Section Contents
The Coming Food Crisis
California Irrigation and the Need for Local Production
The Need and Demand for New Food Sources
The Coming Food Crisis
We heat our greenhouses with renewable fuels, and avoid the use of fossil fuels such as natural gas and oil. This has taken years of design work and was motivated by survival. We are now able to use agricultural, forest, landfill, and construction wastes, as well as geothermal sources for fuels.
Ten to fifteen calories of fossil fuels are required for every calorie of food eaten (1). If a lion spends 10 times the energy catching an antelope than is taken from eating the antelope, the lion will die.
In the late 1980s, farmers in Cuba were highly reliant on cheap fuels and petrochemicals imported from the Soviet Union, using more agrochemicals per acre than their American counterparts. In 1990, as the Soviet empire collapsed, Cuba lost those imports and faced an agricultural crisis. The population lost 20 pounds on average and malnutrition was nearly universal, especially among young children. The Cuban GDP fell by 85% and inhabitants of the island nation experienced a substantial decline in their material standard of living. Cuban authorities responded by breaking up large state-owned farms, offering land to farming families, and encouraging the formation of small agricultural co-ops. Cuban farmers began employing oxen as a replacement for the tractors they could no longer afford to fuel.
The use of renewable fuels in agriculture is inevitable because the world is running out of cheap oil. The U.S. is spending $175 billion per year importing 78% of the 23 million barrels a day it consumes.
The social upheavals during the transition away from oil will be a catastrophe in slow motion for those who refuse to recognize the problem. They are walking toward the cliff edge with the rest of the lemmings.
Successful farmers will revert to the horse and plough, or machinery based on renewable fuels. In either case, production will be lower than using fossil fuel engines and inputs. It must be, because we are using fossil fuels at a rate 1,000,000 times faster than they were formed. In one day, we use fossil fuels that took 500 years to form.
Other farmers will quit, and are quiting, because the costs of fuel, equipment, fertilizers, and pesticides will and are driving them out of business.
(1) Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology
California Irrigation and the Need for Local Production
California’s Central Valley produces 50% of the vegetables, nuts, and fruits for the U.S. and Canada depends on this production as well. The Central Valley is irrigated with water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The delta has been drained, diked and leveed into islands, and farmed for more that a century and many of the islands sit 20’ below sea level.
The delta is the collection point of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Much of the water is pumped south via two man made rivers, the Central Valley Project and California Aqueduct. Sea level rise combined with more severe storms now threaten to break the weaker levees and flood the lower islands, inundating farmland and poisoning the big delta pumps with salt water from San Francisco Bay. A major earthquake already overdue in the area could take out hundreds of miles of levees in seconds, slashing water supplies for 2/3’s of California. This would cut irrigation water off in the Central Valley and cripple food production. It could take years to repair the dikes. Also, global warming has drained most of the state’s major reservoirs to their lowest levels in nearly 2 decades. There is no let up in this trend. The Sierra Nevada mountains are the largest storehouse of water in the state and the snow pack that feed the reservoirs has been shrinking.
70% of California’s available water falls in the north, while 80% of the demand is in the south. The existence of the south depends on northern water from the aqueducts. Drinking and industrial water to Los Angeles will be severely cut back.
Local food production will reduce the reliance on California as a source of fresh food. The reduction in food growing capacity is happening now, and will get worse. An earthquake is due in the Hayward Fault, that runs through the delta. When it happens the shortages will be sudden.
The Need and Demand for New Food Sources
Nobel prize winner Henry Kendall and population dynamics expert David Pimentel at Cornell Unversity have shown that humanity is exceeding the Earth's capacity to support us. Now, we either use, co-opt or destroy 40% of the estimated 100 billion tons of organic matter produced annually by the terrestrial ecosystem. This is driving to extinction many other organisms which keep the planet habitable.
Three different scenarios are considered:
1) Pessimistic: population climbs to 13 billion people and the worst cases of global warming, starvation, population friction and violence, unbelievable debt.
2) Business as usual: population rises to 10 billion; soil erosion, salinization and waterlogging from increased rainfall all rise; no increase for aid in developing countries, no action to reduce global warming or ozone levels.The Need and Demand for New Food Sources
3) Optimistic: population stabilizes at 7.8 billion, energy intensive agriculture expanded; soil and water conservation improves; developed countries increase financial aid and technology; food is more equitably distributed, diets shift from animal to plant protein.
The optimistic scenario would involve the following:
1) expand irrigation by 20%
2) amount of potassium, nitrogen, phosphate, and other fertilizers expanded by 450%
3) food production is tripled
4) all people become vegetarians
5) energy intensity in agriculture is increase 50 to 100 fold
Projections in 2008, state that by 2030, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth, and farmers will have to grow 30% more grain (National Geographic, Sept. 2008).
This optimistic scenario, Kendall and Pimentel state, "appears to be unrealistic". Furthermore, "the human race now appears to be getting close to the limits of global food productive capacity based on present technologies. A major reordering of world priorities is prerequisite for meeting the problems we now face."
In light of this, Saladacres is presented with an great opportunity for expansion to meet the present and future demand for our products. Retail prices for fresh produce are rising. This indicates a shortage for any number of reasons, a strong demand, or both. The trend is a good indicator to start production and expand quickly. Our customers will be the benefactors.
Other farmers will quit, and are quitting, because the costs of fuel, equipment, fertilizers, and pesticides will drive them out of business.We will go back to the 1910 steam tractor age when the population of the U.S. and Canada was 63 million, and not 332 million today. What will happen to the 269 million people when their oil dependent food disappears? Predictions are panic, inflation, food riots, robbery, health crises, race friction, migrations, high taxes, high heating and gasoline costs, rage, and huge debt. Eventually the population will drop. We and our customers will survive.
By using renewable fuels, our production costs will be controlled, and the benefactors will be our customers. We are in a position to serve our customers in this transition because we are not reliant on fossil fuels for heating, and our locations are next to markets that reduce transport costs dramatically.