Surely the effects of Climate Change, floods/droughts and changing water availability is going to have (ing) a noticable impact on food production calculations, not to mention competition with biofuels as attempts are made to fill the fuel gap post Peak Oil, and thus, particularly CC, will have a large impact on actual carrying capacity.

That's an excellent look at food and agriculture without fossil fuel inputs, and also a sensible analysis of carrying capacity with its nod to other species and population distributions.

Here's something else to consider regarding post-peak effects. It's probable that following peak energy there will be a dramatic decline in per-capita GDP in the developing world.

We know that the developing nations, characterized by low energy usage, are also the ones that have the highest TFR, well above replacement. That means that even as energy declines their populations will keep rising. In the case of Pakistan, the UN Medium Fertility Case projects that the population will rise from about 165 million today to 344 million by 2050 - a rise of 110%.

The research of Kummel and Ayres (as reported in David Strahan's excellent book "The Last Oil Shock") has indicated that every additional 1% growth in energy use results in approximately a 0.7% growth in GDP. If this same relationship holds in decline as well, total GDP will drop along with energy use post-peak.

In a recent speculative analysis (World Energy to 2050) I concluded the world total energy supply would decline to about 70% of its present value by 2050, for a 30% drop. Of course, that decline would vary from country to country depending on the mix of energy they consume. In a lucky coincidence I did a detailed calculation for Pakistan yesterday, and concluded that the decline there would be on the order of 45%.

If that happens, I'd expect the GDP of Pakistan to decline by 45% * 0.7 = 33% by 2050. The effect of combining such a drop with the projected rise in population is obvious: a drop of 66% in average per capita GDP. That implies a decline from an average of $2650/person today to a mere $884/person in 2050.

Given the inevitable rising cost and increasing scarcity of nitrogen fertilizer due to the loss of natural gas supplies, the unavoidable conclusion is that fertilizer use in the developing world will drop dramatically, cutting grain yields sharply just when greatly increased yields are needed.

The developing world faces a gloomy future as their ranks are swelled by their fertility as well as the impoverishment of many borderline nations, just as energy supplies start to decline and fertilizer costs begin to soar.

As you say, how populations will decline is a matter of sheer speculation, but when one takes regional and national disparities in energy and fertility into account along with the effects of climate change, aquifer depletion and soil fertility loss, some decline seems inevitable.

An interesting analysis and its good to get a viewpoint from another region but I think it strives too far to analyse the detail without consider the wider possibilities.

Ever since someone said "why don't we use a machine to do this?" we have been running ahead of this Mathusian brick wall. That's 200 years of progress and I don't see any going back. I admit that if fossil fuels and technology where to dissapear very quickly then we would be looking at the Billions+ die off scenario but I think we have time to adapt and probably will.

Some notes:

1. You only consider land as capable of providing a base for agriculture, 2/3rds of this planet is covered in Ocean -suppose we boost the 'productivity' of this unused region? 95% of the ocean is currently the equivalent of a 'dessert'.
2. The majority of people now live in cities. This is not 'overpopulation', for Billions of individual reasons it 'just makes sense' to do so. We are awash with space -even coastline.
3. A work friend of mine uses seaweed as fertilizer: GOTO1
4. Aquaponics and vertical local farms continue the Malthusian beating tradition albeit at the expense of greater dependance on technology but do you really expect us to go back to plow and horse?

Regards, Nick.

Thanks, Wisdom! In regards to water, I just read today of one man's attempt to initiate rain water harvesting on his recently purchased plot of barren land: A Pond is Born. Recommended.

This 10:1 ratio thing I have seen quite a bit lately... where does this calculation come from?

at the discover magazine link

As early as 1974, a study led by John Steinhart, then at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, concluded that the U.S. food system had quadrupled its energy use between 1940 and 1970. It now takes between 10 and 15 calories of energy to deliver one calorie of food to a U.S. consumer. A head of lettuce, for instance, requires 2,200 calories of energy to produce when it's grown in California and eaten in New York, yet it provides only 50 calories of energy. By contrast, subsistence societies use about four calories of energy to produce one calorie of food..

is this study up to date and seen as definitive?

Boris
London

The caloric values must come 55% - 60% from carbohydrates, 12% - 15% from proteins and 33% - 25% fats.

Now those is fightin' words!

Try 80%, 10%, 10%.
Protein intake required is only 5% and it's impossible to go that low if you're eating "whole foods" and getting enough calories. Fat intake is really just essential fatty acids, again about 5%, omega 3 and 6 and 3 is the really the one we're lacking as we're overloaded in 6 primarily because of factory farming (reduces omega 3 in eggs and meat and increases omega 6). Either way we seem to be able to survive that, but it is kind of neat how we, in the west, can get diseases of malnutrition while eating 50% more calories than we need. Thank processed foods for that.

In the part of the world where I live (where we get this thing called winter) I believe that the primary issue is simply getting enough food that can be stored thru the winter until crops grow again in the spring - tubers, beets and whatnot.

Of course one can fast for a month every year; while food is scarce. I think that fasting for a week would be a good thing; can't see doing the whole month bit though.

Also as much as I'm nearly vegan; when the manure hits the fan a diverse food supply helps ensure survival and cured meats and high fat foods are better than nothing at all.

A very good post, it's probaly worth remebering that there is a great variation in people dietary needs, depending on climate, genetics and ammout of physical work done.

So as oil declines and people need to do more physical work, they will also need more food.
People in cold climates who are currently kept warm by fossil fuel may need to move toward a diet with a higher energy density (less carbs more fat/protien) just to stay alive.

"What will happen to the surplus population is a matter of mere speculation."

Perhaps TOD should rename itself to "The Population Pulpit"

Isn't this what the article is all about? I think there are too many people, so let me make up some numbers to justify my belief.

WFP

Excellent post. I was kind of hoping that someone would start a thread on this topic following your earlier comments a couple of weeks ago.

I think your post is a good beginning to a very complicated topic and, if others will participate, over time we collectively could produce a fairly detailed look at the carrying capacity subject. I have reviewed a fair amount of the Googleable literature on this subject and have never found what I consider a comprehensive examination of the subject. There are so many parameters to consider that it is near impossible for one person to write a truly in depth article on the subject. Being a site devoted to energy issues TOD has much of the missing perspective as most of the authors who have examined this issue were somewhat uniformed about energy issues. There are many other parameters which will be equally important, Romanov's comment on the effects of Global Climate Change on food production is a prime example (an understanding of climate change is often lacking in TOD posts just as energy knowledge is often lacking in Blogs relating to climate change). Other parameters requiring inclusion are transportation issues (we have some good knowledge on those here - Alan, etc), population distribution and density, water issues (as you mentioned), soil fertility and how to increase it, reclaiming prime land from suburbia, how much time we have available to convert our agriculture systems to sustainable production giving the press of climate change and oil/natural gas depletion, and a host of others.

