Thanks for this analysis Jason. Stuart is dubbing your graphic "The Bradford Curve"...;)

As I plan to show next week with some graphics from systems ecologist Charlie Hall, a lowering of the aggregate of societal net energy, will reduce discretionary investment because more energy must be allocated towards energy production and basic goods (of which food is the most basic). So I believe your hypothesis is on the right track.

Conversation with high school student a couple of years ago. I described my take on the problems ahead. Student said, what should major in? I replied: something related to agriculture would be a great idea. She looked at me like I had grown two heads.

So, what else is new? I guess all we can do is try to persuade those who will listen.

I nominate Jason Bradford and Alan Drake as TOD Persons of the Year for advocating LOF (Localization Of Food) and EOT (Electrification Of Transportation).

Another wrinkle would be to make the graphic 3 dimensional - shade/color the bubbles based on whether the country is a food importer or exporter. Red being importer, blue being exporter and shade of color being magnitude. Stuart? Jason?...;)

p.s. Ive just taken the plunge and ordered a Mac, in an attempt to reach the high bar of free internet community graphics that Stuart, Euan and Khebab have set.

It looks like the U.S. is on a fairly "flat" portion of the curve. That means fairly large changes in energy use will not cause large changes in %ag for the U.S. (assuming we stick to the curve as our energy use declines). At least until we hit about 100 GJ/person/year (eyeballing) and the slope changes. It could take the U.S. a long time to get there.

On the flip side, all those poor countries on the y-axis could see large decreases in %ag with only modest increases in energy use and, of course, large increases with only modest decreases in energy use. So, as access to energy decreases, wealthy countries on the flat part of the curve change little and poor countries near the %agr axis scramble.

Also, it looks like your curve would fit nicely to an inverse power law. Have you done a fit for this? i.e. : y = x^(-z) where z is some positive #

This is a great start. The bubble curve looks roughly like 1/x to me, i.e. ((GJ/person-year) * (agricultural fraction of population)) is roughly constant.

There are two forms of energy importation that might be useful to add: fertilizer, and food. Actually, it would probably be good to account for export as well. If a country burns lots of fuel to make fertilizer and then exports the fertilizer or the food, that shouldn't count as consumption.

Anyway, you've made an excellent start. Thanks.

If you could plot energy consumption specifically used/related for agriculture, it might be much more meaningful. This also might be useful in showing how efficient energy is used for agriculture.

I believe the broad vision of what needs to be done already exists—food that is more local, organic, produced, processed and distributed by renewable energy systems, and using cultivation methods that put the soil health first.

This vision is based on assumptions that we don't know are valid.

I had planned on writing a long article on the fate of local, "organic" farming for this website, but the task has proved so daunting--and I have such little spare time or stamina to pursue the project--that I'm just going to post some general thoughts here. My initial readings have given me a dismal outlook.

It's always assumed that less energy is the fate of the US and that more farmers/decentralized farming is the answer. But how do we know that? I think we merely hope for it to be true. We're cornucopians, in the something like the original meaning of the word.

What if the US military ensures a continuing source of liquid fuels to the agricultural centers of the country? What if, as Professor Craig Bond Hatfield mentioned to me a couple of years ago, recreational gasoline use is "requisitioned for agricultural use"? (This wasn't a part of my interview with him.) In this way, the conventional agriculture paradigm could chug along for who know how long? Decades.

And what if there is indeed an energy "shock" to the system? An unsettling analogy comes from physiology, which I learned in my EMT training: In "hypoperfusion," the body senses that blood (or, in the US's case, oil) is not adequately getting to the tissues to oxygenate them, so the body "compensates" by increasing respiration and heart rate, and by shunting blood flow away from less critical systems, like the extremities. (People in early stages of shock present cold and clammy skin.) If the hypoperfusion persists or worsens, the vital systems of the body--organs--begin to shut down.

In our current agricultural system, "organic," localized farms are decidedly not fulfilling the role of vital organs: they're mere extremities. Large, centralized farms are the vital parts.

Who's to say, if oil supply is curtailed, the US won't "compensate" with a further consolidation of the existing vital systems? Who's to say the "extremities" won't be shut out during the "compensation" stage, leaving the "organics" movement and other non-vital agricultural systems to wither and die?

Things could transpire in ways we haven't even begun to imagine. And if the peak be imminent, and the decline as drastic as some make it out to be, then we're in for a world of trouble.

*****

Add to all this a wrinkle, a dilemma, that people on this site have not even begun to address:

The "organics" movement in its current manifestation is a scandal, sometimes even an outright sham.

