Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

CATEGORY: Agriculture and Energy Descent

In this recent lecture before the E. F. Schumacher Society,
Richard Heinberg, a leading figure in the Peak Oil movement,
describes a key outcome of energy descent -- the restoration of
the small farmer to a position of respect and relative affluence
and the return of the American population to a largely rural
existence.  These developments will have consequences for Tompkins
County that we need to start planning for.

Jon Bosak
Chair, TCLocal

==================================================================

Published on 17 Nov 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 17 Nov
2006. [http://energybulletin.net/22584.html]

Fifty Million Farmers
by Richard Heinberg

(Note: This is the abbreviated text of a lecture by Richard
Heinberg delivered to the E. F. Schumacher Society in Stockbridge,
Massachusetts on October 28, 2006)

There was a time not so long ago when famine was an expected, if
not accepted, part of life. Until the 19th century -- whether in
China, France, India or Britain -- food came almost entirely from
local sources and harvests were variable. In good years, there was
plenty -- enough for seasonal feasts and for storage in
anticipation of winter and hard times to come; in bad years,
starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest -- the very young,
the old, and the sickly. Sometimes bad years followed one upon
another, reducing the size of the population by several
percent. This was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial
societies, and it persisted for thousands of years.

Today, in America, such a state of affairs is hard to
imagine. Food is so cheap and plentiful that obesity is a far more
widespread concern than hunger. The average mega-supermarket
stocks an impressive array of exotic foods from across the globe,
and even staples are typically trucked from hundreds of miles
away. Many people in America did go hungry during the Great
Depression, but those were times that only the elderly can
recall. In the current regime, the desperately poor may experience
chronic malnutrition and may miss meals, but for most the dilemma
is finding time in the day's hectic schedule to go to the grocery
store or to cook. As a result, fast-food restaurants proliferate:
the fare may not be particularly nutritious, but even an hour's
earnings at minimum wage will buy a meal or two. The average
American family spent 20 percent of its income on food in 1950;
today the figure is 10 percent.

This is an extraordinary situation; but because it is the only one
that most Americans alive today have ever experienced, we tend to
assume that it will continue indefinitely. However there are
reasons to think that our current anomalous abundance of
inexpensive food may be only temporary; if so, present and future
generations may become acquainted with that old, formerly familiar
but unwelcome houseguest -- famine.

The following are four principal bases (there are others) for this
gloomy forecast.

The first has to with looming fuel shortages. This is a subject I
have written about extensively elsewhere, so I shall not repeat
myself in any detail. Suffice it to say that the era of cheap oil
and natural gas is coming to a crashing end, with global oil
production projected to peak in 2010 and North American natural
gas extraction rates already in decline. These events will have
enormous implications for America's petroleum-dependent food
system.

Modern industrial agriculture has been described as a method of
using soil to turn petroleum and gas into food. We use natural gas
to make fertilizer, and oil to fuel farm machinery and power
irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, in
the maintenance of animal operations, in crop storage and drying,
and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs. Agriculture
accounts for about 17 percent of the U.S. annual energy budget;
this makes it the single largest consumer of petroleum products as
compared to other industries. By comparison, the U.S. military, in
all of its operations, uses only about half that amount. About 350
gallons (1,500 liters) of oil equivalents are required to feed
each American each year, and every calorie of food produced
requires, on average, ten calories of fossil-fuel inputs. This is
a food system profoundly vulnerable, at every level, to fuel
shortages and skyrocketing prices. And both are inevitable.

An attempt to make up for fuel shortfalls by producing more
biofuels -- ethanol, butanol, and biodiesel -- will put even more
pressure on the food system, and will likely result in a
competition between food and fuel uses of land and other resources
needed for agricultural production. Already 14 percent of the
U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol, and that proportion
is expected to rise to one quarter, based solely on existing
projects-in-development and government mandates.

The second factor potentially leading to famine is a shortage of
farmers. Much of the success of industrial agriculture lies in its
labor efficiency: far less human work is required to produce a
given amount of food today than was the case decades ago (the
actual fraction, comparing the year 2000 with 1900, is about one
seventh). But that very success implies a growing
vulnerability. We don't need as many farmers, as a percentage of
the population, as we used to; so, throughout the past century,
most farming families -- including hundreds of thousands and
perhaps millions that would have preferred to maintain their
rural, self-sufficient way of life -- were economically forced to
move to cities and find jobs. Today so few people farm that vital
knowledge of how to farm is disappearing. The average age of
American farmers is over 55 and approaching 60. The proportion of
principal farm operators younger than 35 has dropped from 15.9
percent in 1982 to 5.8 percent in 2002. Of all the dismal
statistics I know, these are surely among the most
frightening. Who will be growing our food twenty years from now?
With less oil and gas available, we will need far more knowledge
and muscle power devoted to food production, and thus far more
people on the farm, than we have currently.

