USA Today ethanol commentary published today:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/our-view-on-ene.html

Hey DCMiller -- does the "DC" standard for "District of Columbia?" Just curious.
I too am the grandson of a farmer who epitomized the axiom that farmers live poor and die rich, except that he one-upped that with "died poor" too. Small farmers in northern NH in the 50s had a difficult row to hoe (couldn't resist), although I guess organic farmers are doing better now.

In my slightly-larger than 1/4 acre, over-wooded patch in D.C., I too have been trying to garden organically. I've managed to plant 3 kinds of berries, a dwarf pear tree, 2 super-dwarf peach trees and of course a fig tree. I compost and have a small worm bin in my garage, raised beds, rhubarb, starter-asparagus bed... a pretty unusual gardening effort for northern D.C. And yet I've been gardening for over 50 years and I've never had such poor luck. Partly I have the trees to blame (removed some before the D.C. ban), but 5 hrs/day is barely sufficient. But mostly it is a variety of other problems, everything from wildlife -- raccoons, squirrels, deer... (deer breached the 8' deer fence recently; I guess that's a compliment to the appeal of my back yard) to what I think is a noticeably warmer habitat in just 4 years. Plants that should grow well her are stressed. And in the past 3 years, there's been an invasion of the tiger mosquito (you can't hear her coming) and noseeums, from mid May to early November. The bugs make it difficult to work outside. The end result of all this is that my tomato yield last year could have been a poster child for the book "$64 Tomato."

All this rambling is to point out how difficult urban gardening --maybe any gardening-- has become, and I've been gardening for a long time. I wonder how newbies reacting either to high prices or simply the desire to "localize" will succeed.

Bob -- trying to live sustainably.

Sharon's blog is at

http://www.sharonastyk.com/

(and she contributes on here as jewishfarmer)

I believe the modest increase is home food growing is mostly a search for quality. Gardening has always gone in cycles. The current cycle seems to be driven by "foodies".

Westexas,

This fancipants food is indeed "backyard produce that has more in common with designer boutiques than the local farm stand".

All reminds me of Marie-Antoinette dressing up as a shepherdess:

http://www.postershop.com/Delort-C/Delort-C-Marie-Antoinette-Depicted-at...

Let them eat oregano.

I'm starting an organic micro-farm here in France and people are already coming to us for vegetables, even though we're not selling anything until next year. A restaurant rang today asking if we could supply them. Although I'm growing a lot of stuff for our own supply, little is ready and it's a bit embarrassing telling people we've nothing ready to sell.

Simply by word of mouth people have discovered what we are doing and come to us. Whereas I was expecting demand for local produce to increase as peak oil, climate change, etc. took hold, I'm a little overwhelmed by the demand that already seems to exist.

All I have to do is produce the goods (laughs nervously!).

In the UK, last year, 2007, saw vegetable seed sales greater than flower seeds for the first time since World War II and that trend is continuing.

Does this news make you feel better? It's talking about live viewers of broadcast TV, so not including delayed DVR and cable.

TV viewers' average age hits 50
http://www.variety.com/VR1117988273.html

I've been waiting for signs of suffering in the "eating out" industry. When they start reporting a major downturn I'll know the recession is real.

"Hate it all we want, we still must acknowledge that industrial agriculture is a far more efficient use of energy than all the Outback's and Chili's and Wendy's we see now. It is very very important to draw a line between industrial agriculture and the food service industry.

The only problem is, what are we going to do with 40 million unemployed if the food service industry collapses?"

It's not a question of 'hating it' its a question of breaking through the mental delusion of associating manufacturing economies of scale (e.o.s.), that don't account for the 'externalities' to understanding that nature does not work this way. And so the perceived e.o.s. are rather the spending of the soils carbon reserves and a depletion of the inherent buffering ability of nature.

Another subsidy (in effect) for industrial agriculture is our health as Michael Pollan has pointed out years ago we spent about 5% on health care and 18% on food and now the tables are largely reversed. So the 'cheap food' policy was a trick to get us to offer up our health and the health of the environment for corporate profit.

The energy use stats of 10 calories of fuel oil to produce 1 calorie of food that Industrial agriculture uses, I'm sure don't account for the energy spent on getting and using chemo to treat your cancer as industrial food is a recipe for degenerative disease. As such the idea that large scale agriculture is more efficient is in short fantasy. The U.N. has done studies that reported that small mixed farms can be some 30 times more effictient than large agri-business. The fact that small mixed farms can't pay the bills is a function of the rigged market place that abuses them for their efforts.