Integration of issues such as energy depletion, climate change, food production, transportation, carrying capacity, development with an emphasis on sustainability have been, on the whole, very inadequate and TOD could provide a valuable service by being one of the first centralized locations to work this issue in depth. If the users and moderators are so inclined of course.

I look forward to seeing if this develops. We have a great range of technical expert ice on this site and an in depth attempt at fleshing this out would, over time, draw in others who have much of the relevant knowledge that the regular TOD participants lack. Wyo

This is a very sobering assessment. However I predict that cornucopians will look the other way as we burn every ounce of fossil fuel to keep agriculture going as long as possible eg switching from gas to coal for Haber based fertiliser.

However in a rational world there are a number of eking-out techniques available. These include reduced meat consumption, using resilient plants (barley, cabbage, potatoes) as gut fillers, dual use of biowaste for fuel and fertiliser, turning urban sprawl back to farmland and synergistic arrangements such as aquaculture/hydroponics.

It's just that I don't see SUV driving party people making the transition. In Australia today someone was fatally bashed http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22683996-421,00.html
because they were watering their lawn. Expect more of this as food shortages occur.

History seems to paint a different picture on population, and the people in the past have one big advantage over us.
they were MUCH more experienced in the techniques our current generation will have to re-learn.
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/images/graphics/n-r/popu_GrowthChartWPB.gif
(link instead of img tags to save source's bandwidth, don't be a bandwidth theif.)

2-4 billion is about 2x higher then the most realistic optimistic case i have read which is about 1-2 billion. which also doesn't seem to take into account the damage we have done to the environment and soil loss since pre-mechanized farming, pre-green revolution. 1 billion would be the most realistic case imho.

since this is tod Europe i would also like to point out that Europe it's self is about 700 million in overshoot taking into the same factors.

Thank you Wisdom for taking the time to think through this issue and do the analysis. It actually makes me feel a bit hopeful (although I didn't see mention of the land that might be used for biofuels rather than food).

I'm also increasingly trying to eat a vegan diet, being a vegetarian primarily for environmental (and energy) reasons and also cutting out dairy and eggs strictly for health reasons. I wonder how much arable land is required to feed a typical mostly vegetarian/vegan in China or India? I have a tendency to believe that in a pinch we could squeeze the system even more (unless we start trying to make a massive shift to biofuels).

"It is impossible to "eventually have peak energy""

The concept of peak is not total amount used but the flow. No doubt the energy stored in sun is vast (not infinite) but the average flow of that energy per year is constant since millions of years. For other planets say mars where there are no organic substance to store sunlight in form of fossil fuels, the peak energy is already and its so since atleast a billion year.

"How does the author know that post peak agriculture will be radically different form modern agriculture?"

The difference is absence of fossil-fuel driven farm chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides), use of electricty to extract water from ground etc.

"The criticism that it takes 10 calories of agriculture inputs to produce 1 calorie of food is not supported by the links provided."

Look at the usda link, they say its 5 to 10 times for some crops and they are not counting energy costs of transportation, packaging etc. At the discover magazine link the claim is of 15 times when the count all energy costs.

"The assertion that agriculture is largely a consumer of energy and not a producer is patently false"

Before green revolution agriculture was the energy source of all societies but now in modern agriculture its an energy consumer. The analysis in the article is made for agriculture that not consume any fossil fuel and then it can only support less than half of world population today.

I think this is a very interesting (and good) article; but, I feel I need to throw out a word of caution. As one who has gardened for over 20 years I am wary of the acres needed per person. Sometimes growing is good, sometimes it's not. A)I've also noticed that some crops don't do well if the plot of ground was used for some other specific crops during the previous growing season. B)Occasionally, visiting insect pests can cause severe devastation of one crop before natural predators can establish themselves and begin to control the situation. C)Also, various rodents can totally devastate wide areas (best solution that I have seen is the outdoor common domestic cat, although I've heard that certain breeds of terriers are (?)better(?) at contolling rodents). D)Another factor, soil quality, IMO, can affect quantity of food production on a plot of land by (at least) a factor of four. E)Finally, weather.

The pre-Colonial Native Americans used to grow crops with a safety factor of three; according to stories that I have heard, they expected to eat only one-third of the crops they planted, with one-third going to animals, and one-third going to visiting family and friends.

Outstanding analysis. Thank you Wisdom. I did a much less detailed "back of the envelope" analysis about 5 years ago and came up with 4-5 billion people. I used to grow about 40% of my annual vegetable intake (family of 3) on about 1/6th of your estimated land using the "French intensive method". No pesticides and 3 cubic meters of manure every second year. I planted inverted 1 or 2 liter soda bottles on a regular grid in the garden, with the bottom cut out and holes in the sides, and watered through the necks of the bottles, thus cutting water use significantly, but I never measured my water use.
The Israelis have become very frugal in water use, and even the ancients used to collect water in coverd reservoirs and use covered quanats for distribution. I would still estimate carrying capacity on the high end of your range. Murray
I should add that I had land that faced south on about a 10 degree slope, moderately rocky not very rich starting soil, my plots levelled, and I composted everything handy, except excrement. (In a real pinch a "composting toilet" could be used). Had a dog to keep away rabbits etc, and kept moles out by planting thorny rose cuttings in their burrows. I also roteted the crops. I learned how to do this in one winter by reading books, and became a fairly expert gardener in about 3 years.
I suspect the people who find you optimistc have never tried.

WisdomfromPakistan, Euan,

Thanks for publishing this! I'm going to bookmark it and quote the piece extensively as a good authoritative refutation of the doomer/crash scenario.

A population of 3 billion people living sustainably and prosperously is a goal the world can all work for, and can be acheived without adding to climate change as well .

http://politics.reddit.com/info/5zlvw/comments/

thanks for your support...

Could someone please post an authoritative reference that shows population as a function of energy?

I see a big flaw here: population is not surplus!

There is a wording flaw as well. You pretty clearly mean no other species other than the ones we use in agriculture but you say no other species than man. Yet, you use less than half the land surface area, so what is the extermination program for the other land?