The third worrisome trend is an increasing scarcity of fresh
water. Sixty percent of water used nationally goes toward
agriculture. California's Central Valley, which produces the
substantial bulk of the nation's fruits, nuts, and vegetables,
receives virtually no rainfall during summer months and relies
overwhelmingly on irrigation. But the snowpack on the Sierras,
which provides much of that irrigation water, is declining, and
the aquifer that supplies much of the rest is being drawn down at
many times its recharge rate. If these trends continue, the
Central Valley may be incapable of producing food in any
substantial quantities within two or three decades. Other parts of
the country are similarly overspending their water budgets, and
very little is being done to deal with this looming catastrophe.

Fourth and finally, there is the problem of global climate
change. Often the phrase used for this is "global warming," which
implies only the fact that the world's average temperature will be
increasing by a couple of degrees or more over the next few
decades. The much greater problem for farmers is destabilization
of weather patterns. We face not just a warmer climate, but
climate chaos: droughts, floods, and stronger storms in general
(hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, hail storms) -- in short,
unpredictable weather of all kinds. Farmers depend on relatively
consistent seasonal patterns of rain and sun, cold and heat; a
climate shift can spell the end of farmers' ability to grow a crop
in a given region, and even a single freak storm can destroy an
entire year's production. Given the fact that modern American
agriculture has become highly centralized due to cheap transport
and economies of scale (almost the entire national spinach crop,
for example, comes from a single valley in California), the damage
from that freak storm is today potentially continental or even
global in scale. We have embarked on a century in which,
increasingly, freakish weather is normal.

I am not pointing out these problems, and their likely
consequences, in order to cause panic. As I propose below, there
is a solution to at least two of these dilemmas, one that may also
help us address the remaining ones. It is not a simple or easy
strategy and it will require a coordinated and sustained national
effort. But in addition to averting famine, this strategy may
permit us to solve a host of other, seemingly unrelated social and
environmental problems.

INTENSIFYING FOOD PRODUCTION

In order to get a better grasp of the problems and the solution
being proposed, it is essential that we understand how our present
exceptional situation of cheap abundance came about. In order to
do that, we must go back not just a few decades, but at least ten
thousand years.

The origins of agriculture are shrouded in mystery, though
archaeologists have been whittling away at that mystery for
decades. We know that horticulture (gardening) began at somewhat
different periods, independently, in at least three regions -- the
Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Central America. Following the
end of the last Ice Age, roughly 12,000 years ago, much of
humanity was experiencing a centuries-long food crisis brought on
by the over-hunting of the megafauna that had previously been at
the center of the human diet. The subsequent domestication of
plants and animals brought relative food security, as well as the
ability to support larger and more sedentary populations.

As compared to hunting and gathering, horticulture intensified the
process of obtaining food. Intensification (because it led to
increased population density -- i.e., more mouths to feed), then
led to the need for even more intensification: thus horticulture
(gardening) eventually led to agriculture (field cropping). The
latter produced more food per unit of land, which enabled more
population growth, which meant still more demand for food. We are
describing a classic self-reinforcing feedback loop.

As a social regime, horticulture did not represent a decisive
break with hunting and gathering. Just as women had previously
participated in essential productive activities by foraging for
plants and hunting small animals, they now played a prominent role
in planting, tending, and harvesting the garden -- activities that
were all compatible with the care of infants and small
children. Thus women's status remained relatively high in most
horticultural societies. Seasonal surpluses were relatively small
and there was no full-time division of labor.

But as agriculture developed -- with field crops, plows, and draft
animals -- societies inevitably mutated in response. Plowing
fields was men's work; women were forced to stay at home and lost
social power. Larger seasonal surpluses required management as
well as protection from raiders; full-time managers and
specialists in violence proliferated as a result. Societies became
multi-layered: wealthy ruling classes (which had never existed
among hunter-gatherers, and were rare among gardeners) sat atop an
economic pyramid that came to include scribes, soldiers, and
religious functionaries, and that was supported at its base by the
vastly more numerous peasants -- who produced all the food for
themselves and everyone else as well. Writing, mathematics,
metallurgy, and, ultimately, the trappings of modern life as we
know it thus followed not so much from planting in general, as
from agriculture in particular.

