization in our food production. We must commit to 
healing and rebuilding the soil everywhere we can. We must dramatically 
increase local food production for local consumption.

We must rebuild the local food infrastructure for processing and 
distribution. We must stop supporting and consuming non-local food. We must 
support local farmers, local producers, local grocers, and local restaurants.

We must learn how to eat seasonally. We must learn how to preserve and store 
food. We must plan how we’re going to build food security in our communities, 
and plan how we’re going to feed our people when things get tough. We must be 
prepared to share what we have to eat.

We must develop new skills and knowledge—composting, vermiculture, 
permaculture, soil-building, seed-saving, cultivating, canning and 
preserving, cooking, nutrition planning, herbal medicine.

We must make our foodshed as local as possible.

And we must do all this rather quickly.

If all this sounds like hard work, well, it is! But what would happen if we 
did this?

Our health would improve greatly, especially the health of our children. We’d 
feel more connected, more alive, more engaged, living more meaningful and 
more satisfying lives. We’d be devoted to rebuilding the soil in our 
farmlands. Our local farmers would be able to buy the land on which they 
farm. We’d transform the landscape. Our agricultural land would mostly be 
used for food production for local consumption. We’d produce thousands of new 
jobs; our local economies would be robust! We’d dramatically reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. We’d be sequestering 
carbon in the soil, in plant growth. We’d have plans and food stores in place 
to feed all our people in times of crisis or emergency. We’d all have a far 
greater degree of food security and food sovereignty; major corporations 
would no longer be in control of what and how we eat. Our foodshed would be 
resilient and self-reliant.

The Food and Farming Predicament

Okay, now let me back up and go into a little more depth.

We face a daunting predicament with the way we’re producing and consuming our 
food. We could frame the heart of our predicament around a key concept that 
we’re all learning about these days: sustainability. Now, mostly we’ve been 
forced into learning about sustainability because modern industrial 
agriculture has some real problems here, and these have kind of crept up on 
us. We didn’t see all this coming, but here’s some of what we’ve been 
discovering (of course, most of you already know these things; I’m just 
trying to put it into some kind of context):

First, industrial agriculture is having serious and unexpected environmental 
impacts: fertilizer runoff has created dead zones in our oceans; the search 
for more arable land has devastated our forests; irrigation methods have 
depleted surface and ground water; the way we farm is eroding our topsoil and 
reducing soil fertility; pesticides and herbicides have polluted our air and 
water; monocropping has resulted in loss of habitat for many species.

And agriculture has become a major contributor to climate change. If we 
consider the manufacture and use of pesticides and fertilizers; fuel and oil 
for tractors, equipment, trucking and shipping; electricity for lighting, 
cooling, and heating; and emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide 
and other green house gases—the total impact of farming and food production 
may be between 25 and 30 percent of the U.S.’s collective carbon footprint.

If we add to this the carbon sequestration that is lost every year through 
deforestation to increase land for agricultural use, the total contribution 
of industrial agriculture to climate change is simply enormous.

At the same time, it seems that much of the food we have been producing has 
actually been decreasing in quality. Food is too cheap! We spend only 10% of 
our income to feed ourselves; we don’t value food enough. We’ve seen an 
epidemic of obesity and malnutrition (in Boulder County, 49% of our residents 
are overweight or obese), along with a dramatic increase in chronic 
food-related diseases and food-borne illnesses.

These impacts are serious enough, but may not even be the most significant 
impacts of industrial agriculture. We’ve also witnessed the loss of the web 
of connections at the heart of our society. Our towns and cities do not 
function as communities any more. People are disconnected from food, from the 
people who grow it, and from the land. There is a profound lack of public 
awareness of environmental costs and health consequences of processed foods. 
Rural economies have been left in shambles, as agricultural outputs are 
shipped to distant markets. Our communities can no longer feed themselves.

At the same time, on top of all this, there is a growing global food crisis 
that is symptomatic of our predicament. In the last couple of years, we’ve 
seen runaway inflation of food prices, growing inequities in the availability 
of food staples, food riots in at least 30 nations, and scientists calling 
for a moratorium on biofuel production.