Now, let's get serious: We note that plants reject appoximately 80% of light that falls on them owing to the Sun being broadband and plants having color. Using an 80% efficient solar panel (about the theoretical limit) and using that to produce only wavelengths of light that plants use using 90% efficient LEDs yields can be increased four fold below the solar panel. Without even considering that panels can be used on land where crops are not traditionally grown, your carrying capacity estimate becomes 60 billion.
Conversely, 11 billion can be sustained while leaving plenty of room for other species. Our capacity for nuturing nature has not even begun to be tapped.

Chris

Where do crops with high caloric density but low area cultivation requirements fit in, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes?

This post is important because it goes beyond the sweeping correlations used in previous population analyses on TOD that use a decline in fossil-fuels as a surrogate for a decline in carrying capacity. I don't find that a necessarily poor assumption, but it begs for mechanistic details of some sort.

I have been engaged in biointensive and permaculture techniques for a few years now and am scaling these beyond my own back yard to small farms. There's a huge learning curve! And it is indeed true that veggies take little area. I think most people are unaware of this and imagine they can feed themselves on backyard produce (whoa! look at all those tomatoes I grew) or their local organic farmer who shows up at the outdoor market can take care of them, whereas what matters is the area required for high calorie crops that can be stored and transported.

In my own research I have found that California farmers can achieve yields of 6000 lbs of wheat per acre, enough to feed 12 people per year assuming they get all their carbohydrate calories with wheat. When designing a low energy input method for growing wheat I anticipate more like 1000 lbs per acre. Turns out this was what yields were like around here historically, before WWII.

Thanks wisdom – I really appreciate your fresh perspective.

Purely anecdotal but I have been sourcing all my produce for my restaurant from local growers.

One grower was telling me how he is having a problem with the vegan ag students that come to work on the farm”. Says they have to eat almost continuously to keep energy up and still underperform next to omnivores. Some of them have been with the farm for years. ( I mentioned the soy issue discussed in yesterdays drumbeat).

Just saying…

Sharon Astyk
www.casaubonsbook.blogspot.com

This was a fascinating article - well thought out and rational, unlike a number of similar essays that have recently appeared on TOD.

There are a several other factors you might want to include in your analysis, most of which, I suspect, will result in slightly higher numbers for sustainable carrying capacity.

1. The focus on grains is probably wrong, if we're talking about a society with strong incentives to optimize production. For example, as recently as 1950, hand production of potatoes dramatically outyielded wheat and rice on a per-calorie basis. Root crops, particularly perennializable root crops in warm climates support the staple carb needs of millions of people already, with much higher potential yields than grains.

2. The fall in yields you anticipate due to organic agriculture is not at all necessary. Even on a field scale, there are a number of trials that demonstrate that organic agriculture need not result in a long term drop in yields, but Peter Rosset's paper "Small is Bountiful" demonstrates that small-scale organic agriculture is dramatically more productive *per acre* than present day conventional industrial agriculture. Jules Pretty has duplicated this data in 52 countries. The work of ecology action has demonstrated you can produce a nutritious human diet on less than 2000 square feet of garden.

3. You've left out the oceans, which, the way things are going, may even be the right choice, given the disaster of over-fishing. But an enormous amount of oil and protein can come from a sustainably managed ocean. We may not do this - we may simply rape the oceans to death. But we could up those numbers.

4. There is considerable controversy about the value of the Green Revolution. In many cases, the consensus is that while the Green Revolution gave us more grains, it reduced total food output - for example, pesticides in intensive chemical rice agriculture killed the fish and frogs that were a traditional part of the diet of paddy rice farmers. Monocultures destroyed traditional hedgerows and forest areas that provided food for wildlife and humans, and etc...etc... - there are agricultural scholars who argue that the Green Revolution represented a net total loss in calories available to the population - at best, it was probably a very minimal total gain. You might want to do your own analysis of this debate before you begin.

Again, a promising start.

Sharon

Fred Schumacher

If subsistance agriculture requires 4 calories of input for 1 calorie of output, those farmers would all be dead by now, since subsistance agriculture is primarily dependent on human labor. There's something wrong with the numbers.

The USDA article states 5 to 10 calories in for 1 out, but it's talking about the energy needs for the entire food production/conversion/distribution process from a large spectrum of plant sources. Certainly lettuce, as mentioned above, which is mostly water, returns negligible calories.

Most corn ethanol studies show a return of 1.3 units of energy for 1 invested. Sugar cane is in the 10 to 1 range. University of Illinois biomass studies on miscanthus giganteus show a 50 to 1 return for unprocessed stalks.

Our primary food plants are weed species, annual grasses that produce highly digestible seeds in large quantities. Ditto for vegetables, except we eat the fruit, stalk or tuber. Weeds are disturbance species, so to grow them we have to disturb the soil. Whether it's done by a 60' air seeder or its done by a hoe, it's the same process.

I grew up in a refugee camp after WWII. We used every square meter of available land to grow food. We fed scraps to pigs; geese wandered freely to graze what they could find. Egg shells were saved to be given back to the chickens. We were peasants from the Balkans. We've always gardened, cooked from scratch and put up food for storage. Most people in modern urban society no longer have the ability or the opportunity to do so.

Wes Jackson has been trying to develop perennial food crops. I think he's been on the wrong track, since he's been trying to convert perennial triticeae, like the wheatgrasses, into large seed producers, the idea being to avoid disturbing the soil every year and thus reducing energy input. The problem is that perenniality and seed production are a zero-sum. As one goes up, the other goes down. There's only so much energy a grass plant can harvest and its carbohydrate reserves will either go into the ground or into seed but it can't increase both at the same time. (Trust me. I'm a retired North Dakota native grass seed producer. Just try to get seed production out of western wheatgrass (pascopyrum smithii). It doesn't want to do it.)

There is another way to get increased food production out of existing herbage. Cellulose is a polymer, a long chain of glucose molecules tightly bound. When we figure out how to do cellulosic ethanol, we will not only be producing feed stock for fermentation, we will be making available large quantities of the most digestible carbohydrate known.

As a North Dakota rancher once put it -- Grass is my crop; I use cows to harvest it. Well, we could harvest that grass directly for food. Perennial grasses are low fertility crops requiring very little input.

This article does a calculation of carrying capacity based on how much food can be produced on land. How do the figures change if you include food from water? We eat fish too.

