Will organic farms takeover when oil becomes very expensive?

misterno · Last edited by misterno on Sun Jan 06, 2008 10:24 am; edited 1 time in total

If you believe in PO then why worry about GMO's or the effects of NG or oil based fertilizers on food?

Because if PO really happens, then the cost of growing non-organic food will skyrocket, thus all farming will turn into organic anyway. Except for transportation, fossil fuel is not involved in organic farming.

Personally, I have been noticing the price differential between the organic and non-organic food has narrowed alot thru several past years. If energy prices and fertilizer prices keep going up, the price spread between organic and non organic should dissappear.

Also, long before the spread becomes zero, people will be buying organic if the difference really narrows. As an example, I am paying $3.49 for a gallon of milk in Walmart. I know that Whole foods sells organic milk for $5.99/gl. If regular milk is priced at $4.99, I will be buying the organic for a buck more.

Lighthouse · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1458

What do you mean by "after Peak Oil"?

Do you think Peak Oil is an event like flicking a switch?

Peak Oil is a slow process, which most people will not even recognize as such. As a result horticulture will increase, but not necessarily in an organic way ...
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Organic agriculture as currently practiced by industrial ag is also dependent on oil. No less dependent on oil than conventional ag.
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billg

nutmeg · Tar Sands Joined: Dec 16, 2007 Posts: 50

I agree with billg -- the transition to local, small scale agriculture is going to lead to starvation, and the starving masses won't go quietly into the night either.

I do hand tool farming only, though I do use a truck to haul manure to my property. With no truck and only my own land and full time, I could feed my own family with a little bit of surplus. That's it. My own neighborhood would certainly starve.

I'm hoping for at least a somewhat slowed decline, so people get used to 1000 calories a day, and get motivated to do gardening. I think 3 years of lead time, between people realizing the problem, and the cut-off, would be enough. If EVERYBODY does a backyard garden, and uses human poop and urine for fertilizer as Sharon Astyk says will be necessary, then maybe we can avert a lot but not all of the starvation.

The happy side of this is that if EVERYBODY becomes gardeners, this will be a huge change in the culture. No one will support Empire any more. The TV spell will be broken because they won't have time to watch it except maybe in the middle of winter. All those months without Tee Vee will break the evil hypnotic spell.

misterno

Most of the efficieny that we gained in Ag is with fertilizers. With oil and NG prices rising, fertilizers will become extremely expensive. Since organic farms can not use synthetic fertilizers, organic farms will flourish.

Transportation and utilization of mehcanical devices in both organic and traditional farms are same in weight so it is a wash. I think what puts the organic farms in a more advantageous situation is the fact that they do not use oil-NG based fertilizers.

Remember that organic products does not have to be very cheap to increase their sales. As long as the price spread between organic and non-organic products start to narrow, you will see organic product selling like hot cakes.

Whole Foods and all other organic supermarkets are breaking sales records although the price spread is still high. Imagine what is going to happen when oil is $200. It is so clear.

uncarve_db_lock

I worked on a small organic vegetable/flower farm here in the northeast for one season. All in all, not counting the fields that were out of rotation, we probably had produce on about 20 acres. try farming that with out fossil fuels. The tractor and all its wonderful pto attachments pretty much ran the show from plastic mulching, to pumping water for irrigation, to plowing, transplanting, etc, etc. Then, we either had to drive all the produce somewhere to sell or all the CSA folks would drive over and pick up their goodies.
Makes me wonder how much land say, 20 people can work, without internal combustion engines. It would most likely have to be a more bio intensive permaculture system.

billg

FoolYap

clodhopper

In the past, the energy needs of farming and transport were met by using around 25% of the available land to grow food for the horses and men that provided the power. It has been suggested that we will have to go back to that system, but it would take many years to breed the millions of horses needed and train millions of men to handle them, nor can we afford to lose the amount of land needed to feed them.

But farm machines can run on bio diesel made from crops such as oilseed rape. One acre of rapeseed in Europe will yield about 450 litre of bio diesel which is roughly enough to provide fuel for 10 acres. This is much more efficient than feeding horses, but in addition, the seed residue after removing the oil can be used for animal feed and the straw can be burnt to produce electricity .

We would also need to go back to sensible crop rotation with legumes to fix nitrogen as supplies of natural gas based supplies dry up. Careful recycling of other plant nutrients would also be needed.

www.peakfood.co.uk

FoolYap

namenick · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 270

I hope I get this close to right.

Last night on the Dem debate Richardson said somethiing like: If he was pres he would reduce US oil consumption by 50% by 2020. Or some inane nonsense to that effect. Something to do with finding alternate sources, blah, blah.

And not a one of those clowns who want to be president has the cohones to call him on it.

Is this?

1. denial

2. absolute stupidity

3. playing to the voting fools.

4. other

IN any case it's unfortunate and it indicates to me that nothing anyone says is going to make a difference in convincing the general public that PO is real other than waiting for the S to HTF.

pstarr

namenick, 4. Other.

Richardson is neither stupid, venal, or psycho. He's just like a lot of successful American managers. Too busy networking, pressing the flesh, and careening all over America to bother with technical 'details.' like oil depletion. His staff writes his opinions and polls say 'be green.'

Hydrolover, so true. There are few full service supermarkets in the ghetto either, and lots of convenience stores. I read a study that explained obesity. Apparently it's cheaper to purchase high-caloric food (convenience store junk) then fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods. Being fat is a smart economic decision for poor people in the United States.
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namenick · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 270

pstarr- The point I was trying to make was not concerning oil depletion. I am of the opinion that the US will consume more oil in 2020 than it does now and I base that assumption on the fact that consumption is still on the rise. I really do think that the US will get the oil it needs from somewhere. Barring the Christians being able to get their long awaited and prayed for Armageddon of course.

I was more thinking of the fact that there are no alternative energy sources which can come online by 2020 which can take the place of around 10 million barrels a day. Which could become the subject for another discussion if it's not already up somewhere on this board. Perhaps you could tell me, does anyone appreciate the amount of energy contained in a gallon of gasoline and how much alternate energy it takes to equal that? Btu, Kwh, whatever. Probably few but few would want to admit that they aren't interested in finding out yet.