It was ,in effect, in a similar way an answer to how do we get more now while at the same time ignoring the long term consequences of this behavior. The only solution to getting your slaves to pay you is if you can get them to spend their generational capital right now. Or as in the case of many farmers where I live (the ones left) subsidize our food by procuring off farm employment to pay the expenses that are not covered by the income from the farm.
The phoney accounting 3 card monty game of pretending that we have no connection with the bio-sphere other than as plunderers, has been revealed for those who want to see it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

"The reports are the largest international collaboration to date to advocate more sustainable farming practices such as crop diversification, use of organic fertilizers, and the adoption of labeling and certification schemes.

The reports are the result of a three-year, $12 million effort by the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Launched in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the IAASTD, led by former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair Robert Watson, coordinated the more than 400 experts from the world's universities, think tanks, governments, and industries."

Translated their is only one known sustainable (for centuries anyway -then reversion to forests where applicable for a couple of centuries ley would be called for to have the trees remineralize the top soil)
form of agriculture known and that is small mixed farming, which organizations like the world bank and the w.t.o. have done a great job of destroying and continuing to actively destroy. The model of small farms in India is being replaced with the unsustainable, corporate destroy and screw the grandkids. Big ag-business, Big Pharma, and the other chemical companies tied in with big oil are 1/2 the PROBLEM. The other half of the problem is our predelection for slaves, that we stand by and allow to be sprayed with neurotoxins in the name of winners and losers.

So while food has become more expensive ( I predict that we ain't seen nothing yet) the plight of the small farmer increases, with increased costs.
Follow the money ss the 'subsidies' come down, the barriers to entry and lack of market access will remain for large numbers of farmers.With food shocks inevitable, 'consumers' will tire of hearing of the plight of the 'rich' farmers as their food prices and cancer rates soar (though its hard to greatly increase cancer rates from a rate of 1 in 2 ...Babies born with cancer?) which will exasporate things.

The solution for consumers to help slow this attack is to opt out of the convenience and cornucopia of the shopping centre (good luck with that). The 'convenience' is short term, the pain is real and long term.
Should enough people revert to gardens, I expect 'control' to enact laws and inspectors to help dissuade you from undertaking such a hazardous venture. Able to help you to read the application instructions on the label of your can of malathion and miracle grow to apply enough for a fee that will help make continued business as usual more appealing.

The readers of T.O.D. represent a small faction of awareness. Probably the single most revolutionary act (when everything is weighed and counted) that we can undertake is to plant gardens. And reject the continual propoganda coming from the machine.

Danger? Heck, most of those things would be benefits.

I'm thinking the same thing.....as I contemplate the jar of peaches I'm eating while I read through this thread. Importing food great distances has only been made possible by energy costs that are out of balance with the rest of the world's products. The peaches are from Dole, a US company last I knew. On the package it says they were grown in China, packed in Thailand and obviously shipped here after that. Who knows where the plastic jar containing 24.5 oz of peaches came from.........

To me, this doesn't make any sense at all for a jar of fruit which costs $2.09 at the supermarket. If the true cost of the transportation for those peaches from grower to packager, then across the Pacific to a West coast port and then from there to Michigan via truck were actually factored into the price I'd think that they should sell for more like double that. So, where are the subsidies that enable Dole to deliver a product like that? There's no way on God's green earth that $2.09 reflects the actual cost of bringing those peaches halfway around the world.

Methinks those days are numbered and we will begin to see a resurgence of locally or at least US grown and packaged food.

"Look at the oil business in Russia. They have hugh amounts of oil, but the Soviets couldn't get their act together to exploit the resource. Even to save communism. Now oil is driving their economy."

But look at the economy that they have now. It is really a stretch to call it private enterprise. Or 'free'.

dcmiller, I agree.

In the article it was said "Just because we buy our food at the grocery store doesn’t mean we have any real control over how we fed our families. What we have is the illusion of control and in this regard we might be worse off than the Soviets in terms of susceptibility."

Illusion of control? We have tremendous control over how we feed our families, more now that at any time in my 58 year lifetime. All kinds of food, organic or not, is available though one might have to go to a small grocery to find some of it. Farmers markets are commonplace here in the Chicago area at least.

I don't believe the current system of agribusiness is sustainable, not only due to ever increasing fuel costs but also due to such things as degradation of the soil, fertilizer runoff, etc. Still, it has become established because it does produce the goods at the lowest prices. Industrialization of farming has made possible crop yields that could not be matched with the kind of family farming that was once common in the United States. Growing your own food just isn't possible for urban dwellers as there isn't enough space immediately available to them to raise enough food to support even a good part of their food consumption throughout the year.