As important an instance of intensification as agriculture was, in
many respects it pales in comparison with what has occurred within
the past century or so, with the application of fossil fuels to
farming. Petroleum-fed tractors replaced horses and oxen, freeing
up more land to grow food for far more people. The Haber-Bosch
process for synthesizing ammonia from fossil fuels, invented just
prior to World War I, has doubled the amount of nitrogen available
to green nature -- with nearly all of that increase going directly
to food crops. New hybrid plant varieties led to higher
yields. Technologies for food storage improved radically. And
fuel-fed transport systems enabled local surpluses to be sold not
just regionally, but nationally and even globally. Through all of
these strategies, we have developed the wherewithal to feed seven
times the population that existed at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution. And, in the process, we have made farming
uneconomical and unattractive to all but a few.

That's the broad, global overview. In America, whose history as an
independent nation begins at the dawn of the industrial era, the
story of agriculture comprises three distinct periods:

The Expansion Period (1600 to 1920): Increases in food production
during these three centuries came simply from putting more land
into production; technological change played only a minor role.

The Mechanization Period (1920 to 1970): In this half-century,
technological advances issuing from cheap, abundant fossil-fuel
energy resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity (output per
worker hour). Meanwhile, farm machinery, pesticides, herbicides,
irrigation, new hybrid crops, and synthetic fertilizers allowed
for the doubling and tripling of crop production. Also during this
time, U.S. Department of Agriculture policy began favoring larger
farms (the average U.S. farm size grew from 100 acres in 1930 to
almost 500 acres by 1990), and production for export.

The Saturation Period (1970-present): In recent decades, the
application of still greater amounts of energy have produced
smaller relative increases in crop yields; meanwhile an
ever-growing amount of energy is being expended to maintain the
functioning of the overall system. For example, about ten percent
of the energy in agriculture is used just to offset the negative
effects of soil erosion, while increasing amounts of pesticides
must be sprayed each year as pests develop resistances. In short,
strategies that had recently produced dramatic increases in
productivity became subject to the law of diminishing returns.

While we were achieving miracles of productivity, agriculture's
impact on the natural world was also growing; indeed it is now the
single greatest source of human damage to the global
environment. That damage takes a number of forms: erosion and
salinization of soils; deforestation (a strategy for bringing more
land into cultivation); fertilizer runoff (which ultimately
creates enormous "dead zones" around the mouths of many rivers);
loss of biodiversity; fresh water scarcity; and agrochemical
pollution of water and soil.

In short, we created unprecedented abundance while ignoring the
long-term consequences of our actions. This is more than a little
reminiscent of how some previous agricultural societies -- the
Greeks, Babylonians, and Romans -- destroyed soil and habitat in
their mania to feed growing urban populations, and collapsed as a
result.

Fortunately, during the past century or two we have also developed
the disciplines of archaeology and ecology, which teach us how and
why those ancient societies failed, and how the diversity of the
web of life sustains us. Thus, in principle, if we avail ourselves
of this knowledge, we need not mindlessly repeat yet again the
time-worn tale of catastrophic civilizational collapse.

THE 21ST CENTURY: DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION

How might we avoid such a fate?

Surely the dilemmas we have outlined above are understood by the
managers of the current industrial food system. They must have
some solutions in mind.

Indeed they do, and, predictably perhaps, those solutions involve
a further intensification of the food production process. Since we
cannot achieve much by applying more energy directly to that
process, the most promising strategy on the horizon seems to be
the genetic engineering of new crop varieties. If, for example, we
could design crops to grow with less water, or in unfavorable
climate and soil conditions, we could perhaps find our way out of
the current mess.

Unfortunately, there are some flaws with this plan. Our collective
experience with genetically modifying crops so far shows that
glowing promises of higher yields, or of the reduced need for
herbicides, have seldom been fulfilled. At the same time, new
genetic technologies carry with them the potential for horrific
unintended consequences in the forms of negative impacts on human
health and the integrity of ecosystems. We have been gradually
modifying plants and animals through selective breeding for
millennia, but new gene-splicing techniques enable the re-mixing
of genomes in ways and to degrees impossible heretofore. One
serious error could result in biological tragedy on an
unprecedented scale.