I have previously mentioned some Permaculture proponents claim high productivity. This study claims organic farming can be as productive as conventional intensive farming, but a professor of Agriculture disagrees:

Previous analyses have put the carrying capacity of well-managed organic agriculture (OA) over all farmland to be 3 to 4 billion.

This is more pessimistic than your analysis. I expect the economic problems and conflicts caused by oil depletion will prevent the efficient worldwide production and distribution of organic food. It is hard to estimate how much the shortfall will be, but perhaps enough food for 2.5 billion is a reasonable guess.

Right at this point your entire article strikes an iceberg and sinks....

As peak oil approaches, shortly followed by peak gas and eventually peak energy, we have to retreat to agriculture as the prime energy producer in society.<\blockquote>

Now please join me in singing "Nearer My God to Thee"....

Wisdom, at the ASPO conference in Houston, I spoke with David Hughes, and I believe he told me that 100 years ago the energy return on agriculture was around 1:1. If I understand correctly, we have now gone to an energy return of 1: 0.1 and have seen yields rise 2.5 times - a good example of the law of diminishing returns? And so very roughly speaking, if we go back to 1:1, food production may fall be 2.5 and this would provide a sustainable population of around 2.6 billion. But we can also gain by eating less meat - and so that number would converge on your figure of 3 billion.

I was wondering if you, or anyone else knows, how much energy is used in global agriculture today (ideally expressed as boe)? I think its safe to assume that when energy rationing is introduced, that agriculture will be last to be hit.

Its also worth noting that in agriculture we have been ready to tolerate a really lousy energy return - eroei of 0.1? I suspect this will be related to a relatively low % of global energy that is used in agriculture combined with the very special status that food has in hearts and minds (and stomachs).

Answering Noutram:

"Ever since someone said "why don't we use a machine to do this?" we have been running ahead of this Mathusian brick wall. That's 200 years of progress and I don't see any going back. I admit that if fossil fuels and technology where to dissapear very quickly then we would be looking at the Billions+ die off scenario but I think we have time to adapt and probably will."

Well, its not a coincident that the intensive use of fossil fuels especially coal started about 200 years ago when we started breaking the 'mathusian brick'. At the start of 18th century there was more capacity to support population than the number of people living on planet. Due to increased use of coal railway lines developed that brought modern medicines to far off places, decreasing infant mortality rate, thereby increasing population. The use of coal in ships brought far off crops, seeds etc and better techniques of food production to parts of world which didn't knew about it before, thereby increasing food production. Once we run out of these things, that level of transportation wouldn't be available any more.

"You only consider land as capable of providing a base for agriculture, 2/3rds of this planet is covered in Ocean -suppose we boost the 'productivity' of this unused region? 95% of the ocean is currently the equivalent of a 'dessert'"

The key issue here is transportation. Most sea ports in world are sandy and far from river or lake, so in absence of large quantity of water available there can't be much crops there and due to decline in transportation it can't be brought in large quantity from elsewhere. Post peak its wise to stay near the line of river flow or lake to utilize fertility of soil along the banks of river, rather than limiting yourself to a sea coast.

How far you can think a manual boat can go in sea, how much fish can a person catch in a day with his bare hands, what about the other food items needed for survival that can't be grown near a sea on large scale. With the main crop land far from sea ports in most of the world its not wise to rely on transportation of essential food items in a post peak world.

Answering creg:

"i was aware rice was/is the biggest beneficiary of the green revolution. is it as productive w/o fossil fuel inputs?"

The rule of thumb is that rice has thrice output per unit land than wheat. Thats why in middle ages, that is before modern agriculture, china used to be three times denser in population than europe.

You are right, there are storage issues but i didn't consider them in the article for simplicty having the assumption of an ideal world where every grain grown reached human mouth and where everybody is intelligent, understanding, co operative and have a community sense.

Answering mididoctor:

"This 10:1 ratio thing I have seen quite a bit lately... where does this calculation come from?

at the discover magazine link

As early as 1974, a study led by John Steinhart, then at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, concluded that the U.S. food system had quadrupled its energy use between 1940 and 1970. It now takes between 10 and 15 calories of energy to deliver one calorie of food to a U.S. consumer. A head of lettuce, for instance, requires 2,200 calories of energy to produce when it's grown in California and eaten in New York, yet it provides only 50 calories of energy. By contrast, subsistence societies use about four calories of energy to produce one calorie of food..

is this study up to date and seen as definitive?"

I didn't check but obviously the globalization (something not widely present in 1974), rise in world gdp since 1974 etc result in far more energy use than it was back in 1970s. That is also obvious from the increase of per capita diet both in quantity and quality (more meat).

Answering praetzel:

"Try 80%, 10%, 10"

Don't know from where you get your figures. Everywhere I read be it books or websites (including that of US Deptt of Agriculture) the recommended ratio of CH, Proteins and Fats are as discussed in article. Perhaps you are confused with non human species diet, Obviously some animals, especially the vegetarian ones, requires much less protein to be healthy than humans do. Ofcourse there are other species like lions that requires all its food to be meat.

"In the part of the world where I live (where we get this thing called winter) I believe that the primary issue is simply getting enough food that can be stored thru the winter until crops grow again in the spring - tubers, beets and whatnot."

I am not from sub-saharan africa so I sure know what winter is, some northern areas of pakistan which are near to siachin glacier has as much cold in winters (-50 degree celsius) as at antarctica.

Seems like per person arable land available in your locality is large so you are not considered by gross production of food and have the luxury to look at relatively minor problems of storage.

Answering Smokey:

"I'm also increasingly trying to eat a vegan diet"

Being a human you can't be 100-percent-vegetarian (one who avoid ALL animal products egg, milk, meat everything) because there is an essential food ingredient Vitamin B12 that can only be get from animal sources, a lack of it can create severe health issues. I have wrote an article on it too calculating minimum animal products we need, hope it be published soon. At a glance I made this diet recommendation about animal product, 15.625 gram fish, 15.625 gram chicken and 31.25 gram goat, cow, horse, camel etc meat. Remember we need to keep these animals to have milk and when they get old its wise to eat them, because that is meat you get free when you already gave the expenses for milk.

Answers to rest of questions and suggestions in a while.

"Wisdom, at the ASPO conference in Houston, I spoke with David Hughes, and I believe he told me that 100 years ago the energy return on agriculture was around 1:1"

He must be talking about fuedal agriculture in middle ages europe. If world wide energy return on agriculture is 1:1 then before we started using fossil fuels each and every human would be living in village doing nothing but farming, there wouldn't ever be great civilizations borned, no pyramids constructed, no taj mahal made, no ancient trade routes.