There are many good things we can do such as growing a plot of veggies if there is the space, eating less meat to reduce our footprint on the land, buying organic, but there is no denying that for quality and quantity, price and availability of food, we've been living in a glutton's paradise. There is also no denying that we are reaching the end of the era. Having grown up in the 1950's I well remember the high prices, low quality and small selection of foods in grocery stores (no such thing as a supermarket then). We ate mostly canned food because the produce was too expensive. Somehow we have to arrive at a point that splits the difference between then and now and that can be maintained indefinitely.

"Look at the oil business in Russia. They have hugh amounts of oil, but the Soviets couldn't get their act together to exploit the resource. Even to save communism. Now oil is driving their economy."

To be fair to the old regime, they did mobilize vast resources to develop and produce West Siberian fields in the 1970s. Soviet production peaked in the late 1980s but the collapse was due not so much to the peak as to very low oil prices.

Thanks to Western Siberia, the USSR was able to buy enough wheat and consumer goods in the West to both keep its subjects fed and clothed and sustain its inefficient, wheat-gorging cattle farms. That lasted for about 10 years, 1978-1988 or so. When the USSR collapsed, Russia (now without Ukraine, the USSR's key grain producer) suddenly became self-sufficient in grain. Why? Mostly because it let its state-owned cattle farms collapse.

I suspect Gaidar has much more to say about absurd resource allocation in the USSR.

No one understands it. That is its beauty.

It is a political sausage that satisfies the politicians interested in it. While it is called a farm bill most of the money goes to food stamps which pleases urban representatives.

In return rural areas get grain and other subsidies if prices fall and plums like ethanol subsidies and mandates. Those who think that ethanol subsidies and mandates can be just abolished with the stroke of pen had better think about food stamps as well. These compromises are reached after months and months of haggling. Even President Bush could not stop it with his rarely used veto pen.

Ethanol producing states are not going to go along with a farm bill that only benefits urban areas. Such is the dilemma of politics. If you want something, you have to give something in return. There is usually no winner take all in legislation even though some think there should be.

Those who think representatives of corn growing areas should or will vote against their constituencies self interest are delusional.

http://deltafarmpress.com/farmbill/

As good as any:

Someone gave up something between here:

Congress overrides Bush farm bill veto — again
Jun 19, 2008,

By Elton Robinson
Farm Press Editorial Staff

In an unusual case of farm bill déjà vu, Congress voted yesterday to override President Bush’s second veto of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act....

and here:

http://deltafarmpress.com/farmbill/bill-provisions-0703/

Farm bill: Several provisions delayed until 2009

Jul 3, 2008 8:08 AM

The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 that U.S. farmers will be hitched to for the next five years has something old, something new, something borrowed and certainly something to make a few farmers blue.

Here are key provisions of the 2008 farm bill developed by the National Cotton Council for a series of informational hearings on the new farm bill.

something happened.

The Great Grain Robbery happened in 1972.

It's remarkable how russian/american ag mimic each
other thru the years.

Between 1966 and 1990 there were radical changes in US ag as well.

Like this-the two towns of both apprx. 3500 that I grew up in
collapsed.

Each has less than a 1000 today.

I don't know how far the analogy with the Soviet collapse can be taken, but both situations involve a serious disruption of previously functioning (though dysfunctional) food supply systems. Although for several years I have learned to grow nearly all my vegetables, eat in season, and improve my soils, I was humbled by the recent reading of David Montgomery's book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations.

This book looks at what the top 12 inches of the earth mean to us and the role it played in shaping world history. The discussion about the US really evokes the sense of our hubris, when set after the discussions of Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, Britain, the Mayas and many other great powers and the consequences of their relationship to soil. Kruschschov lost power over agriculture, and the severe land degradation their programs caused accelerated the Soviet collapse.

The Soviet experience is instructive, but here we would have the first instance of the collapse of a fully industrialized private agricultural model which has been particularly destructive of our soils. Set against the history of such episodes that Montgomery covers, I guess all you could say is that we had it coming to us.

The main reason the USSR collapsed was it went broke
spending on the cold war before the USA did

Actually not... The USA in fact declared bankruptcy on the 15th of August 1971, though relatively few seem to have noticed. Since then, they have had some friends in the middle east propping up their economy and currency.

