Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food, and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture

In this book's Forward by Andrew Jones we find the old solutions to our nation's (and the global) food scarcities: increased production and better utilization of existing resources.Thankfully the book's author, Dale Allen Pfeifer, wastes no words as he begins on page 1 his scholarly attack on the wasteful and unsustainable exploitation of fossil fuels in the pursuit of unlimited agricultural expansion.Two respected consultants to the oil industry predict that world production would peak and then begin an irreversable decline around 2010. The result will be "food shortages and massive starvation".The Green Revolution that began a half century past did nothing to alleviate world hunger but it did stimulate the relentless trajectory of population growth within the globalization of food production. This was all under the parentage of cheap and abundant oil and natural gas that incrementally created a dependency on unsustainable energies to seed crops, harvest and transport them to processors and then to market.The intensity of big agri practices soon strips the soils of nutrients and depletes water aquifers. This requires greater dependence on energy intensive irrigation and ever greater reliance on nonrenewable hydrocarbons.Some 10,000 years past humanity transitioned from hunters/gathers to agriculture. This was the beginning of "civilization". And so began the unrelenting population growth that would displace other competing life forms.On page 6 the authors note "The need to expand agricultural production has been one of the root causes behind most of the wars...Today land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture". the Green Revolution industrialized world grain production during mid-20th century when fossil fuel fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation reflected a 250% increase in grainsThe Green Revolution's industrial practices leave behind degradation of the land and water supply. Since 1945 more than 43% of the land's vegetated surface has degraded because of soil depletion, desertification and destruction of rain forests. Sixty percent of world deforestation is related to arable land needs to feed the 84 million people born each year. Farmland loses millions of acres annually to erosion, urbanization, road building, industry... The production of one pound of maize requires 175 gallons of water. Forty percent of all grain production worldwide goes to poultry and meat farms.According to one study the U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces. More than 40% of food-related energy consumption is used in refrigeration, 20% in used in cooking and a similar amount for heating water.Americans individually consume one-third of their calories from animal and dairy sources. Fast food provides one-third of all caloric intake. The farming behind all this uses 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides in the U.S. annually. That is five pounds for every member of humanity. Each year we lose more crops to pests despite more pesticide use.Page 25 has an interesting narrative regarding how far food travels from farm to table. A Swedish study found that the mileage estimated for an entire breakfast was equal to the circumference of the earth.Eating Fossil Fuels might best be described as a treatise on the profligacy of unrelenting waste in humanity's quest for the good life but leaving the medusa for the unsuspecting. It may be worth noting that as chapter 6 proclaims: "the underpinning of life on this planet has been diminished... to the breaking point... our agricultural system is ready to collapse". In old census data 34.6 million people were living in poverty and it happened during cheap oil and gas, limitless water for irrigation, and transportation without borders.Indubitably.

One good thing about this book is that the author does not need 300 pages to explain the Oil/Agriculture relation. What I liked most of this book is the explanation on the evolution of agriculture to these days, making clear that Oil is an important contributor to production performance, due to the use of fertilizers, pesticides and of course the energy derived from it in Industrial Agriculture. I agree with the author that we are beginning a transition to a new way of living, not pleasant, due to the fact that oil depletion will make difficult to attain a sustainable agriculture, even a sustainable civilization with the population numbers we have. The effects are visible, inflation and food crisis.Most people think that technology will remedy the situation, but if you read more about energy you will realize the future's precarious situation. Governments in the world need to put an eye on it and start doing energy projects, particularly Nuclear. India must control its population growth also. I have my opinion on Cuba but considering all this is a very informative book.

Concerned about food and how a world economy fueled by oil will continue to feed over 6 ½ billion people when the oil squeeze comes? I suggest you read this book. Pfeiffer, a geologist and science journalist who has been intimately involved with peak oil issues for more than ten years, provides profound insight with his analysis of two parallel nations suffering from similar predicaments, but with radically different outcomes. He uses the powerful example of how Cuba and North Korea each dealt with nearly instantaneous loss of their supplies of oil after the Soviet Union dissolved. In the case of North Korea, their economy was shattered and millions of people died of starvation and disease. In the case of Cuba, people lost weight and made do with less, but a shift to sustainable agriculture and natural healing averted catastrophe. Cuba provides us with a glimpse of a possible future that avoids violent collapse and provides a good quality of life in spite of having to get by using less energy and buying less stuff.