The problem is not EROEI on agriculture, the problem is amount of arable land available per person. Today while we stand at a level of world energy usage humanity never saw before we have just enough food to feed everybody plus a little extra. We can't afford to have any decline in fossil fuels spend at farm because that means fall in agriculture productivity which means somebody has to go hungry.

Past civilizations had the advantage of high per capita arable land availability, so they be able to make wonders, have empires like rome expanded on three continents etc. Today we simply not have that.

In my opinion hunger-related diseases would results in reduction of body power against diseases, so epidemic spread would be frequent and long staying, infant mortality rates would be high, many peoples in modern world that depend on high tech medicines needing cold storage to survive (diabetics, angina etc patients) would not able to survive for long.

Suppose we give agriculture priority in usage of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, then we be able to produce as much food as we do while world energy production decline. But then after may be one, two or three decades there would come a point when those fossil fuels would be so less that food production would have to decline. That very large scale decline in population is something humanity has never seen, except middle ages plague in europe.

To all TOD readers,

You believe on peak energy or not, the excel file (link above the first table in article) is there as a gift for you. You can use it to plan your diet in case you are worried about your weight, either want to gain more or lose some.

The rough rule is 40 calories per kg weight per day for average type of work, if you do more physical work then make it 50, for a typical desktop worker make it 30.

So suppose you are 80 kg and you want to be 70 kg then start taking 70 * 40 = 2800 calories per day, hopefully in a matter of 4 months you reach your desire weight. Same if you want to increase your weight.

You can use the excel file to plan how much of each food item you want to eat or drink, then multiply it by 8 to get a rough estimation of per week need or multiply it by 32 to get a rough estimatin of per month need.

Hi WisdomfromPakistan,

Looking at Rice, Grains and Cereals, it would seem to me that their main point, in use as food would be that they store well and are portable. Possibly better caloric and nutritional value of the land would be had with 'garden' vegetables and fruit which could, where necessary, be dried or better freeze dried for storage and portability. As far as red meat the only real need there, I think, is in providing farm work or milk and not grown purposely for meat.

BTW. I would not think the west would take kindly to the diet you are prescribing, I think they would go on a hunger strike first:)

Hi mdsolar,
Your 19-23% figure on PV panels, is that based on bi-facial panels?

Euan,

Thanks for the links regarding the 10 to 1 calorie ratio. It's one of the things that I have heard echoed many times since I first learned about peak oil and never really had any data to back it up if I used it to make a point about our dependency on fossil fuels for food production.

I see the debate rages on in these comments as to whether or not it's actually true. That's fine. But at least now I have some links saved for future references. Thanks again.

Recently there have been several posts on T.O.D. that say essentially the following:

1)The world’s pre-industrial population was around a billion;
2)We’ve been able to increase to 6.6 billion or more because of the use of cheap fossil fuels;
3)Therefore when the cheap fossils fuels run out, there will be a mass die-off back to 1 billion or less.

This argument neglects the following:

1)The possibility of renewable energy sources to satisfy our energy needs is not seriously taken into account. A cursory examination of wind, solar, geothermal, hydro-electrical, tidal, etc... potential shows that there is plenty of renewable energy available, although admittedly the energy will cost far more than fossil fuels, and will require long-range power transmission lines + large-scale stored pumping projects + other major investments.

2)The fact that only a small fraction of fossil fuels are currently used for basic necessities such as food production and distribution, water treatment and distribution, etc.. is not taken into account. Even if renewable energy is neglected and it is assumed that total energy use will decline drastically, shouldn’t one take into account that there is an hierarchy of needs and that in a densely populated energy-poor world most of the available energy would be used to satisfy essential needs such as the need for food and water? The energy used for basic needs will not be reduced in proportion to all other energy uses.

3)The potential of energy conservation is neglected. Energy consumption can be reduced considerably with a slight decline in living standards (for ex : by using public transit instead of cars, by living in well-insulated townhouses and apartment buildings instead of in badly-insulated detached houses, etc..). Suburban North Americans may grumble about living like urban Europeans, Japanese or even New-Yorkers, but it’s a lot better than dying off.

In my opinion, the real threat of a die-off does not come from the decline from the fossil-fuel peak, but rather from the threat of World War III if the notion of the inevitability of mass die-off takes hold and there is consequently a scramble among the world’s superpowers for the remaining fossil fuels.

Transforming our energy base to renewable will require tremendous international cooperation, as continental-scale power grids will be required to link together wind farms in Northern Europe and Russia, Solar plants in the Sahara & Southern Asia, geothermal plants in South-East Asia, Hydro-Electric plants in the Himalayas and Russia, Tidal plants in Northern Europe, etc..

What we need to motivate people is a vision of a future world where maybe 8 to 10 billion people can live quite comfortably using primarily renewable energy.

Indeed I’m convinced that my optimistic view of the future and the more pessimistic mass-die-off view that seems to be gaining currency are both self-fulfilling prophecies. The real question is which future would you choose?

Despite all the work that clearly went into this article, I find that the total disregard of actual climate puts all of its' conclusions into doubt. "Suitable for agriculture" doesn't cut it. Vietnam and southern Alberta are both suitable for agriculture. But Vietnam can grow two crops of rice per year, year in and year out, while no estimate of global warming shows a second crop of anything out of Alberta.

It is particularly disappointing because Pakistan itself shows that kind of variation between river deltas and the mountains of the tribal areas.

Most of the comments here concerning permaculture and other labour-intensive food production (compared to current energy-intensive agriculture), don't mention one important aspect. That is, the huge increase in the number of people who will have to devote time and effort to growing food for themselves and others. At the UK Soil Association conference on peak oil earlier this year, Richard Heinberg stated Britain would need 10 million more farmers by 2030. Not all full-timers necessarily, but maybe a quarter of the able-bodied population putting a significant amount of time into the task of food production.

I dare say there are many millions of young people in western countries and also elsewhere, assuming they have a future of college followed by a well-paid job which principally involves sitting in a chair in an air-conditioned office in front of a PC for around 40 hours per week. It is not exactly going to be easy to tell them that many will be working outside in all seasons and weather, doing work that will often be physically hard and dirty. Also, getting hold of land to actually grow the food for families and small communities will require dramatic land use and ownership changes.