Yet even if future genetically modified commercial crops prove to
be much more successful than past ones, and even if we manage to
avert a genetic apocalypse, the means of producing and
distributing genetically engineered seeds is itself reliant on the
very fuel-fed industrial system that is in question.

Is it possible, then, that a solution lies in another direction
altogether -- perhaps in deliberately de-industrializing
production, but doing so intelligently, using information we have
gained from the science of ecology, as well as from traditional
and indigenous farming methods, in order to reduce environmental
impacts while maintaining total yields at a level high enough to
avert widespread famine?

This is not an entirely new idea (as you all well know, the
organic and ecological farming movements have been around for
decades), but up to this point the managers of the current system
have resisted it. This is no doubt largely because those managers
are heavily influenced by giant corporations that profit from
centralized industrial production for distant
markets. Nevertheless, the fact that we have reached the end of
the era of cheap oil and gas demands that we re-examine the
potential costs and benefits of our current trajectory and its
alternatives.

I believe we must and can de-industrialize agriculture. The
general outline of what I mean by de-industrialization is simple
enough: this would imply a radical reduction of fossil fuel inputs
to agriculture, accompanied by an increase in labor inputs and a
reduction of transport, with production being devoted primarily to
local consumption.

Once again, fossil fuel depletion almost ensures that this will
happen. But at the same time, it is fairly obvious that if we
don't plan for de-industrialization, the result could be
catastrophic. It's worth taking a moment to think about how events
might unfold if the process occurs without intelligent management,
driven simply by oil and gas depletion.

Facing high fuel prices, family farms would declare bankruptcy in
record numbers. Older farmers (the majority, in other words) would
probably choose simply to retire, whether they could afford to or
not. However, giant corporate farms would also confront rising
costs -- which they would pass along to consumers by way of
dramatically higher food prices.

Yields would begin to decline -- in fits and starts -- as weather
anomalies and water shortages affected one crop after another.

Meanwhile, people in the cities would also feel the effects of
skyrocketing energy prices. Entire industries would falter,
precipitating a general economic collapse. Massive unemployment
would lead to unprecedented levels of homelessness and hunger.

Many people would leave cities looking for places to live where
they could grow some food. Yet they might find all of the
available land already owned by banks or the government. Without
experience of farming, even those who succeeded in gaining access
to acreage would fail to produce much food and would ruin large
tracts of land in the process.

Eventually these problems would sort themselves out; people and
social systems would adapt -- but probably not before an immense
human and environmental tragedy had ensued.

I wish I could say that this forecast is exaggerated for
effect. Yet the actual events could be far more violent and
disruptive than it is possible to suggest in so short a summary.

EXAMPLES AND STRATEGIES

Things don't have to turn out that way. As I have already said, I
believe that the de-industrialization of agriculture could be
carried out in a way that is not catastrophic and that in fact
substantially benefits society and the environment in the long
run. But to be convinced of the thesis we need more than promises
-- we need historic examples and proven strategies. Fortunately,
we have two of each.

In some respects the most relevant example is that of Cuba's
Special Period. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Cuba lost its source of cheap oil. Its
industrialized agricultural system, which was heavily
fuel-dependent, immediately faltered. Very quickly, Cuban leaders
abandoned the Soviet industrial model of production, changing from
a fuel- and petrochemical-intensive farming method to a more
localized, labor-intensive, organic mode of production.

How they did this is itself an interesting story. Eco-agronomists
at Cuban universities had already been advocating a transition
somewhat along these lines. However, they were making little or no
headway. When the crisis hit, they were given free rein to, in
effect, redesign the entire Cuban food system. Had these academics
not had a plan waiting in the wings, the nation's fate might have
been sealed.

Heeding their advice, the Cuban government broke up large,
state-owned farms and introduced private farms, farmer co-ops, and
farmer markets. Cuban farmers began breeding oxen for animal
traction. The Cuban people adopted a mainly vegetarian diet,
mostly involuntarily (Meat eating went from twice a day to twice a
week). They increased their intake of vegetable sources of protein
and farmers decreased the growing of wheat and rice (Green
Revolution crops that required too many inputs). Urban gardens
(including rooftop gardens) were encouraged, and today they
produce 50 to 80 percent of vegetables consumed in cities.

