[DesuMaiden]

This is an interview where he talks about the Green Revolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdr-maH3jtc

It is a very interesting watch. The main point of the interview is as following...

We peaked in arable land for agriculture in 1960. We can't create anymore arable land. But since 1960, we were able to increase food production by 3 times by increasing productivity of food per acre. We dwarfed crops like rice, grain and corn. We were able to decrease the size of the stem and increase the size of the seed (which is edible).

But another reason our food system is able to increase its food production is because we are using fossil fuels to grow food. If we run out of fossil fuels, our food production will go down. It is that simple. Can we produce food without fossil fuels? Yes, but we can't produce as much food without fossil fuels.

Those are the most important points of the interview. Watch the rest of the interview for more information.

[Pops]

I'm data impaired so will just address your points,
We tripled yield since 1960, why are we prevented from tripling it again? I've mentioned before that maize converts about 3% of sunlight into carbs yet sugar cane converts 18% - why can't we work on that?

The reason some plants take up P better than others is they have more growing root tips that capture p from the soil, why can't we work on that?

Just a couple of thoughts off the top, I'm sure if I can pull those out of my ear that smart people have been working on them and a hundred or thousand more.

--
Oil is neat because it is so concentrated that we can waste huge amounts doing nothing - running the radio and a/c in the tractor cab, etc. I've worked on a couple farms, big and little and there is huge waste - even though - as I've also said before - ag only uses 2% of total consumption to the farm gate and 1% for transport from there. Essentially 97% of oil will disappear before tractors run out.

For that matter soy beans yield something over 3.2 efficiency energy as biodiesel. Contrast that to .83 for petroleum based diesel. And beans yield less than 50 gals of oil an acre while peanuts, rape, sunflower and other offer 2-3 times that.

Obviously big change needs to take place; from transport to processing to packaging but petroleum or veg oil used for traction will be the last thing to change. IMHO.

[vtsnowedin]

I'm data impaired so will just address your points,....
sniped
....

Obviously big change needs to take place; from transport to processing to packaging but petroleum or veg oil used for traction will be the last thing to change. IMHO.

I totally agree with you on this. Just imagine the chagrin of some rich kid when he can't fill up his corvette because the farmer in Iowa has priority.

[Shaved Monkey]

We can't create anymore arable land.

I spend most of my time creating soil.
Manure, compost, legumes, mulch,swales,gabions,deep rooted plants,ground cover,bio char,EM.

[careinke]

We can't create anymore arable land.

I spend most of my time creating soil.
Manure, compost, legumes, mulch,swales,gabions,deep rooted plants,ground cover,bio char,EM.

I had to laugh when I read that "we can't create anymore arable land." How silly, maybe he needs to read up on restoration agriculture.

[Shaved Monkey]

We can't create anymore arable land.

I spend most of my time creating soil.
Manure, compost, legumes, mulch,swales,gabions,deep rooted plants,ground cover,bio char,EM.

I had to laugh when I read that "we can't create anymore arable land." How silly, maybe he needs to read up on restoration agriculture.

It's not funny at all. Humans have already modified >50% of Earth's land surface, mostly for food, timber, pasture, and cities and I doubt there is much else to steal. Restoration agriculture is all fine and good but it will not create more arable land. Arable land is rare, it is not steep slopes, dry, flooded, salted. or arctic. It barely exists.

I agree industrial agriculture is mining the soil of minerals and life.
Arable land is rare and getting rarer.
Part of the problem is ploughing itself makes it die.