1.) The "organics" movement sits cheek-by-jowl with the rankest of superstitions. For every Pimentel carefully plotting energy flows through organic systems, there are ten Steiners telling us to stuff manure into cow's horns as a way of "energizing" the soil.

Therefore, if there is an oil shock, and the hue-and-cry for more "organic" farmers hits the mainstream, the debunkers are going to already be there in force, waiting to decimate the outrageous claims of the current crop of "organics" aficionados.

The high priest and priestess of the current cry for "organics," Heinberg and Astyk, are not immune from this infectious hocus-pocus:

ACRES U.S.A. Many [people] even reject food if it’s organic or at least wholesome, because it’s too high priced. If it looks like food and tastes like food, they seem satisfied that it really is food.

HEINBERG. In most cases, they don’t know any better. Many of them have never tasted anything really nutritious — a carrot straight from the soil, something that they’ve grown themselves, or simply something that has been grown without chemicals and fertilizers.

This implies that "organics" foods are somehow better, "more nutritious," and that conventionally grown foods are less so, which is just neo-kosher claptrap.

[Astyk said] I don't know whether in the net the Green Revolution gave us more food or not. But it is absolutely clear that it did not give us the enormous increases in food that were claimed for it. And it may well be that all of us experienced a loss of nutritious food, or food value. It is manifestly the case that not only may we not need industrial agriculture to feed us, we may well be better off without it.

This is the most specious nonsense. It sinks to the level of what Morris Berman calls "manichaean" thinking: it's not enough that one's particular tribe has the "answer": all the others must be devils. It is the very apotheosis of "biting the hand that feeds you."

2.) In my meager experience here in Maine, the "organics" movement is in nowhere near the condition to step in and fill a void should local shortages develop. My own boss at Rippling Waters Farm is peak oil aware, but he owns a mere 4 acres.

The larger umbrella organization in Maine, MOFGA barely hints that they know what's going all. They seem indifferent to peak oil.

But they know what's going on. In 2004, I wrote an article for MOFGA's newsletter describing peak oil and asking what MOFGA would do if there should be a sudden call for organic farmers in Maine. Wasn't this a vast opportunity? The Director rejected my article thus:

We don't want to be seen as Chicken Littles.

My partner and I stopped attending the "organics" fair held by MOFGA because of their profiteering (a friend this year paid $14 for a pound of seed garlic) and their embarrassing pseudo-scientific and New Age trappings.

******

In conclusion:

The vast net of assumptions; the utterly unpredictable trajectory of peak oil; the mountains of "studies" and counter-studies for and against the ambitious and sometimes extraordinary claims of "organics"; the cluelessness of even the term "organic," have dissuaded me from undertaking the writing project I mention above.

When people would ask my partner or me if our farm is "organic," we used to say, "Sure. It's carbon-based." But it's a joke that doesn't go over well anymore.

Now we just continue to practice what we have always practiced, whatever the hell you want to call it.

Feed the soil.

Recycle the energy in the plant matter.

Call it "dirt farming." Do it yourself.

Don't wait for a sudden groundswell of "organics" to come to your rescue. Its feasibility is still being "studied."

I really like the graph. Can anyone tell me what program was used to make it?

Jason, I attended a presentation 10 years ago about future workforce trends. The speaker pointed out that in 1905, 50% of the North American population were direct farm laborers - like modern Indians according to your graph. By 1948, less than 10% remained on the land, while manufacturing peaked at 40% of the workforce. From this perspective, the great depression was caused by the development of good, cheap farm tractors after WW1 displacing people as farm labor. Manufacturing has been steadily declining Since '48, due mostly to automation improvement, though offshoring gets the credit. The "service" economy is now the biggest employer in North America.

I predict the rise of the energy economy. Renewables, nuclear (a typical nuc. employs a thousand people!) and CO2 sequestration of coal will require 20-30% of us, and small, regional "artesan" manufacturing using CNC tools will provide a resurgence in that sector.

Primary industry will be located near the minerals.

Farming will continue to require almost nobody, as electric tractors will operate just as well as the diesel ones.

Workers will have to come from the ranks of financial services, retail, etc.. and may well be happier building solar panels than CDOs.

To me, the question of agricultural employment centers upon how one sees the future. On the one hand there are those who foresee re-urbanization coupled with TOD - what I call Business As Usual Lite. On the other hand, there are those like myself who foresee a dispersed population.

In BAUL, it would be expected that a far smaller percentage of people would be involved with agriculture. However, I do not see this as a sustainable paradigm. I've discussed this on other posts so I won't repeat my arguments as to why I belive this to be the case.