Early on, it was realized that more farmers were needed, and that
this would require education. All of the nation's colleges and
universities quickly added courses on agronomy. At the same time,
wages for farmers were raised to be at parity with those for
engineers and doctors. Many people moved from the cities to the
country; in some cases there were incentives, in others the move
was forced.

The result was survival. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds of body
weight, but in the long run the overall health of the nation's
people actually improved as a consequence. Today, Cuba has a
stable, slowly growing economy. There are few if any luxuries, but
everyone has enough to eat. Having seen the benefit of
smaller-scale organic production, Cuba's leaders have decided that
even if they find another source of cheap oil, they will maintain
a commitment to their new, decentralized, low-energy methods.

I don't want to give the impression that Cubans sailed through the
Special Period unscathed. Cuba was a grim place during these
years, and to this day food is far from plentiful there by
American standards. My point is not that Cuba is some sort of
paradise, but simply that matters could have been far worse.

It could be objected that Cuba's experience holds few lessons for
our own nation. Since Cuba has a very different government and
climate, we might question whether its experience can be
extrapolated to the U.S.

Let us, then, consider an indigenous historical example. During
both World Wars, Americans planted Victory Gardens. During both
periods, gardening became a sort of spontaneous popular movement,
which (at least during World War II) the USDA initially tried to
suppress, believing that it would compromise the industrialization
of agriculture. It wasn't until Eleanor Roosevelt planted a
Victory Garden in the White House lawn that agriculture secretary
Claude Wickard relented; his agency then began to promote Victory
Gardens and to take credit for them. At the height of the
movement, Victory Gardens were producing roughly 40 percent of
America's vegetables, an extraordinary achievement in so short a
time.

In addition to these historical precedents, we have new techniques
developed with the coming agricultural crisis in mind; two of the
most significant are Permaculture and Biointensive farming (there
are others -- such as efforts by Wes Jackson of The Land Institute
to breed perennial grain crops -- but limitations of time and
space require me to pick and choose).

Permaculture was developed in the late 1970s by Australian
ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in anticipation of
exactly the problem we see unfolding before us. Holmgren defines
Permaculture as "consciously designed landscapes that mimic the
patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an
abundance of food, fiber, and energy for provision of local
needs." Common Permaculture strategies include mulching, rainwater
capture using earthworks such as swales, composting, and the
harmonious integration of aquaculture, horticulture, and
small-scale animal operations. A typical Permaculture farm may
produce a small cash crop but concentrates largely on
self-sufficiency and soil building. Significantly, Permaculture
has played an important role in Cuba's adaptation to a low-energy
food regime.

Biointensive farming has been developed primarily by Californian
John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables. Like
Permaculture, Biointensive is a product of research begun in the
1970s. Jeavons defines Biointensive (now trademarked as "Grow
Biointensive") farming as

   . . . an organic agricultural system that focuses on maximum
   yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously
   improving the soil. The goal of the method is long-term
   sustainability on a closed-system basis. Because biointensive
   is practiced on a relatively small scale, it is well suited to
   anything from personal or family to community gardens, market
   gardens, or minifarms. It has also been used successfully on
   small-scale commercial farms.

Like Holmgren and Mollison, Jeavons has worked for the past three
decades in anticipation of the need for the de-industrialization
of food production due to accumulating environmental damage and
fossil fuel depletion. Currently Biointensive farming is being
taught extensively in Africa and South America as a sustainable
alternative to the globalized monocropping. The term
"biointensive" suggests that what we are discussing here is not a
de-intensification of food production, but rather the development
of production along entirely different lines. While both
Permaculture and Biointensive have been shown to be capable of
dramatically improving yields-per-acre, their developers clearly
understand that even these methods will eventually fail us unless
we also limit demand for food by gradually and humanely limiting
the size of the human population.

In short, it is possible in principle for industrial nations like
the U.S. to make the transition to smaller-scale, non-petroleum
food production, given certain conditions. There are both
precedents and models.

However, all of them imply more farmers. Here's the catch -- and
here's where the ancillary benefits kick in.

THE KEY: MORE FARMERS!

One way or another, re-ruralization will be the dominant social
trend of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years from now --
again, one way or another -- we will see a more historically
normal ratio of rural to urban population, with the majority once
again living in small, farming communities. More food will be
produced in cities than is the case today, but cities will be
smaller. Millions more people than today will be in the
countryside growing food.