I learned that the carbon cycle was a, or the, critical element.
Contrary to popular belief, water soluble nitrogen applications actually depletes soil carbon, rather than builds it – because soil micro-organisms, if I am to use simplistic terminology, feed on nitrogen, and excess soluble supplies send them into a frenzy of activity.
That activity is focussed on breaking down organic matter (carbon rich humus). Regular dousings of water-soluble nitrogen fertiliser (and yes, that also includes concentrated chicken litter and blood meal) turns our microscopic soil buddies into hyperactive, and short lived, soil baddies.
The same thing occurs with over-aeration of soil from ploughing and other manipulations.
The result is rapid plant growth, but at the expense of plant health – and, significantly, resulting in our effectively burning up the organic matter content in our soils, without which there can be no life on this earth.

http://permaculturenews.org/2010/07/27/ ... il-carbon/

Restoration ag. is aimed at arable land already destroyed, hopefully to be returned to productive (human-centric) use. You guys are operating on land that was cut, cleared, and abused hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago. (By the way none of those restorative crops will return phosphorus that was leached a century ago.)

It was cleared to be for productive human-centric use ???
Do we really need to return phosphorous to a predetermined time line or to a point that makes things grow sustainably so we can eat them ?
Get your fungus growing,no herbicides to kill it and lots of compost tea and brown mulch
Phosphorus accumulating plants used as mulch.(comfrey is a good one)
Urine
http://permaculturenews.org/2011/11/27/ ... -npk-loop/
Bat boxes and dove cotes as phosphate factories with a side benefit of insect control and meat, no hand feeding required.

http://permaculturenews.org/2009/07/23/ ... -on-farms/

[Apneaman]

I saw that interview a month or so ago and then got Manning's 2004 book from the library-
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

What is possible does not matter when we are trapped in a food system that is shaped for and exists for big Ag. Big changes will only happen after this system collapses and a younger generation rebuilds - if anyone is left. Most everyone else will cling to and defend to the death the system they were raised in. The big 3 crops will not be able to handle the changes that are already baked into the cake. Their proteins start to denature at around 4 degrees c, which will be here in a few decades. Then there is the water/drought issues already well under way. This is just the beginning. Drought is the destroyer of civilizations.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . What is the definition of arable land?

If it is undulating lightly timbered land with forty inch rainfall with plenty of gullies that can be dammed for small scale horticulture there are millions of bloody acres available up the east coast of Australia . . . if you are talking the plains of Ukraine, Australia, and the US where you can pull a hundred feet of implement with a three hundred horsepower John Deere, then maybe not so much.

I am not saying there is not a problem but this peak arable land bullshit gets right up my nose. Are those beautiful open fields grazing sheep I see in the Pommy "escape to the country" TV series my wife watches not suitable for vegetable production?

Of course they are . . . it's just that the farmer is not motivated to do so, vegetables are too cheap and in oversupply and you can't make any money out of the bloody things . . . far better to sit back and grow some fat lambs or other meat, it's a lot less work and investment.

A drench gun, a vaccination syringe and a castrating knife or band tool and you are pretty much in business . . . and they even walk up on the trailer themselves, you don't have to buy plastic bags and boxes or pay unmotivated twits to pick them

As I have said before the seasonal food for most towns and cities in Australia could be grown within a hundred kays of the CBD and I won't buy that claptrap about running out of land.

Cheers.

.

[SeaGypsy]

A lot of our agriculture happens on what was non agrible land. We also have the near virgin tropical savannah, supposedly non agrible.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . pstarr.

In England there are over 1,000 folks per km of arable land.

That is the point I am trying to make . . . I just don't buy it.

I take "Arable Land" to mean land on which crops can be grown and if you go to Google earth and have a wander around the English/French/German/Vermont/Tennessee/North and South Island of New Zealand country side you will find millions of acres of open undulating land on which crops could be grown . . .possibly in rotation with livestock.

They won't be grown because it is not viable due to a corrupted system that sees local citrus growers chain sawing trees and the oranges on our Supermarket shelf come from California . . . and, I repeat we need to eat seasonal and local and all the seasonable produce for most given cities can be grown within one hundred kays/miles of that cities CBD.

If you want to see intensive agriculture visit the rice and vegetable terraces of China and Southeast Asia and stop trying to judge from a European/American ("Western"?) perspective.