Rather I anticipate extended family and afinity groups living together to personally produce the majority of their food needs with the possible exception of grains such as wheat and rice. In this instance, essentailly everyone would be involved with agriculture, perhaps not full time, but at least a significant portion of their work day.

Todd

Re. Education - I am forever sorry that I majored in chemistry rather than ag. Interestingly, I have now spent more of my life growing stuff than my time in the chemical industry. Being a plant manager was boring and not intellectually challenging compared with producing food.

I welcome this topic and believe it to be of extreme importance to this country's future.

As many know I post quite often on my observations regarding the topic of farming as I see it and work within it here in
an important part of the agriculture areas of Kentucky.

However most of what I post seems to only attract the attentions of the very few others here who are into agriculture. Most I think is dismissed as either doomerism or redneck jabberwocky.

However I still post those observations on the local effects of climate change , seasonal farming periods and other aspects of this. Workers,cost of fuel,grain trucking and so on.

Right now I am entering this as I sit in a farmers workshop connected via a DSL modem and all the PC gear I have installed and maintain for his operation. So I am 'hooked' in though I no longer actively farm my land.

I believe that to find true values for the number of farmers some definitions are going to have to be made as regards the very generic term of 'farmer'.

So let me add a few for others consideration.

First you have landowners. And among them you have ones whose land contains very little tillable ground yet they will enlist themselves as 'farmers' with the governments USDA and it partners programs(extension office ,FSA,etc). They do this for tax purposes.

Then your have landowners who have varying amounts of tillable land. Some may be locked up in soil bank programs and not being farmed but are titled as 'farms'.

Then some landowners may be farming their land and some may be cash renting it out(more common) to what is termed by the IRS Schedule F as 'operators'.

Within the number of 'operators' you have those who farm land they rent, farm their own land and some of others and various mixes which can change somewhat as they expand their operations.

Also you have those termed farmers who do not cultivate and produce grain or other crops. These can be dairymen. They can be cattlemen and some may raise sheep or goats and some do confinement feeding. Again they might or might not be considered by those who do the counting as 'farmers'.

So its daunting to mine the relevant data as exactly how many do which of all that is placed under the generic term of 'farmer'.

Also those who do confinement feeding may produce feed crops for their own feeding, sell the output of the confinement process for spreading on their or others fields as fertilizer.

Farming then is a very varied area to understand.

In my friends case he owns a few farms and rents some land both on shares and cash rent. He farms a tad over 3,000 acres and also has a side business of hauling and trucking for other local farmers as well as himself.

Ok..enough of that.

Here is one point I have made in the past. When I lived as a youngster with my grandparents they farmed 100 acres of which only about 50 were 'cleared'. On that farm and others in the past they raised 14 children, one of which was my father. They did it without the 'slave labour' aspects some speak of. It was a very healthy life and I flourished in it. We were going thru the back end of the depression and then thru WWII, yet we had plenty to eat and did very well.
The farm was sharecropped as my grandparents did not and never did own their own farm.

Now today. My friend is divorced and has one son. He has difficulty even providing for his and his son's livelhood and thats running a 3,000 acre operation. He does manage to keep some employees but pays minimum wage doing so.

He does not live but other than a normal lifestyle. Not opulent or ostentatious. The comparison is astounding to me!!!

Currently we are at a slow period due to the season. Its time to repair equipment. I have a bin blower to fix and a chain saw to repair and some radios to replace. Check out some wireless gear and update one of the big tractors radar gun or replace it with a GPS unit to measure acreage input/output from the tractor computer.

My opinion is on TOD we need to more closely hue to what is happening in agriculture and thereby be able to make wise plans for the future and to raise the 'hue and cry' as we can.

As another in a Key Topic said..this is really the Age of Agriculture and not the Info or the Industrial Age.

We need to concentrate very much on the future and present of agriculture. Our very lives depend upon it.

airdale-wondering how many on TOD are real farmers or work in that area

While this is an interesting analysis, it oversimplifies in one important respect: People don't neatly fall into "farmer" and "non-farmer" cubbyholes. In particular, there are two intermediate categories that also must be considered:

1) People primarilly engaged in farming, but that also engage in some non-farming employment. They must do this to make ends meet, otherwise they wouldn't be farming at all.

2) People primarilly engaged in non-farming employment, but that also grow some food on the side (mostly gardening, and maybe some small stock raising). (I'd put myself in this category, quite a few others here on TOD might also place themselves here.)

