A friend once suggested to me that the three worst things we could be
doing for the environment are, in order of destructiveness, 1) drive
cars, 2) eat meat, and 3) eat vegetables.

I'd consider listing the car third. Industrial agriculture is, far
and away, the most destructive practice humans have so far inflicted
on the biosphere. Apart from sunlight; soil, climate, biodiversity
and water are the fundamental ingredients of a healthy life on this
planet. Our agricultural system is brutally polluting, depleting
and/or dangerously altering all four.

In searching for a green alternative to fossil fuels, everyone from
Willie Nelson to the Governor of California , from prominent
environmentalists to General Motors and Monsanto, has promoted
ethanol or other biofuels. While it's true that we desperately need
alternatives, biofuels based on industrial agriculture, are in no
sense 'sustainable.'

As the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announces massive
grain shortfalls after summer heat waves hit Europe and the US, I
want to look closely at the crises in the global food system, and
consider further challenges it may face as we start running out of
cheap petroleum. (This will serve as a backdrop for a discussion on
biofuels in a follow up article next week.)

Post-war technologies made possible the so-called 'Green Revolution,'
or industrialisation of agriculture. From chemical warfare came the
pesticide and herbicide industry, from military vehicles came the
technology for improved farm machinery. They proved very effective.
Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased a remarkable
250 per cent, while farm labour dropped, enabling the rapid rise in
human population over the same period.

Unfortunately, the relationship between food and war does not end there.

The rise in agricultural production was particularly suited to
grains. Grains are a special type of food. Excluding fossil fuels,
they represent some of the most densely packed chemical energy in the
natural world. As Richard Manning writes in his essay 'The Oil We
Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq ', grains also lend
themselves to very destructive farming methods.

Grains are adapted to disaster. In nature, they dominate land only
after catastrophic events such as floods. Their short lives are
devoted to putting as much energy as possible into their seeds, so
that they may spring up first, as pioneer species. In order to grow
them, year after year, we turn over the topsoil and spray for weeds
to artificially create the conditions of catastrophe they favour.

Every time we plough, it is like a high stakes game of Russian
roulette. Plants and soil organisms can (very slowly) create topsoil
from the subsoil below. But, truly revitalising fertility on a large
scale requires geological assistance in such forms as ash from
volcanic eruptions, or rock-crushing glaciers. When we say Australia
has the oldest soils on the planet, it is because we have neither of
these two geological revitalising systems, and haven't had for
millions of years. If a rainstorm washes a mere millimetre of topsoil
off a hectare of land, 15 tonnes is lost. Our rivers flow grey and
turbid as this fertility flows out to sea.

A handful of good soil contains more living creatures than there are
human beings on the earth. The little we know about these creatures
reads like an Alice in Wonderland adventure - amoeba with temporary
feet, vampiric protozoa, fungi with elaborate communication systems
and symbiotic relationships with trees. When we pour nitrogen-based
fertiliser and agricultural poisons onto the soil, or expose it to
the sun, we destroy this life.

As the life dies, we lose the humus, the organic component of the
topsoil. As it rots it releases methane, becoming a major contributor
to global warming. Without the ecosystem services provided by the
soil life, the soil is left as nothing more than a dead medium to
hold plants upright in. We then have to supply more fertilisers
artificially - and the sad cycle continues.

In this extremely dry continent of ours, agriculture accounts for two
thirds of all our water use. This irrigation causes salination, draws
life from our rivers, and depletes our aquifers.

Our monoculture system of farming invites attack from 'pests.' Such
an unnatural system must be protected from insects, birds and animals
with sprays, traps and ammunition. As such, I don't think anyone who
feeds from the industrial food system can truly claim to be vegan.

Each year, more and more virgin forested land and fossil fuel energy
must be fed into the agricultural system simply to maintain current
levels of production. Yet, each year, insects are becoming more
resistant to pesticides, water must be pumped from deeper down in the
earth, weather conditions are becoming less stable, and less
ecosystem services are being provided by soil organisms, without
cost. We are facing diminishing returns.

Despite the rapid growth in agricultural production over the past 35
years, per-capita levels of grain production peaked in 1985.
Distribution politics aside, it is only this century, however, that
the problem has become critical. In every year bar one since 2000,
the world has consumed more grains than it has produced . Less than
two-months worth of grains are now in storage around the world. Last
time stores were this low, in the early 1970s, global wheat and rice
prices doubled.

How do we come to terms with these facts? How are we supposed to feel
when we realise that one of the most intimate facets of our lives - a
source of culture and meaning, enmeshed in the most nurturing
relationships between family and friends, something which we take
into ourselves, which quite literally becomes part of our flesh -
embodies, in a word, violence? And self-destructive violence at that.

I don't really know. But I believe we will all benefit from beginning
to disengage from it.

The promise, and perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced by our
species, is that these destructive forms of agriculture cannot
continue. The Green Revolution has increased energy inputs to
agriculture to levels around 50 times those of traditional
agriculture. Yet energy availability will soon fall. The increasing
unavailability (and therefore increasing cost) of oil and gas means
that we will need to begin to de-industrialise and re-localise our
food systems.

To succeed is to survive - to avoid more widespread hunger, and
develop sustainable, healthy food systems. We need great efforts to
enable farmers to produce food with less energy and less destruction
to their own land, encouraging innovative designs and techniques
inspired by permaculture, incorporating traditional systems and
modern science, such as keyline ploughing and swale building. We need
to produce more food in and around the cities, while changing our
relationship to food so we eat it fresh and in season.

We are lucky that one country has been through such a process and
survived already: Cuba. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Cuba lost most of its oil and fertiliser imports virtually overnight.
With research, institutions turned over to low energy food production
techniques, and organic food production encouraged in the cities,
Cubans' life expectancies and infant mortality rates now rival or
better the United States, while using around one eighth of the energy
per capita.

Success is possible because re-localising the food system has a
solutions-multiplying effect. If our food is grown locally, some of
it by ourselves, we can recycle the nutrients on site, we can
radically decrease the water and energy inputs of food production, we
eat more nutritious food and get more exercise.

This type of vision, perhaps the only practical direction left to us,
does not allow much spare agricultural capacity for biofuels.

Next week I will address how significant biofuel production might
nevertheless be possible, although it too will challenge some
deep-set habits and convictions.

About the author
Adam Fenderson is founder and co-editor of international peak oil
news clearinghouse EnergyBulletin.net, a permaculturist and
co-producer of 3CR's Food Fight program.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New Matilda is an online Australian magazine and policy portal.

www.NewMatilda.com

Article found at :

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=19525