Everybody's gotta start somewhere. My parents gardened for 40 years, in the same plots, and succeeded pretty well without much fertilizer other than kitchen compost, some cow manure, and occasional peak moss. Not everything they tried would grow, but they always had some pretty good produce. During some rough years in the 70's Mom put back hundreds of quarts of canned food, and even us kids had gardens that did OK. I doubt we got the productivity of a factory farm, and I think survival by gardening would be a full-time year round job, but with some practice it seems possible to me.

In your opinion what IS the best way to become a self-sufficient farmer?

Hello Todd,

Thxs for the plug, but I am hoping some of 400 agricultural experts that the UN recently convened for a conference would respond to this keypost and thread discussion here on TOD:

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5712
---------------------------------
International Commission Calls for ‘Paradigm Shift’ in Agriculture
by Ben Block on April 18, 2008

A commission of international agriculture experts unveiled a series of reports on Wednesday calling for an end to "business-as-usual" farming practices to avoid widespread environmental degradation and increasing food scarcity.

The group of more than 400 experts, known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), concluded through its global and regional studies that governments and industries need to discontinue environmentally damaging farming methods. Farmers should have greater access to agricultural technology and science, especially in the developing world, to ensure productivity increases without further environmental degradation, the reports say.

The reports are the largest international collaboration to date to advocate more sustainable farming practices such as crop diversification, use of organic fertilizers, and the adoption of labeling and certification schemes.

The reports are the result of a three-year, $12 million effort by the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Launched in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the IAASTD, led by former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair Robert Watson, coordinated the more than 400 experts from the world's universities, think tanks, governments, and industries.
----------------------------

The homepage of the IAASTD:
http://www.agassessment.org/

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

I agree. Synthetic/industrial fertilisers have masked the degradation of the soil and allowed us to overshoot the carrying capacity of the lands farmed. And I also agree organic methods do mainly constitute moving organic nutrients from A to B (ie. taking organic material from large areas and concentrating them into smaller productive areas). Which if undertaken on a worldwide basis would further erode the Earth's carrying capacity as vast amounts of organic material are scavenged from far and wide (take animal feed as a current example).

Another factor which I've not seen considered is the huge amount of energy needed to acquire and use organic materials required for organic farming. I would imagine that a move from industrial agriculture to organic would also entail a significant shift of energy use from say fertiliser manufacturers to the individual farms. Large scale organic farming may well be more energy intensive overall.

I am using organic methods as it suits my circumstances and philosophy, but I do not believe it is the silver bullet which will solve the World's problems. In fact, a large scale shift to organic farming may well be disastrous IMO. But essentially that is the problem with overshoot, there is no solution other than to extend carrying capacity or reduce population.

Any disruption in the supply of fertilisers, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides will lead to rapid and severe food shortages worldwide. It would also cause the cost of seed to skyrocket. I guess what we're heading towards is something like "price discovery" in the stockmarket, a point where the crisis comes into view, followed by fear and panic worldwide.

Here in north east Ohio its a rather simple matter to
grow a garden.
Compost is readily available as many people in
suburbia, toss out their leaves in the fall and all
grass clipping throughout the year, on the curb for
the garbage men to haul away.

The soil is naturally fertile and sandy loam. Potatos
grow well in straw without the need for tilling.
Troy bilt <-----(proper spelling) tillers can be bought
off craigslist for a few hundred dollars for those
who want to turn the soil too dust if they desire.

Allowing some product to bolt to seed and not using
hybred seed to start, is really simple.
No till gardening isnt rocket science either.

Give me 100 million people who never gardened and
100 million people who never smelted iron ore and
machined an engine and let me test the groups to see
which endeavor people would most likely fail at.
Iam really putting myself out on a limb here....but
I venture to guess the people gardening are gonna be
giving zucchini to the hungry, failed, engine builders
who are walking to the autoparts store to ask Biff
behind the counter to give them some more sage advice.

On more then several occassions while living in
western PA in Northern Cambria county, when going too
town to pick up or drop off my mail, I found it
necessary to lock the doors of my vehicle.
The reason wasnt because someone would heist my 4 year
old pine scented cardboard rearview mirror ornament...
It was because they would pack your seats with plastic
bags and cardboard boxes , filled to overflowing with
vegetables from their gardens.
Since I had an over abundance of my own, I just used
it in the same fashion...throwing the whole lot on
my truck patch and tilling it back into the earth.

Too think that people are gonna starve to death in the
USA in the near term isnt really doing P.O. a service.
In truth, untold millions are sick and the number of
deaths caused by over consumption cant really be grasped or measured.

I will reiterate once more in an effort to drive home
the point.
MILLIONS are dying now for eating over processed and
over abundant foods that ARENT natural.
This isnt ancient Romans eating off lead dinner plates
but its close enough.