The lines between these two categories are not hard and fast, though it is actually pretty rare to find someone that is maintaining exactly a 50:50 mix; most people lean to one side or the other.

In the US, at least, I suspect that some people classified as "farmers" actually fall in that first intermediate category above; it is getting pretty hard to make a living doing nothing but farming, and quite a few farmers do need to have something else going on the side, at least for part of the year.

It used to be that a very substantial portion of the US population would have fit into that second intermediate category. I would venture to guess that in a place like Russia, where many city and town dwellers work an allotment in a community garden, it probably represents well more than half the population.

My point is: As things pan out, it is not going to be the case that non-farmers are suddenly going to become farmers. That is a good recipie for starvation. No, what is going to happen is that increasing numbers of people that formerly grew NONE of their own food are going to start growing SOME of it; they are not going to give up non-farm employment, but will need to supplement their earnings with home-grown food to make ends meet. As this trend progresses, some people will become good enough at raising crops or livestock that they can buy small holdings and get into growing food in a more serious way; they'll still need something going on the side, though, to make it work financially. Finally, as some of these people become more successful as farmers, and as the demand for locally-produced food becomes more urgent, some of them will take the plunge and get into farming in a big enough way for it to become a full-time occupation.

This transition will require a couple of decades, maybe, but probably not much more than that.

Hey, it's really a no brainer. One farmer with two horses can produce a cash crop of cotton or something else, then enough food to feed his livestock and perhaps one or two other families. One farmer with an eight row tractor and all the mechanized farm equipment to go with it can produce enough food to feed at least one hundred families.

Why is there even a question here? The green revolution is a direct product of all that extra fossil energy. And all that extra energy means a lot more food. And all that food means a population explosion.

Ron Patterson

Thanks for great article.
I was many times thinking how to estimate a EROEI for the whole country and society. I came to a feeling that the fraction of the population, which is directly active in the agriculture activities, has to be related to it.
Your graphs are only supporting my thoughts. Prior the industrial revolution there were at least 80% population always active in the agriculture despite of historical time and continent.
This estimation based your graphs is indicating that EROEI is at about 50 in US and most developed countries and barely above one in such countries like Ethiopia. It seems to be in agreement of estimation of EROEI done by other means.
M

Here in Iowa a switch to locally produced biodiesel would not be that difficult. Farm equipment that uses gasoline is limited to antiques. Farmers almost exclusively use diesel even in their pickup trucks.
There are a few changes that would be a big help in keeping the young folks down on the farm.
1) Eliminate property taxes. No more losing land to the taxman. This 11th century relic has no place in the 21st.
2) Universal single payer health care. The self employed simply cannot afford health care costs.
3) Let farmers borrow borrow money at the Fed discount rate. No more having bankers make more profit on a bushel than the farmer. Unlike the paper wealth of Wall St farmers actually create real wealth from the combination of their labor, use of natural resources like sunshine and rainfall, and their ingenuity.
4) Use the surplus biomass farms create as a replacement for some of the coal now used to generate electricity. This would create a new product from farmers at no extra cost to them.

There are feedback loops in the agribusiness sector just as there are feedback loops in other sectors of the economy. As the scarcity of fuels - and thus the price - increases then the price of agri products including food will increase. The higher commodity prices for farm goods will drive the market for more farmers. Many high schools have FFA (Future Farmers of America) vocational agriculture programs. Likewise, there are many vocational schools and colleges with ag programs. As the price of farm commodities goes up so does the incentive for more young people to get into agriculture and get the required training. The same held true for the technology sector in the past decades. More young farmers will be tilling smaller acerages and making a decent income doing so. The economics of scale will change - to a smaller scale in this case - as the higher input costs of fuel and fertilizers coupled with the higher price per unit of agriculture output will make small farms practical again. In India, for sure, there are thousands of small farms, many only a few acres, that are highly profitable. Even small farmers in India are able to earn a decent living. They do so with significantly lower energy inputs than in the USA. These feedback loops work best when there is a fairly gradual transition from say low fuel costs to high fuel costs. If a sudden "energy shock" happens, however, that could result in food shortages since new farmers will need a number of years to "ramp up" and become productive.
Daniel Draffen

Why couldn’t an alternative energy reduced future agricultural scenario be greater industrialization and professionalization (no slam on today’s high-tech farmers), so that fewer corporate units farm greater acreages for gains in efficiency – higher output and lower labor inputs?

That seems to have been the trend for nearly 100 years.