Cheers

[Shaved Monkey]

Fertile land is depleted and getting depleted but their is also the distortion of markets.
Cherries are being planted now in the highlands of Tasmania to supply the Chinese New Year market.(its colder and they will ripen later)
It extends the growing season to a new market but that wasnt done before as it would eat into the fruit market of the fruit that was available in Feb
Currently stone fruit and grapes are going cheap in Australia because Vietnam cancelled orders, because Australia wouldn't buy their dragon fruit and lychees.
Tasmanian apples used to supply the UK until the EU
Now Tas apples supply Asia.
Lots of talk in Australia of damming rivers in the tropics and opening up more land to feed the middle class of Asia.
The expansions of the Ord river scheme and new areas in the top of Queensland
These are predominantly untouched areas or currently used for dry land grazing,due to lack of dammed water.
The idea is scary feed more people and create more environmental devastation, while a few big rich farming families and agricultural corporations makes some short term profit
I've lived in the edges of the tropical/dessert nothing grows until it rains and then it just takes off the soil is very fertile,but only good for grazing without water.

[Pops]

There are huge swaths of land gone to seed because they are not economically viable in the current system.

This is a topic I've ranted on for years, the "getting from here to there" of transition. There is no "corruption," there is just transport enabled regional specialization that enables the huge economies of scale. The challenge of transitioning to any local agriculture (organic/permie/manual/whatever) is the opportunity cost, except for the tiny specialized, luxury farmer's market clique, small time farming is a money loser in the current system.

I know, theoretically small farms are more "productive" but I can be very productive and still go bankrupt. And yes I know there are authors who farm and make lots of money, and yes I know that farmer's markets grew big time around the turn of the century
but I can be a small farmer and spend every bit of outside income and direct sales have long since stopped growing.

From 2007 to 2012 the value of food sales of farmers face-to-face with consumers dropped by 1 percent in real dollars. For some context, from 2002 to 2007 that value increased 32 percent. The increase was 36 percent in the five-year period before that.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/0 ... or-farmers

Again, there are a huge number of farmable plots out there bypassed for one reason or another by big ag because they are unsuitable - in other words, they can not be made profitable in the current system. Obviously then, in order to enact transition, one must be willing to invest money knowing it will be lost.

Not much of that going on nowadays
.

[Pops]

Just saw this, reality:

Smaller farms actually lost money farming and earned 109 percent of their household income from off-farm sources.
.. 90 percent of farmers in this country rely on an outside job, or a spouse’s outside job, or some independent form of wealth, for their primary income....

When a student asked if my farm was sustainable, I told her that I was certified organic, I managed my soil fertility through crop rotations and compost applications, I didn’t use synthetic pesticides, I conserved water. But no, I’d said, I didn’t think my farm was sustainable. Like all the other farms I knew, my farm relied on uncompensated labor and self-exploitation. My farm was not sustainable because I knew the years my partner and I could continue to work without a viable income were numbered.

Read the whole thing...

[Shaved Monkey]

and the profitable industrial farms are subsidised by cheap oil

[vtsnowedin]

and the profitable industrial farms are subsidised by cheap oil

While that is true, it is beside the point. Replacement of industrial farms with sustainable organic agriculture will not happen in the free market. It will either occur as a result of government mandate or the depletion of fossil fuels. The former is unacceptable, and the latter is inevitable.

How it plays out is the question. As oil declines we will have to give up some of the things we do with it first. I expect big AG will be one of the last things along with fighter jets and aircraft carriers. But certainly things like single occupant commuting to work will pass away before any commercial farming is reduced as will most air travel. I doubt that the government will collapse to the point where they suddenly cut off all welfare and social security checks but rather they will hold the checks constant and let high inflation eat away at their value while preserving the illusion that the politicians have kept their campaign promises.
So you have forty-nine million Americans on food stamps that can no longer buy enough food with them to live on. There is where your future organic (or not) farmers will come from. Those with access to land will start gardening to supplement their food supply and the successful ones will sell or barter their excess production to other under fed people without access to land. All done under the table of course to keep the government checks flowing for as long as they have any value at all.