Now i will end with a rousing rendition of .....
"THERES TWO THINGS IN LIFE THAT MONEY CANT BUY...
THATS TRUE LOVE ....AND HOME GROWN TOMATERS"
Everyone sing along now when the corus comes around again!

All of these methods move nutrients from location A to location B.

QED. Brilliant. As usual, I suppose you'll just get the silent treatment from your adversaries. So I'm not surprised you throw up your hands now and then. But keep it coming all the same.

Yup,

Reading all this nice yuppie ideas on 'backyard' gardening I am struck by the inanity of it all.

Weather,sufficient rain,supplies of seed stock,gas to run tillers,means to store and preserve,no pesticides,no insecticides,no N,P,K and the list goes on and on.

These people are playing 'wishing games'.

If your not way way into your soil and all the rest then its too late and you won't make it. If you not out in the outback already then its likely too late. You neighbor will easily pick you off and take what he wants or the local gangbangers from the nearby city/hood will take it and you will die begging on your knees.

I think most all posting these wishing games are about 3 years too late. Its coming already folks. $40 a bu for home grown peaches, signs of the times,signs of the times.

Airdale-been there and done it all and its not that frigging easy especially for yuppies and women who have to go to school to learn how to light an oven........watching Emeril or Iron Chefs won't make it

And the worst thing we can do is consume it.

IPCC AR 4, 2007:

Http://www.ipcc.ch/

Yeah.....pick me...pick me
Ive got a idea.
Well......not really an idea, but a historical reference.
Some dame who had the chutzpah to order the entree for
all the others in her little dinner party exclaimed
"LET THEM EAT CAKE"
And the first chop-o-matic food processor was born!
Well...it wasnt used to chop food at first....but
a guy named Ron Popeil was in the crowd and saw the
before mentioned skirt lose her head and came up with
the idea of a food processor.

BUT WAIT!!!....theres more!!!...no there isnt...just
kidding.

Five billion people won't die unless they get nuked or something, and even then we'd have to work pretty hard on it.

As Colin Tudge points out (though he overstates the points somewhat), at the end of the last Ice Age the world population was about 10 million. By 1930 when fossil fuel inputs started becoming significant - the start of the Oil Age - it was 2,000 million. Thus, traditional organic agriculture took us from 10 to 2,000 million people.

Today it’s 6,700 million, more or less - but the total area planted with crops has increased by 50% since the 1930s, so that we can fairly say that 3,000 million were and could be supported without any fossil fuel inputs worth speaking of. Thus, from 10 to 3,000 million - with no black crap except animal manure.

And of course today around half the world’s food, currently sufficient for 10 billion people (if evenly distributed and not diverted to livestock and biofuels) is produced without significant fossil fuel inputs. So that we can fairly say that simple improvements in organic farming and spreading of the use of land can support 5,000 million at least.

Thus, the implication that around 5,500 million of the world’s people owe their existence to fossil fuel inputs into agriculture is wrong.

There is relatively little oil involved in growing food. A small amount is used to make pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. But nitrogen fertiliser is made from natural gas. Oil is used in harvesting food (specifically, tractors and combine harvesters for grains) and in transporting food, while coal (for electricity) is used in storing food (canning it, refrigerating, etc). A lack of oil thus does not mean less food can be grown, rather it means that it must be grown more locally.

It’s also worth remembering that peak oil does not mean that one day the tap runs dry. It simply means that the supply of oil drops and its price rises; the same goes for natural gas and coal. At some point, fossil fuels become too valuable to just burn - but they may still be available at a decent price for other uses - such as agriculture.

I realise that this non-doomerist message of "no dieoff" is one which will disappoint a lot of people who were really hoping to be sitting on top of their ammo crates gunning down hordes of cannibal suburbanites, but really that's the way things look.

None of which means there will be no trouble, no civil conflicts and the like; merely that there is nothing inherent in agriculture which insists that we use fossil fuel inputs. We strongly overstate their importance in keeping us alive, especially oil.

And don't forget to choose varieties that will be suited to what your local climate will be like in 5 (and more) years time, not now.

Oh, the joys of climate change.

I think you may be a bit optimistic.

I think you may need a square kilometer of solar panels to make fertilizer and fuel cell hydrogen in any meaningful quantities.

Organic farming is actually viable if the desire is there. Remember grandparents had no chemical Nitrogens, and they made farming work.

Plant Castor beans for lamps, ox for plough, wife for labour, kids for clean up and all is well.

Graham.