The food crisis is also local. In 2008, we witnessed 40,000 people show up at 
the Miller Farm by Platteville when they opened their fields for gleaning. 
Hunger is on the increase even in America, and it’s extending well into the 
middle class. Poorer families often have to choose between food, medical 
care, or heat. They just can’t afford them all.
The Coming “Perfect Global Storm”

Gleaning at Miller Farm

Most of us know in our bones that a sea change is coming in agriculture. But 
the biggest driver of that change is not going to come from the issues that 
I’ve mentioned so far.

The biggest driver is going to be the increasing cost and decreasing 
availability of fossil fuels, especially oil. Because agriculture is so 
dependent on oil, the entire system is extremely vulnerable to oil 
depletion—and to oil price spikes.

The situation brewing on the horizon regarding oil compels us to begin 
rethinking how we grow our food, and even how we eat.

The application of fossil fuels to the food system has supported a human 
population growing from fewer than two billion in 1990 to nearly seven 
billion today. In the process, the way we feed ourselves has changed 
profoundly.

The population is expected to grow to about nine billion by the middle of 
this century, and there is great concern about how we’re going to feed all 
those people. The system is already straining to keep up.

What’s not on the radar of most people—including governments and industry—is 
that our supply of cheap oil on which we all depend (most especially in 
agriculture) is shrinking.

We’ve likely already reached the peak of global oil production, and are 
facing an irreversible decline rate that will be somewhere between three and 
nine percent per year. We’re at the tipping point right now.

So, the bottom line is not good news: Oil is going to become increasingly 
scarce and increasingly expensive over time—beginning very soon. This will 
fundamentally change how we farm and how we eat, and the local food and 
farming revolution is in many ways an attempt to anticipate and prepare for 
what’s inevitably coming.

Of course, it’s not just farming that’s going to be impacted, because our 
entire globalized economy is based on an abundant supply of fossil fuels, 
especially oil. The economic downturn we’ve recently experienced is directly 
related to this dynamic. In 2008, oil rose to $147/barrel, precipitating a 
global recession, and we’re still reeling from it.

There are now 98 oil producing nations in the world—and at least 64 of them 
have already reached their peak in oil production and are in decline. That is 
fundamentally why oil prices have been rising so dramatically.

Yes, it’s true that there is a bit more oil to be discovered and developed 
and produced in various parts of the world. But oil discoveries peaked 
globally around 1960, and have fallen off dramatically despite plenty of 
investment in exploration. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit, 
the easy inexpensive oil. From here on in, oil is going to be increasingly 
expensive and harder to get out of the ground. All the cheap oil has already 
been burned.

And in a way, this is a very good thing. Because if we had unlimited 
quantities of cheap oil to burn, and continued doing so, we would quickly 
overwhelm the atmosphere with carbon to the point that it would be very 
difficult to grow anything anywhere. Climate change at that level would be 
devastating to all life on this planet.

Peak oil is an enormous predicament. Our ability to grow food to feed our 
population has been based on cheap fossil fuels. In fact, our entire global 
economy is based on cheap fossil fuels. And now we’re bumping into a very 
fundamental resource limitation that will force us to change how we do almost 
everything. Worse, though most economists don’t want to consider this yet, 
peak oil signals the end of economic growth. We are learning that economic 
growth as we have known it is profoundly unsustainable.

The implications for food and agriculture are staggering, and they are 
urgent. Last year, the Soil Association in the UK published a key paper, 
“Food Futures: Strategies for resilient food and farming.” In that document, 
they say:

    “Over the next 20 years we must make fundamental changes to the way we 
farm, process, distribute, prepare and eat our food. Global food shortages 
will be inevitable unless we act now to change our food and farming systems.”

One of the key researchers in this area is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at 
Post Carbon Institute, author of a number of important books that have helped 
us understand our predicament. Last year, he co-authored a very important 
paper, which I highly recommend to you, “The Food & Farming Transition: 
Toward a Post Carbon Food System.” Here he maps the pathways to a much-needed 
revolution in agriculture.

Richard is one of the most grounded and most incisive researchers and 
communicators in the world regarding these issues. I’ve come to deeply trust 
his perspective and his insights. In a paper titled, “What Will We Eat When 
the Oil Runs Out?,” Richard says,

    “To get to the heart of the crisis, we need a more fundamental reform of 
agriculture than anything we have seen in many decades. In essence, we need 
an agriculture that does not require fossil fuels…”

A non-fossil-fuel agricultural system! Well, the situation we’re facing does 
mandate radical changes. Heinberg continues:

    “The transition to a fossil-fuel-free food system does not constitute a 
distant utopian proposal. It is an unavoidable, immediate, and immense 
challenge that will call for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels 
of society.”