They won't be doing so the way farmers do it today, and perhaps
not the way farmers did it in 1900.

Indeed, we need perhaps to redefine the term farmer. We have come
to think of a farmer as someone with 500 acres and a big tractor
and other expensive machinery. But this is not what farmers looked
like a hundred years ago, and it's not an accurate picture of most
current farmers in less-industrialized countries. Nor does it
coincide with what will be needed in the coming decades. We should
perhaps start thinking of a farmer as someone with 3 to 50 acres,
who uses mostly hand labor and twice a year borrows a small
tractor that she or he fuels with ethanol or biodiesel produced
on-site.

How many more farmers are we talking about? Currently the U.S. has
three or four million of them, depending on how we define the
term.

Let's again consider Cuba's experience: in its transition away
from fossil-fueled agriculture, that nation found that it required
15 to 25 percent of its population to become involved in food
production. In America in 1900, nearly 40 percent of the
population farmed; the current proportion is close to one percent.

Do the math for yourself. Extrapolated to this country's future
requirements, this implies the need for a minimum of 40 to 50
million additional farmers as oil and gas availability
declines. How soon will the need arise? Assuming that the peak of
global oil production occurs within the next five years, and that
North American natural gas is already in decline, we are looking
at a transition that must occur over the next 20 to 30 years, and
that must begin approximately now.

Fortunately there are some hopeful existing trends to point
to. The stereotypical American farmer is a middle-aged,
Euro-American male, but the millions of new farmers in our future
will have to include a broad mix of people, reflecting America's
increasing diversity. Already the fastest growth in farm operators
in America is among female full-time farmers, as well as Hispanic,
Asian, and Native American farm operators.

Another positive trend worth noting: Here in the Northeast, where
the soil is acidic and giant agribusiness has not established as
much of a foothold as elsewhere, the number of small farms is
increasing. Young adults -- not in the millions, but at least in
the hundreds -- are aspiring to become Permaculture or organic or
Biointensive farmers. Farmers markets and CSAs are established or
springing up throughout the region. This is somewhat the case also
on the Pacific coast, much less so in the Midwest and South.

What will it take to make these tentative trends the predominant
ones? Among other things we will need good and helpful
policies. The USDA will need to cease supporting and encouraging
industrial monocropping for export, and begin supporting smaller
farms, rewarding those that make the effort to reduce inputs and
to grow for local consumption. In the absence of USDA policy along
these lines, we need to pursue state, county, and municipal
efforts to support small farms in various ways, through favorable
zoning, by purchasing local food for school lunches, and so on.

We will also require land reform. Those millions of new farmers
will need access to the soil, and there must be some means for
assisting in making land available for this purpose. Conservation
land trusts may be useful in this regard, and we might take
inspiration from Indian Line Farm, here in the northeast.

Since so few people currently know much about farming, education
will be essential. Universities and community colleges have both
the opportunity and responsibility to quickly develop programs in
small-scale ecological farming methods -- programs that also
include training in other skills that farmers will need, such as
in marketing and formulating business plans.

Since few if any farms are financially successful the first year
or even the second or third, loans and grants will also be
necessary to help farmers get started.

These new farmers will need higher and stabilized food prices. As
difficult as it may be even to imagine this situation now, food
rationing may be required at some point in the next two or three
decades. That quota system needs to be organized in such a way as
to make sure everyone has the bare essentials, and to support the
people at the base of the food system -- the farmers.

Finally, we need a revitalization of farming communities and
farming culture. A century ago, even in the absence of the air and
auto transport systems we now take for granted, small towns across
this land strove to provide their citizens with lectures,
concerts, libraries, and yearly chautauquas. Over the past decades
these same towns have seen their best and brightest young people
flee first to distant colleges and then to the cities. The folks
left behind have done their best to maintain a cultural
environment, but in all too many cases that now consists merely of
a movie theater and a couple of video rental stores. Farming
communities must be interesting, attractive places if we expect
people to inhabit them and for children to want to stay there.

IF WE DO THIS WELL

We have been trained to admire the benefits of intensification and
industrialization. But, as I've already indicated, we have paid an
enormous price for these benefits -- a price that includes
alienation from nature, loss of community and tradition, and the
acceptance of the anonymity and loss of autonomy implied by mass
society. In essence, this tradeoff has its origins in the
beginnings of urbanization and agriculture.