No doubt there will be plenty of pressure to try to maintain some sort of BAU scenario in the face of peak oil, etc. However, I'm optimistic that when it's clear that this isn't possible, people will choose not to starve and will instead make the effort.

I see the biggest issues as the policies to allow people to grow food on land near them (often owned by others) and training of millions to use effectively use sustainable fod production techniques.

This is far too optimistic. A substantial portion of the potentially "arable land" in Europe was in fact covered by forests before coal came into widespread use as an industry and home fuel. These forests also satisfied much of the local requirement for timber before transport became so cheap it could be imported from, say, Finland. In a post-peak, low energy world, we will have to replant much of these forests. Also, in certain regions the soil is so depleted now, they will not be very productive without significant artifical fertilizer input, so the whole assumption is rather academic. The actual carrying capacity of the Earth will be determined by whatever circumstances we face, and they might be much more grim.

It is typical to boil down complex systems to a few numbers to enable manipulation. Food calories seem to be a good example of this. Humans are not machines and require more than calories to live. I believe many of today's illnesses in the West are related to malnutrition, even though they consume more than enough calories. Also convenient foods for industrialisation such as grains and dairy are in themselves unhealthy and shouldn't form the bulk or even part of a person's diet.

The Green Revolution was IMO a nutritional disaster which will likely end in tragedy. It both encouraged increased population growth while also degrading the population's health. Disease, pandemics and famine will likely be the end result. But I digress.

Organic produce 'better for you'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7067100.stm

Researchers grew fruit, vegetables and reared cattle on adjacent organic and non-organic sites across Europe, including a 725-acre farm attached to Newcastle University.

They found levels of antioxidants in milk from organic cattle were between 50% and 80% higher than normal milk.

Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce had between 20% and 40% more nutrients.

What this means is that people need to eat ever increasing amounts of calories to maintain the same level of nutrition. No wonder obesity is turning into a global pandemic. It also means that a population eating the recommended calorie intake will be malnourished and susceptible to disease. Add to that the effects of environmental pollution, land & water degradation, Climate Change, GMOs, etc.

We've not only got ourselves in a position of overshoot, but also managed to degrade our carrying capacity to such a degree that it will no longer carry what it did prior to the Green Revolution.

A major consideration is that all operations of civilization entail the irreversible use of available natural bounty. This fact can be formalized as the Dependence on Nature Law, as I propose in 'What went wrong? The misdirection of civilization'. Some of this bounty,like water, naturally recycles so can be regarded as income. Others, like the fossil fuels, are exhaustible so should be regarded as natural bounty capital. Their use is not sustainable. Skills, know how and technology determine how worthwhile this use of natural bounty is to society. But they do not affect the principle what human activities are depleting and devastating the natural bounty. Future activities of society will only influence the rate of this depletion and devastation. The rate of fossil fuel usage can be expected to decline in the near future and this will have an impact on food production. The global population can also be expected to decline as a consequence. These factors will only slow down the rate of using the remaining natural bounty capital.

Denis Frith
Melbourne
Australia

denisaf2000@yahoo.com.au

‘What went wrong? The misdirection of civilization.’
http://users.bigpond.net.au/jaymz/download/Gaia_and_Us-Denis_Frith-jun07...

‘The Usufruct Delusion’
http://candobetter.org/node/204

‘The Dependence on Nature Law’
http://candobetter.org/StarkReality

Jason, WFP and others,

As I stated before I am a retired engineer who operates a small organic/sustainable vegetable farm. I sell via a CSA type program and via farmers markets in my area. I find the discussions about carrying capacity and the factors that impact it fascinating. I think that the concept of growing food for 6+ billion people in a sustainable fashion in the face of declining fossil energy, global climate change, shrinking water supplies, increasing pollution, desertification, suburban sprawl, etc is an easy order or two of magnitude more complicated of a problem to solve than any of the above factors listed above. Feeding people is fundamental. It comes first before all else or those hungry people will not allow any efforts towards solving the other problems to go forward. This is the fundamental dilemma we face and the subconscious driver of the die-off proponents.

"Sustainable" agriculture (this is not to be taken as a precise definition) implies that nothing comes on to the farm for farming purposes other than sunlight and rain. The farm itself generates all other required inputs to growing crops. In practical terms this means that basically there is no such thing as an actual sustainable farming operation which has the purpose of feeding people in excess of those operating the farm itself. And true sustainable living could only be conducted at a virtual subsistence level. This a rather stark statement, but what I mean by it is that for mankind to live sustainable existence over a very long time would require that we partake only sparingly of the worlds resources. There is no industrial activity that I am aware of that could meet this definition. And, currently, no conceivable way that large numbers of humans could exist if we lived by that criteria. I think almost everyone fundamentally understands this and that it is a large driver for those who are very skeptical of using organic/sustainable practices on a scale large enough to feed the world. The large industrial farming/fishing enterprises know deep in their bones that without them most of the people on earth would starve. Most of us probably agree with, in general terms, with that statement.

Thus we come to the crux of the problem, given peak fossil fuels, climate change, etc, how much of "industrial agriculture" can we replace with "sustainable agriculture" and still feed everyone (or close to everyone). This is the balance point of the system of civilization. Mankind's myriad of problems are very complex and many of the likely solutions require significant shares of that dwindling fossil energy supply to be solved. Some of the proposed solution show promise in that they could eventually work us out of the situation we find ourselves in, but they require time to execute. Many of the problems are acute and their solutions are critical to the long term viability of life as we sort of know it.

While it is quite possible for many people (though no where near a majority) to grow a reasonable percentage of their own food in their backyard so to speak. It is completely impractical for the worlds urban and suburban populations to feed themselves. They could, and indeed will have to in the future, make a significant contribution towards that goal, but the bulk of the work will fall to the agriculture community. So how much food can we grow in the future?

A number of the posters here have presented good and interesting data, but many have drifted away from the core intent of the original article. How much food can we grow in a reasonably sustainable fashion and what is our future carrying capacity?

