What will we eat when the oil runs out?

The Soil Association, a UK based promoter of organic food and farming, held its 2007 "Lady Eve Balfour" lecture in London on Thursday November 22nd. (Lady Balfour was one of the founders of the Soil Association).

Principal speaker was Richard Heinberg, the US based academic and author of several books on peak oil and its consequences. The central theme of his address was the that there are four dilemmas facing mankind and farmers in particular:

1) The direct impact on agriculture of higher oil prices.

2) The indirect impact of the increasing demand for biofuels.

3) The impacts of climate change - in reality the central issue.

4) The degradation of the environment, top soil and water supplies.

Each of these problems is exacerbated by population increase.

He reviewed the issue of Peak Oil and associated the availability of 'easy oil' with the increases in agricultural productivity seen over the past years, however, with the limitations in fuel supplies expected in the future the situation is not sustainable and a return to a lower input based agriculture will of necessity be forced upon us. He gave as an example the situation in Cuba after cheap oil supplies from the USSR were sharply reduced and the nation was forced to rapidly re-introduce organic farming methods with the implementation of urban farms and market garden schemes. Accompanying these changes was a de-urbanisaton of the employment market, with workers returning to work on the land and agricultural wages rising, in many cases to above those paid to office workers. He also pointed up the fact that it is not just peak oil but peak gas and then peak coal which will cause major problems, the last of these, peak coal, he estimated will be in 15 years or so.

The increasing demand for biofuels was highlighted as causing many problems, not the least the increased prices of grains leading to increased costs of food aid to the malnourished in developing countries and those hit by natural disasters. With fixed budgets the aid agencies find their ability to help being compromised with each price rise. The displacement of native populations from subsistence land which will be used to grow biofuel crops was also emphasised, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Zeigler, was quoted as saying that "Use of crops for biofuels is a crime against humanity".

Global warming is causing a destabilisation of the atmosphere so that seasonal weather patterns are disrupted, affecting farm output, for instance the current long drought in Australia has led to a forecast 40% reduction in the winter grain harvest compared to the five year average.

The message was that we need a fundamental reform of agriculture, finding ways of managing without fossil fuels, re-localising the distribution systems so that locally grown food can be distributed locally, for example the aim of the city of Oakland, California, is to have 40% of their vegetables grown within 50 miles of the city. We need to train new generations of farmers in techniques of reduced tillage and the use of organic fertilisers and governments need to change the present system of farm subsidies, encouraging post-industrial farming techniques. It is an unavoidable and immediate challenge, in 100 years everybody will be eating what we would recognise today as organic but we need to start planning the management of the changes now.

The subsequent panel discussion was chaired by the journalist Anna Ford, the contributors being Guy Watson from Riverford Organics, Lucy Siegle from the Observer newspaper, Chris Skrebowski from the Energy Institute and a member of the ODAC board, Richard Heinberg, and Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association. Chris Skrebowski made the points that we must use the oil supplies that remain carefully, and he pointed out that some of the countries with the most rapidly growing oil consumption were the large oil producing states themselves, where prices are low or subsidised and the driver of high oil prices limiting oil usage does not occur. Regarding possible solutions to the problem of food distribution, Patrick Holden put forward the idea of greater use of electric vehicles and in his final comment he made the chilling statement that we "must maintain food supplies in order to maintain civil order"

Richard Heinberg's latest book "Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Decline in Earth's Resources" has just been published in the USA and should shortly be available in Europe.