The overall number of farms, farmers, and farm workers, however defined, in U.S. agriculture has been declining. Here’s a snapshot from the USDA: In 1910 there were 6.4 million farms and 13.6 million farm workers. In 2000, there were 2.2 million farms and about 3 million farm workers.

And production has increased over that time. For example, for All Wheat, 45.8 million acres were harvested in 1910, with a yield of 13.7 bushels an acre, for a production of 625.5 million bushels. In 2000, 53.1 million acres were harvested, with a yield of 42 bushels an acre, for a production of 2.22 billion bushels.

Sources: National Agricultural Statistics Service

Is the argument that an energy short agriculture future means a less mechanized, less corporatized agriculture where the price of energy is so high that multi-story combines roaming millions of acres are substituted on a cost basis with massive numbers of individuals in localized agriculture?

What is the price of energy that yields that result?

Hilary Smith

Hello Jason and Nate,

Thxs for this keypost--well done. IMO, Nepal can be an instructive example of what lies ahead postPeak for most countries as Nepal must import all non-organic fertilizers and FFs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nepal
---------------------------
Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 81%, services 16%, industry 3% -- Unemployment rate: 47% (2001 est.)

Imports - commodities: gold, machinery and equipment, petroleum products, fertilizer
------------------------------
It all starts with water, seeds, and NPK: the amount of job specialization is dependent upon food surpluses. Recall the Nepalese posts by Leanan: long lines queued up for fuel, and other dire effects. Since Nepal is a high altitude, landlocked geography: the sheer physics of importing FFs & NPK from sealevel-on-up is working against them. I would suspect that they might have the highest prices globally due to this low ERoEI geo-physical logistic reality of importation.

Thus, IMO, it will be very difficult for Nepal to lower their agricultural employment rate; in fact, as FFs & NPK become even more expensive, I would expect even more people to return to the ancient ways. I am unaware of the degree of sustainable farming in Nepal, but from this searchable database link on fertilizer imports by country:

http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/index.php?theme=8&variable_ID=2...
---------------------------------
NEPAL 10-year fertilizer imports [Units: Thousand metric tons]

1992 73.6
1993 95.0
1994 96.6
1995 94.0
1996 103.0
1997 108.9
1998 121.5
1999 94.4
2000 76.7
2001 77.5
2002 55.6
---------------
Is Nepal already far postPeak in terms of NPK?

Possibly the best thing to do in Nepal, besides full humanure recycling and localized composting, is to put the massive numbers of their unemployed to work portering NPK uphill with bicycles and wheelbarrows as there is no substitute to these Elements. I would suggest they get going before food surpluses shrink so low that no job specialization is possible.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Something I've wondered about biofuels is whether they could provide fuel for ag - and leave it at that. Would the 400k barrels (or whatever it was) of ethanol produced in 2006 be enough for the country's tractors/combines/farm trucks? Make that biodiesel while we're at it. Yeah, I know it was all fueled by NG/diesel anyway. But anyway - how would that stack up against the biomass requirements of the equivalent amount of livestock? Could farmers produce enough fuel for their own needs?

Or should we just assume there'll always be a few kbpd of oil to kick around - or that farmers will find it cheaper to go electric at some point?

That neat bubble chart sure is fascinating when you look at it from a fuel crop perspective. It's amazing how peak oil may be forcing the big industrialised nations to become more like the small agrarian nations and vice versa. If you were to draw another set of bubbles on this chart in yellow showing, not population, but wealth, you would have a sea of yellow at one end of the inverse curve that fits through this data with the sea of blue at the other end. If the immense focus on high net energy designer fuel crops produces enough breakthroughs, you may see the wealth hungry sea of blue and the fuel hungry sea of yellow not so separated anymore in the post peak world. It brings to mind one possible reason there could be, as the Bible prophecies about our day, a transfer of wealth from the rich nations to the poor nations. The green of agriculture may become the new green of wealth (blue and yellow do make green).

Interesting article and comments-thought I'd respond to a few. RE: organic agriculture-sounds like you are confusing biodynamic ag with organic- Steiner is the originator of biodynamic ag- some organic farmers are also biodynamic followers and practitioners and others are not. Personally, I think it's interesting, I've been to some workshops, and done some reading on it but still have never filled that cow horn with manure and buried it-maybe I'll try it some day-can't hurt. In any event, organic ag is not hocu-pocus, most is founded on solid principles and it is very effective. As for organic farmers being able to feed the country/world- well one only has to look at Cuba's experience to see what organic ag can do. As for small-scale farmers- in actuality a small acreage is much more productive than a large acreage- the only advantage large farms have is needing less labor due to their ability to use large equipment. Small-scale growers have more labor requirements- but in an energy short world- physical labor will be in ample supply I would guess while large fuel powered machinery might be at a disadvantage. So don't discount the ability of small growers and even backyard gardeners to feed humanity.