So a few questions that need addressing:
1. What percentage of the worlds fossil energy can be reserved for agriculture uses? This includes industrial as well as "organic" and "sustainable" (more on this later if I don't forget:).
2. How much biodiesel can be manufactured for use by agriculture without doing more harm than good.
3. How many people does it take to most efficiently run large sustainable farming operations?
4. What kind of farming equipment is most efficient for large sustainable farming operations? For those who don't understand this question it is based upon the fact that, outside of your backyard garden, it is not possible to farm large acreage's without the use of significant amounts of non-human labor. Be it draft horses, two wheeled tractors or Mr. John Deere. Just as a data point: I am not aware of any large organic/sustainable farming operation that does not use significant amounts of fossil energy and lots of manmade mechanization. To any farmer this is obvious and is part of the basis for the opinion often expressed that "organic/sustainable" agriculture is in large part just a marketing slogan.
5. How far can we afford to ship food in the future given the issues we face with declining fossil energy. If we build Alan's electric rail infrastructure we can get one answer, but that is US dependent. How does this extrapolate to the rest of the world. And how what share of the fossil energy left does Alan get to realize his goal? I am presuming that long distance shipping of food will have to cease, with the exception of things like bulk grains. Flying food on airplanes should be outlawed.
6. What kinds of food do we grow where? This question delves into the incredibly complex world of local climates's, soil types, water availability, mineral content, topography, latitude. I would point out that those who advocate vegetarian diets for all of us do not understand the land and or feeding people. There is a large amount of the arable land in the world that is not suitable for cropping. It is, however, suitable for some level of animal husbandry and, done in a fashion that is just as sustainable as that used in "sustainable" vegetable growing, can add significantly to global food supplies. In addition, traditional sustainable farming operations almost always include small scale animal husbandry such as chickens, goats and pigs. In my area chickens and small goats are very viable. Except in the dead of winter the only feed that the chickens get is what they forage for (they love to eat those damn bugs that want my vegetables) and the goats love to eat weeds and thorn bushes. They also provide significant amounts of valuable fertilizer not to mention eggs, meat and milk.
7. Do we reconfigure where people live to make this future system more efficient? Much of the desert SW of the US for instance is not a viable place to live in terms of efficiency of resource use. It is too intensive of fossil fuel use and it is too far to ship food to. So do we abandon Vegas et. al. and how do we go about it? If not, that will impact how much food we can supply.
8. How much food can we harvest from the oceans in the future. We need to dramatically REDUCE the amount we are taking now in order not to completely collapse the fisheries and end up with nothing. This is a big fly in the ointment and will dramatically impact the number of people we can feed as the amount of seafood consumed worldwide is staggering. We could not replace it right now from land based agriculture if we had to. Big problem.

There are many other questions of course. But what I am driving at is that all of the analysis of carrying capacity I have seen are just first attempts to quantify this issue. If we just started with WFP's approach and modified it to analyze the different types of farming locations around the world and then aggregated the totals we would come up with much more rigorous numbers. Taking in all of the factors I listed above and the many more that I didn't would add further granularity and preciseness. Including the large number of feedback loops (mostly negative, but some positive) related to fossil and alternate energy use, climate change, etc would add more. At this time I believe that carrying capacity numbers are nothing more than WAGs. With some effort we can get to SWAG's and we might be surprised and what we find.

Well the sky is lightening and I do need to get to work daylight to dusk you know). There are so many other items to discuss I could be here for weeks, but I will provide a data point fro my operation.

I grew about 13,000 lbs of mixed vegetables an acre on my operation this year. Types were chard, lettuce (6 types), spinach, peas (3 types), beets, onions (3 types), scallions, radishes, peppers (7 types), cucumbers (3 types), tomatoes (7 types), summer squash (5 types), winter squash (8 types), corn (3 types), beans (3 types) and some spices. I have no idea how many calories of food this was so I have no idea exactly how many "yearly" diets equivalent I supplied. It is quite possible to grow a lot more per acre than I did and I know others who are. I intend to increase my yields by at least 50% next year. We'll see how that goes. My operation is "certified" and I try and be as sustainable as I can be, but I do bring onto the farm a large amount of compost, a number of bales of straw, various other "organic" supplements (like greensand, blood meal, peat moss, etc), seeds (real sustainability implies that you do your own seeds). I have the minimum amount of equipment I can get by with given my age (nothing sustainable about that I guess). And I did use a significant amount of fuel to deliver my produce to my markets.

I hope the above was valuable. I am sure that later, when I am fully awake, that I will think of 20 things I should have said or said better. Off to work. Wyo

WFP:

Interesting post. I like your conclusion for a global carrying capacity of 3-4B instead of 0.5B that I see some people bandying about.

Might there be some things we can do to stretch that a little further?

Several have talked about recovering ocean fisheries through proper management to achieve maximum sustainable yields. The challenge is: 1) how to confine most of the fishermen and boats to port until the fish stocks recover, and then 2) send sufficient numbers of the best ones back out to harvest fisheries at sustainable yield.

Several have also talked about a reduction in the production of meat in general and beef in particular as being helpful. Beef is certainly the worst offender, both in terms of the amount of land and the amount of energy inputs required for its production. The mere substitution of dairy herds for beef cattle herds would achieve a huge immediate improvement in the productivity of livestock agriculture. Your analysis assumes that everyone eats some meat, but less than the beef-loving average American. Concentrating most of that meat on the most productive livestock - poultry - would help to make maximum efficient use of land and other inputs. Indeed, with appropriate changes in land use laws, it should be possible for every North American community (and indeed, for every community in the world) to become totally self-sufficient in their meat and egg consumption, just by raising chickens - a few for each household.

Greenhouses can allow some food (particularly vegetables, and perhaps some fruits) to be grown in places where the soil is otherwise not arable. Their enclosed environment can also conserve moisture, allowing food production in arid climates. Finally, greenhouses enable an extension of the growing season in non-tropical climates. They do not necessarilly have to be heated; incorporating heat sinks like stones or water into the interior of the greenhouses will enable solar heat captured into the day to be radiated into the interior of the greenhouse at night. This will not be enough to enable one to grow tomatoes in the middle of the winter at high latitudes (there isn't enough sunlight for that in any case), but such a system is quite adequate to assure a continuous supply of leafy green vegetables all winter long. I have seen such greenhouses, constructed inexpensively out of clear poly plastic sheets and pvc tubing; there is a retired missionary here in WNC that goes over the North Korea each year to build several of these over there to help them with their food production.

When one considers the situation in North America, and to a lesser extent in the other developed countries, an issue that has been discussed here extensively is that of residential lawns and other potentially arable land not presently being used for food production. I doubt that your analysis includes this land (as it is not generally counted in official statistics as being arable land), but it could make a considerable contribution. In an article by Dr. Francois Cellier a few months ago, it was mentioned that during WWII, the Swiss government required that all residential lawns be plowed up and they were planted with potatoes. Bringing this additional land into production yielded sufficient food to feed the entire population. What would happen if the lawns around every house and office building in North America were converted into vegetable gardens? Most likely, every community would be self sufficient in vegetables, allowing acreage presently dedicated to the production of vegetables for transport to North American markets to be reallocated to the production of foodstuffs for export to more hungry parts of the world.