I wish I had read this book last year, I would already have prepared a vegetable garden to plant this spring. I know about Peak Oil, etc. but this book really got my attention. It provides a clear explanation of how dependent our food supply is on fossil fuels. Higher and higher food prices are in store for us, soon. And that's before we start to see food shortages. The agricultural land in the U.S. can only support about 200 million people, and we have almost 300 million. Plus this agriculture is heavily dependent on oil (to run the irrigation pumps, harvest, process and transport the products), and natural gas (to make fertilizer..who knew?). In a politically unstable world of rising fuel prices, not to mention a future without those fuels, do we really want to rely on imported food to feed our nation? Or go to war over food? This book outlines the problems and has an action plan and extensive list of resources to help solve the problems. Yes! There are things you can do to avert this crisis, whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country.Spade up those (organic) Victory Gardens, folks, and learn how to provide and preserve at least some of your own food. Support your local food producers. This year. You'll be glad you did.

In this 100-or-so page book, Dale summarises the position modern Agriculture is in today, how it is already providing diminishing returns, and how fossil fuel depletion will hasten its departure. There are a few "Oh My God" moments.The Introduction outlines the Green Revolution with its effects on soil, hunger, population and how it is utterly dependent on the availability of cheap fossil fuels.Chapter 1, "Food = Energy + Nutrients", outlines how fossil fuels were created, and how humans developed from hunter-gatherering to agriculture.The laws of Thermodynamics and Entropy are presented, the Green Revolution is revisited, indicating the energy inputs, and how it's already failing.Chapter 2, "Land Degradation", describes how soil naturally replenishes its nutrients, and just how quickly this is being undermined by erosion,with the knock-on effect of having to apply ever more pesticides and fertiliser.Chapter 3, "Water Degradation", describes how modern agriculture is overdrafting rivers and aquifiers, with details regarding how much water is needed to feed a few different crops. Pollution from pesticides and fertiliser is also mentioned.Chapter 4, "Eating Fossil Fuels", summarises a few studies undertaken to estimate the fossil energy inputs to provide food energy.Studies of food toxicology is also described, for instance some foods are imported from countries where "banned" pesticides are still in use.Food miles is described, as well as how the globalisation of food is leading to the spread of disease.Chapter 5, "The End of the Oil Age", describes Peak Oil and the Natural Gas Cliff.Chapter 6, "The Collapse of Agriculture", describes how industrial agriculture has been pushed to the limit and how it will fail to continue to feed the world by 2050, and how fossil fuel depletion will accelerate the coming crisis.A model of how bad it could be is demonstrated with a description of the collapse of North Korea's industrial agriculture following the crash of the USSR.Particular emphasis is given on how power failures and a lack of spare machinery parts contributed to a series of positive feedback loops which has created a series of humanitarian disasters.Chapter 7, "The Next 'Green Revolution': Cuba's Agricultural Miracle" describes how Cuba responded to the USSR crash. Cuba was fortunate to have well educated scientists who had already developed Agroecology, a sustainable Organic farming system. Details are given of how the Cuban government embraced their methods and restructured the farms into smaller units to be compatible with the new methods. Urban gardens are also described as being a further, unplanned, response from individuals.Chapter 8, "Building A Sustainable Agriculture", outlines how agriculture should be relocalised, supported by Urban food production, with a closed-loop approach to replenish nutrients. The difference between the effects of the USSR crash and the fossil fuel rate of depletion is covered with an optimistic view.Chapter 9, "Twelve Fun Activities for Activists", outlines how grass-roots efforts should be attempted to engage with communities.14 pages of resources follow, and 14 pages of source-material references.This book is suitable for use as an introduction to the subjects covered. It should be read by everyone involved in agriculture, and every MP.Chapters 6 and 7 are arguably the best parts of the book with a fairamount of detail on how a sudden collapse of industry and fossil fuels affected two different countries in arguably the worst way and the best way. The book would be better if it featured flow diagrams illustrating the flows of all of the agricultural system's inputs and outputs. Chapter 4 should have provided some of the detail from the referenced studies.

Everyone should read this book.