RE: farm subsidies- only a very few farmers receive subsidies- most are commodities growers and often not even farming themselves but rather wealthy landowners. The majority of farmers receive no subsidies whatsoever.

The question of biofuels is interesting- it does seem to me that while it doesn't appear reasonable or feasible to engage in large-scale biofuel production in order to fuel soccer mom's driving SUV's to the mall- it would make sense to produce them to fuel agricultural equipment-tractors, combines, etc. So how this could play out will be interesting to see. If biofuels were produced in sufficient quantities and devoted to agricultural production, we might continue to see large-scale ag production continue. Of course the question as to transportation of products then arises- do biofuels get used for the big rigs? How about air transport of food? I doubt at this time we'll see much in the way of electric tractors other than small-scale low-powered ones- seems more likely to see biofueled ones.

RE; kids not wanting to farm- well some do want to but mostly we have made farming out to be a job for losers and a low-paying one at that. Even though I know many well-educated and intelligent farmers(I include myself here), for years the stereotype has been of dumb, redneck hicks-who aspires to that?

Re; farmers and working other jobs- yes, that seems to mostly be the case. Among farmers I know they tend to either have one spouse work off-farm or else one or both of a couple work other jobs as well. It's really hard to support a family on farm incomes these days. For those who need to purchase land it's even more difficult due to land prices. I've had to work other jobs along with farming-the "joke" is always about working to support our farming habit.....

Based on the curve and what I know about these countries, I think there is two effects in play here. The curve is quite bent, with the developing countries above the bend and the more developed countries to the right. This is probably no coincident.

When energy input decreses, the labour requirement increase, and the terning point is about where Ukraine is in the figure. In that case, small machines are used instead of the huge ones used in e.g. Canada. Even a harvesting machine pulled by a horse is orders of magnitudes more efficent than doing it by hand. Such machines do not require much more energy input than manual labour, but production of such machines require an industry outside of agriculture. The nations above the bend those where large parts of the population live outside an industrialised economy.

The scale of the industry needed support an agriculture is much smaller than the size of the current one, and is probably small enough to be sustainable with renewable energy sources. This means, that even with less fossile fuel, a nation like Canada is unlikely to end up like Nepal, even with only a fraction of the energy available today.

Another, but related effect in less developed countries is that when there is no industrialised economy, there is no other place people can make an income, so they have to work in agriculture, not because they are required, but because they offer their labour cheaply to get an income. An industial economy require energy, but it also require infrastructure and know-how that the least developed countries don't have developed.

how local can we or should we get? my guess is we will have a barbell. agricultural goods will be more regional(southwest, westcoast, eastcoast) and more local as in your backyard. getting your goods shipped from coast to coast and from latin america.

I hate people saying that we have to get local. nobody knows how local we need to be. that will depend most likely on how high gas prices get and how your food is shipped. if you food is shipped by tractor-trailer a long distance that probably won't happen during peak oil. "Local" will be whatever gas prices and food prices dictate. the market will decide. all discussions about localization have take into account food prices and gas prices.

http://politics.reddit.com/info/63na7/comments/

thanks for your support...

Haven't read many posts so I could be repeating what others have said..huge inroads to the problem could be made by urban rezoning and replacing much animal protein with plant based.

Suburbs tend to be in good soil and rainfall areas. The landscape has also been 'tamed' so take away half the McMansions and the soil could be worked by low powered battery tractors. Cut our intake of meat and dairy to say 100 grams per day and stretch that with nuts and beans. Configure the layout between housing, small farms and transport corridors so as to minimise energy and recycle grey water. The farms will have the size and know-how to easily outperform backyard growing while still being 'local'.

Big shots could drive their plugin hybrids to the city centre while others ride bicycles to their low paid jobs in the fields. Nobody starves though. Problems are who gets to be a big shot and if governments will accept less property taxes.

Paul Craig Roberts and others discuss the demise of the American dollar.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18934.htm

What a wonderful analysis, and thank you for putting together the fascinating graphs.

Would it be unbearably churlish of me to observe that my name is "Astyk" not "Astyx?" I find I rather prefer your spelling, actually, but it is probably too late to change all the documents bearing my name ;-).