This is all part of a convergence of global crises—fossil fuel depletion, 
climate change, and economic turmoil—which James Howard Kunstler has called 
“The Long Emergency.” We need to understand that The Long Emergency is not a 
problem that can be solved. It is a predicament, a long-term consequence of 
our own actions to which we must now adapt.

Now, at first this might all sound like a disaster. But it doesn’t have to 
be. It might turn out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to food and 
agriculture.

Albert Bates, author of The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, says

    “The Long Emergency is an opportunity to pause, to think through our 
present course, and to adjust to a saner path for the future. We had best 
face facts: we really have no choice. The Long Emergency is a horrible 
predicament. It is also a wonderful opportunity to do a lot better. Let’s not 
squander this moment.”

As Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition movement, says:

    “Inherent within the challenges of peak oil and climate change is an 
extraordinary opportunity to reinvent, rethink and rebuild the world around 
us.”

In the face of all this, one of the most important things we can do—and must 
do—is to completely rebuild our local foodsheds—from multiplying backyard and 
frontyard gardens, to converting our local agricultural lands to growing food 
for local consumption, to rebuilding local food storage and distribution 
systems, to training people to learn farming as a wise and essential—and 
sustainable—career choice.

Not only will all this help reduce the amount of fossil fuels embedded in 
today’s food from fertilizer, pesticides and transport, but adopting a more 
local organic diet will greatly contribute to our health, and our children’s 
health. It will also reconnect us with those who grow our food, with the land 
that supports and nurtures us, with the seasons, and with the natural 
processes and cycles that are fundamental to all life. In the process, we’ll 
rediscover what community really means. And for most of us, that will be an 
unexpected and inspiring revelation.

Of course, what I’m pointing to here are qualities of sustainability that 
can’t be measured, but which we know in our hearts are essential to 
humanness—qualities and experiences that have been lost to our communities 
for a long time.

This means that we have no choice but to quickly transition to a world no 
longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and 
economies that function within ecological limits. The age of economic growth 
driven by cheap fossil fuels is over.

And the age of agriculture driven by cheap fossil fuels is over, too.

The Worldwatch Institute recently published its report, 2010 State of the 
World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability. In this 
book, in an article titled “From Agriculture to Permaculture,” Albert Bates 
and Toby Hemenway (both farmers and teachers of Permaculture) say:

    “Humanity now confronts a critical challenge: to develop methods of 
agriculture that sequester carbon, enhance soil fertility, preserve ecosystem 
services, use less water, and hold more water in the landscape—all while 
productively using a steadily compounding supply of human labor. In short, a 
sustainable agriculture.”

Another perspective is from Sharon Astyk, a farmer and mother and writer. In 
her latest book, A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American 
Soil, she writes:

    “Oil has replaced people in industrial agriculture, and now people have 
to come back and replace the oil.”

Sharon calls for a food and farming revolution that is based on simply 
choosing to change the nature of what we grow and what we eat.

    “It is a call for more participation in the food system—100 million new 
farmers and 200 million new cooks in the U.S., and many more worldwide.”

Agriculture is entering into a profound transition, and fundamentally it’s an 
energy transition that will be unfolding over the next 10 to 15 years—and 
there probably will be some pretty big bumps along the way. We will have less 
available energy in the future. And renewables will not be able to come on 
stream quickly enough or at sufficient scale to avoid fairly drastic changes.

The opportunity we have is to design our descent down this energy curve. Now, 
the transition to a non-fossil-fuel food system will take some time. Nearly 
every aspect of the process by which we feed ourselves must be redesigned.

But if we do this right, we have an opportunity to build a food and farming 
system that is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, resilient 
and self-reliant, that ensures food security and sovereignty for all, that 
contributes to the health and happiness of our citizenry, and that 
revitalizes our communities across the nation.

If we do this right, as Sharon Astyk says:

    “Not only can we cease to do the harm that industrial agriculture does, 
but we can replace it with something better—a better way of growing and 
preparing food—and also a democracy of the sort that Thomas Jefferson 
imagined for his nation, a democracy that is not vulnerable to being stolen 
or sold, as our present one is.”