This, in turn, brings me to another issue. You mention the mis-match between population concentrations and arable land. You conclude that - absent a massive redistribution of populations - this implies a lower practical carrying capacity than the theoretical maximum. However, this conclusion is apparently premised on the cessation of all long-distance transport. While it is indeed likely that the total amount of long-distance transport will decline along with oil supplies, I am not convinced that it is a foregone conclusion that it will dissapear altogether. It is likely than an airlift of fresh table grapes from Chile to North America each winter might indeed eventually become prohibitively expensive, and thus become a distant memory. However, maritime shipping is highly energy efficient. Goods were being shipped long distances thousands of years ago; it is not likely that shipping will ever totally go away. Even if we were to have to go back to sail, shipping would still be undertaken. I happen to think that shipping is a valuable enough activity, and its energy demands are sparce enough, that an allocation of a small amount of cropland to produce sufficient amounts of biodiesel to keep the ships running will happen. It is, of course, the high value cargo that will be most likely to continue to be shipped. Tea, coffee, cocoa, spices, etc. will continue to be financially attractive cargo for shippers, just as they have always been. Grains are a lower value bulk cargo; yet, even in Roman times there was long-distance shipping of grain, so it may still continue.

Thus, with appropriate changes to food production and consumption patterns, and with continued maritime shipping available, I believe that North America, at least, has the potential to continue to be sustainably self-sufficient in food production even at present population levels, and to probably be a large net food exporter. I suspect that the same could potentially be said for Russia and several of the FSR nations, certainly for NZ. Europe could achieve sustainable self-sufficiency in food, or at least come very close to it, at or near present population levels IF it adopted the same draconian production and consumption measures as the Swiss did during WWII. I am not intimately familiar with the Latin American situation; however, the Cuban experience in the 1990s suggests that sustainable food self-sufficiency throughout Latin America might be achievable at or near present population levels. Poor soils, fragile environments, water, and other issues present Latin America with special challenges, though.

This leaves Asia (including the Indian subcontinent and China, as well as Japan, Indonesia, etc.), Africa, and Australia as the big question marks for the future. Australia has the land, but will they have the water? If global climate change causes Austrailia to become even more arid than it is now, then this will effectively remove them as the net food exporter they are today. Even under the worst drought conditions, though, Australia should be able to continue to feed its present population. Asia and Africa, then, are the big challenges for the next century.

Africa is already suffering terribly. They are unlikely to get any more help from the rest of the world than what they already have gotten and are getting. As the help they have gotten is not enough to prevent or mitigate the suffering, we can conclude that their suffering will continue and probably worsen. There will still be people in Africa a century from now, but there will probably be far fewer of them, and their lives will probably be even worse on average than they are now. Africa will eventually become sustainably self-sufficient in food, as it once was; this will be at a much lower population level, as it also once was. Africa is the one place where the whole Malthusian population overshoot and collapse drama will pretty much play out according to the classic script.

No one seriously suggests that Japan can become sustainably self-sufficient in food given its present population; it was struggling before the petroleum age, with only a fraction of the present population. All of Asia is becoming more like Japan. As Asia is the largest concentration of the human population, it is likely that this is where most of the drama of population vs. food supply is likely to play out. Exported surpluses from North America and Russia might help a little bit. If the Chinese were to continue their one-child policy for another century, that would help quite a bit. The aging and gradual decline of the Japanese population will help a bit. One wonders how India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and SE Asia can possibly make it, though, without experiencing some major catastrophes along the way.

Asia will determine what the ultimate carrying capacity of the earth, and the ultimate sustainable human population level, really turns out to be.

The figure of 3 billion seems too optimistic. Long term, sustainable population would be more likely in the range of 500 million to 1 billion. The pre-industrial population was in this range. Due to the effects of global warming and other effects of environmental destruction the numbers may have to go even lower. If the post-carbon world is going to attempt to "grow" fuels such as ethenol and biofuels, in effect competing with the food and water supply, the sustainable population numbers would be impacted by this as well.
D. Draffen

I'm a city boy. I don't know enough to take a position but I wanted to thank Wisdom for taking the trouble to research and write this up.

RobertInTucson

I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.

Thanks Wisdom,

I've done a variety of similar ecological footprint calculations and feel your calculations are close enough to the mark to show the concern humanity ought to have for its future. No matter how you slice it, a carrying capacity of 2-4 billion is the sustainable value. Once the renewable resources upon which a population depends has been exhausted, the subsequent dip below the sustainable level is inevitable and by its nature will be severe. I've seen values as low as 1 billion posted here on TOD, but from my understanding of population cycles, that number seems optimistic.

One really big problem I see with people exhausting a renewable or non-renewable resource is that we humans are smart enough to substitute some less suitable resource for the exhausted one. That becomes a problem for several reasons. First, we seldom let up the pressure on the initial resource so it can never recover, Second, the next most suitable resource often has even more environmental cost associated with it. Today, we are several levels down the resource substitution path in so many areas. That will make any population rebound after the crash a much much slower process. In animal populations a deep sustained population crash is less likely to happen simply because they are less able to substitute.

The depth of the population crash will likely be proportional to the degree of population overshoot beyond the sustainable level. I liken our use of non-renewable energy for food production to the guy that gets a really springy new vaulting pole: Once he is 6.6 billion feet in the air, it is a little late to say "Now What?". There may be no graceful way to fall back to sustainable levels, but we may be able to land a little less hard with cooperative planning.

It's worth noting that fertilizer production represents only 3% of world natural gas consumption[1], and pesticide production represents less than 0.1% of world oil consumption[2], so modern farming methods are by no means unusable in a post-peak world.

[1] Each ton of nitrogen fertilizer requires 37,100 cu ft of natural gas (src), and 80M tonnes (src) of nitrogen were used in 2001, representing 2,968,000,000,000 cu ft (3T cu ft) of natural gas, as compared to the 100T cu ft of natural gas produced in 2004 (src).

[2] Pesticide (including herbicide) use in 2000 was 5.4B pounds (src), or about 15M barrels, not all of which is derived from petroleum. World petroleum consumption in 2000 was roughly 30,000M barrels, or 2,000x as much.