A couple of observations. The first is that in my own case, my own claims are based only partly on historical norms - the other part is upon (a much less detailed) analysis of present day lower energy trends in lower energy nations, rather like yours. But I tend to think that both models have their problems - globalization over the past decades has radically reshaped world agriculture in ways that are unlikely to remain the same when the costs of shipping things around the world rise further. So while the percentage of farmers is sometimes telling, sometimes it reveals things like World Bank pressure into commercial agriculture, or government policies about food importation and dumping more than it reveals anything about how many farmers are *needed.*

It is interesting to note that the former Soviet Interim leader recently argued that the Soviet collapse was at least partly caused by a combination of rising importation prices and too few farmers on the land. One line of inquiry I've been pursuing personally is the Russian model - here you have a fairly highly industrialized model, and a policy of moving people away from agricultural careers - it would be worth asking exactly how many people went back to agriculture and horticulture in the post Soviet period.

Which of course, brings me to exactly what is a farmer. As I understand it, Heinberg and I use the term, and get our numbers, slightly differently. That is, I'm using farmer as an umbrella term for political and aesthetic reasons, whereas Heinberg is calling for 50 million commercial farmers on small farms. My own personal presumption is that a majority (what majority I don't know - I haven't tried to figure it out, honestly, and don't really have a preference between, say, New Jersey getting its food from 3 million additional home gardeners with 200 square feet of garden or from an additional X number of larger farms of X number of larger acres) of those new agrarians will be people subsistence farming/gardening/horticulturing - call it what you want - on existing, subdivided housing lots, in community gardens, or in walkable existing spaces near their homes. That is, most of the new farmers won't be farmers by the present definition at all. We'd call them gardeners. I call them farmers because that's what they are called in poor nations, generally speaking - someone who does agriculture part time, subsistence farms, or produces supplement income on very small acreage are called farmers in most of the Global South, and in fact, were called farmers in large chunks of the developed world until recently.

So at least to be relevant to my own analysis, your numbers would probably have to include people not identified as professional farmers - and some analysis of how the classifications were made. It is easy to overlook these people, and lord knows, running the numbers is hard enough, but it is worth noting that food produced in gardens, by non-full time professionals can be an enormous part of the available food - the obvious number is the 40% of all produce produced in home gardens in the US and Britain during WWII, but there are nations with higher numbers still. The UN FAO notes that 2 *billion* people (as of the late 1990s) were feeding themselves based on small scale, low input "backyard" and marginal land agriculture worldwide. These include many people whose nations don't count them as farmers, and it is extremely hard (I've tried) to figure out exactly how the proportions shake out.

As for the scale of the transition - enormous, of course, but consider the transition to computer work. At 35, I'm old enough to remember my step-Mom training to repair computers, and listening to her wonder whether desktop computers would really ever spread far enough to keep her in business in the long term, and to the laments of people who said they'd never use one at work because they had other people to type for them. And yet, a generation or so later... It is difficult to imagine such a transition - unless, of course, there was money in it - unless yahoo started running stories on the hot new agricultural careers. And there will be money in it, I suspect - no matter how the transition goes, we'll need to train a new workforce fairly soon (that is, the farmers really are that old), we'll need to make use of some of the land that we paved over and put tract houses on (that is, Pimental and Gampietro's analysis really does put us at .6 acres per person and 1.2 for a veg diet), industrial agriculture's yields really have started to fall overall, and Pretty, Rosset, the FAO and the World Bank's Ag arm really have more or less come to the consensus that for total calories and nutrition on a piece of land, small scale, low input polyculture really is substantively more productive than industrial agriculture. How many farmers vs. gardeners this will get us, I don't know, but the choice more or less becomes clear - find a magic bullet to fix the land degradation, toxicity and declining returns of the industrial system, pick a new system, or starve.

This is a very good and useful analysis - I'm delighted you are doing it. Thanks.

Sharon

Farming doesn't consume all the energy we use, let's say 25% (farm to home) for argument's sake. If so, then it would be possible to handle a large loss of energy imports, without ever needing to touch the energy needed for farming. However, I don't think we will slide nicely (linearly) along "Bradford's Curve" to account for any arbitrary decrease in energy imports.

Peak oil is the GREATEST THING EVER to happen to the farm!!!!

Since I became PO aware a few years ago, I became EXTREMELY concerned about ag aquiring fuel to farm with.

Now I realize now that that is nothing to fear. Its very simple. As a farmer growing wheat, corn, and soybeans in SD, I can outbid ANYONE ELSE in the ENTIRE USA for whatever fuel is available. Here's how;

I burn EXACTLY 4.23 gallons diesel/acre. 100% no-till. $150,000 tractors and $300,000 combines don't need SQUAT DIDDLY for fuel on a per acre basis.