Could we actually regain much of what we have lost? Yes, perhaps
by going back, at least in large part, to horticulture. Recall
that the shift from horticulture to agriculture was, as best we
can tell, a fateful turning point in cultural history. It
represented the beginning of full-time division of labor,
hierarchy, and patriarchy.

Biointensive farming and Permaculture are primarily horticultural
rather than agricultural systems. These new, intelligent forms of
horticulture could, then, offer an alternative to a new feudalism
with a new peasantry. In addition, they emphasize biodiversity,
averting many of the environmental impacts of field cropping. They
use various strategies to make hand labor as efficient as
possible, minimizing toil and drudgery. And they typically slash
water requirements for crops grown in arid regions.

We have gotten used to a situation where most farmers rely on
non-farm income. As of 2002 only a bit less than 60 percent of
farm operators reported that their primary work is on the
farm. Only 9 percent of primary operators on farms with one
operator, and 10 percent on farms with multiple operators, report
all of their income as coming from the farm.

The bad side of this is that it means it's hard to make a living
farming these days. The good side is that we don't have to think
of farming as an exclusive occupation. As people return to small
communities and to farming, they could bring with them other
interests. Rather than a new peasantry that spends all of its time
in drudgery, we could look forward to a new population of
producers who maintain interests in the arts and sciences, in
history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology -- in short, the
whole range of pursuits that make modern urban life interesting
and worthwhile.

Moreover, the re-ruralization program I am describing could be a
springboard for the rebirth of democracy in this nation. I do not
have to tell this audience how, over the past few years, democracy
in America has become little more than a slogan. In fact this
erosion of our democratic traditions has been going on for some
time. As Kirkpatrick Sale showed in his wonderful book Human
Scale, as communities grow in size, individuals' ability to
influence public affairs tends to shrink. Sociological research
now shows that people who have the ability to influence policy in
their communities show a much higher sense of satisfaction with
life in general. In short, the re-ruralization of America could
represent the fulfillment of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an
agrarian democracy -- but without the slaves.

If we do this well, it could mean the revitalization not only of
democracy, but of the family and of authentic, place-based
culture. It could also serve as the basis for a new, genuine
conservatism to replace the ersatz conservatism of the current
ruling political elites.

What I am proposing is nothing less than a new alliance among
environmental organizations, farmers, gardeners, organizations
promoting economic justice, the anti-globalization movement,
universities and colleges, local businesses, churches, and other
social organizations. Moreover, the efforts of this alliance would
have to be coordinated at the national, state, and local
level. This is clearly a tall order. However, we are not talking
about merely a good idea. This is a survival strategy.

It may seem that I am describing and advocating a reversion to the
world of 1800, or even that of 8,000 BC. This is not really the
case. We will of course need to relearn much of what our ancestors
knew. But we have discovered a great deal about biology, geology,
hydrology, and other relevant subjects in recent decades, and we
should be applying that knowledge -- as Holmgren, Mollison,
Jeavons, and others have done -- to the project of producing food
for ourselves.

Cultural anthropology teaches us that the way people get their
food is the most reliable determinant of virtually all other
social characteristics. Thus, as we build a different food system
we will inevitably be building a new kind of culture, certainly
very different from industrial urbanism but probably also from
what preceded it. As always before in human history, we will make
it up as we go along, in response to necessity and opportunity.

Perhaps these great changes won't take place until the need is
obvious and irresistibly pressing. Maybe gasoline needs to get to
$10 a gallon. Perhaps unemployment will have to rise to ten or
twenty or forty percent, with families begging for food in the
streets, before embattled policy makers begin to reconsider their
commitment to industrial agriculture.

But even in that case, as in Cuba, all may depend upon having
another option already articulated. Without that, we will be left
to the worst possible outcome.

Rather than consigning ourselves to that fate, let us accept the
current challenge -- the next great energy transition -- as an
opportunity not to vainly try to preserve business as usual, the
American Way of Life that, we are told, is not up for negotiation,
but rather to re-imagine human culture from the ground up.

(This lecture drew on certain ideas earlier put forward by Knox,
New York farmer Sharon Astyk in her remarks at the 2006 Peak Oil
and Community Solutions conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and on
others that emerged in conversation with Pat Murphy of Community
Service and Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute.)