1 gallon of diesel fuel = 130,000 BTU

1 bushel of corn = 395,000 BTU

I turn 4.23 gallon fuel/acre (This includes planting, spraying, harvest, trucking grain, etc) into 115 bushel/acre of corn.

I produce so many more BTU's than I burn its not even funny.

I seriously run through maybe 15,000 gallons on 3,000 acres of land and easliy produce 100,000 bushels of grain per year.

Herbicides are even more of a no-brainer. It really doesn't matter how much herbicides cost, they save INSANE amounts of tillage and nonsense with lost yields.

The only way the farmer can't bid to the moon for fuel is if grains are priced below crude oil on a BTU basis. (As they are today sadly, and which is why more corn stoves will get sold.)

If grains are priced equal to or greater than crude, (which they were throughout the 20th century) then we will be able to EASILY outbid everyone else in the country for fuel.

Example, If corn were to equal crude on a BTU basis, we'd get $6.50/bu. You show me a farmer who gets $6.50/bu for corn and I'll show you a guy who COULD pay over $10/gal for diesel and LAUGH all the way to the bank.

ORGANIC IS A JOKE in a PO world. Acres will be too valuable to screw around with low yielding organic.

Food will get scarce because as long as we continue to produce a cheaper BTU with corn than the oil industry does with crude, then corn burning stoves will get made and sold.

Google "corn burning stoves" if you don't believe me. Burning corn saves folks big $$.

WE ON THE FARM DON'T NEED SUBSIDIES AT ALL. All we need us UNSUBSIDIZED corn stoves and EXPENSIVE FUEL. Presto, unlimited wealth.

The problem with this whole thing is NOT a lack of crude, its going to be a lack of nat gas. People will starve from a lack of fertilizer.

But don't think for a moment the tractor will lack fuel.

The first barrels pumped out of the ground will go to herbicides, and the next will go to farm equipment.

The fuel will go to the guy who can add the most value to that fuel.

Noone can add more value to 4.23 gallons of diesel fuel than a no-till farmer using herbicide instead of tillage to kill weeds and thus creating 115 bushel of corn.

Jason,
Thanks for putting together that research, great keypost.

The graph looks like an inverse relationship -- I wonder how linear it would be if one of the axes were inverse scale? Like 1/energy vs. farming percent.

Duh.

www.lawnstogardens.com

RE: Organic farming having poor yields- not sure where you could possibly have gotten that idea from. Yields of organic ag are quite good for the most part- and there is no question that the quality is better. I can't put my hands on the data- perhaps one of you can- but I have seen lots of reports that examine the difference in content of vitamins, etc between organic and non-organic produce- and organic wins by far. In terms of residues of chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides- why would anyone in their right mind want to consume them? They are poisons. Makes little sense to me to claim thatthere is no difference in quality.

re: big ag. I think that the crux of some of it is that while some, such as Sharon Astyk are cheering for a resurgence of small farmers and local ag and gardens behind every home- big corporate ag is not giving up so easy. So I'd guess that if/when petro fuels become scarce not only will large-scale ag receive preference for fuel, but biodiesel will also play a big role. I don't doubt the ability to continue to farm- I just know that costs of fertilizers, herbicides and the like will climb, trucking costs to deliver these will climb, and food prices will skyrocket. Transportation of food is another big if- how this will play out I don't know. So I'd guess that food will still be produced on large-scale industial ag farms-but many will be unable to afford it. So that's where the local ag small-farmers/household gardens will come in.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Rodale Research Institute. They do real researach not hippy-dippy annectodtal stories. Their emphasis is upon sustainable ag. They have many excellent articles. http://www.newfarm.org

I'm also surprised that no one has mentioned the Sustainable Ag Research and Education project. They have lots of good information much of which is downloadable. http://www.sare.org

In California try: http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu

I haven't visited the above link for a while so I might have it wrong.

Todd

First off, we have more productive farmers than 100 years ago because we have a lot more knowledge and better seeds. So we won't revert back to year 1900 ways of doing things just because oil production will fall.

Plus, we can use non-fossil fuels energy sources to power agriculture. Electrify the farm and run farms off of wind, nuclear, and solar photovoltaics. Shift from diesel water pumps to electric water pumps for example.

Plus, we can develop more biotechnologies (e.g. introduce nitrogen fixing genes into more crops) to reduce energy usage.

Organic Farming Can Feed The World, Study Suggests

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070711134523.htm