My friend, you need a recreational drug of choice.

What graphs? Why can't demand [planet-wide total] drop just because some people already pay more than others?

These are testing times. Let's get along, there are going to be plenty problems ahead.

You only have a point in that oil pessimists have historically used heuristics and qualitative arguments instead of drawing on real quantitative arguments backed by formal reasoning. Some of us are trying to change this. It is a slow process however, as whenever you go down that route, other critics want you to "dumb down" your arguments to make it more entertaining and palatable to a wider audience. So we are in a possible catch-22. The key is to make the arguments bullet-proof and therefore critic-proof.

Demand has dropped, because society could not afford high priced petroleum products,

This is a generalization and an unsupported assertion on your part.

At the risk of speaking for Gail (something I am in no way qualified to do), I don't think that this remark was the point of the article. Whether the current demand destruction is oil price-related or not is, frankly, irrelevant. I think the point is...

- there are limits to growth
- oil is one of them
- so are other resources, environmental concerns, financial issues, societal issues, etc.
- they are interrelated and do not function in isolation (and cannot be addressed in isolation)
- so, what do you do about it?

Do you put everything into a single grand strategy, do you concentrate on small projects that are as close to 100% doable as possible and that will have some longer-term (albeit smaller or more local) benefit, or do you try something in between?

Personally, I think this question is fundamental, but, probably, unanswerable and, possibly, irrelevant. How can it be fundamental and irrelevant? Because, while critical, I don't think that there is currently political or societal will to even consider the answer. In fact, the will currently doesn't exist even to ask the question, or to acknowledge the true scope of the problem. In short, the vast majority of people either don't know, don't understand, don't believe, or don't care about the above limits to growth list and its implications.

I think that the first step, at least in western capitalist democracies, has to be a concerted, all out, government supported (probably mandated and funded as well), public relations campaign to a) describe the situation, b) show the "potential" (inevitable) downside of our existing system, c) create a crisis-mode mentality, and d) explain to people that, given the nature of the "crisis that is never going away", the only sane response will require a level of commitment and sacrifice substantially longer and harder than that made for WWII. We're talking about a media/PR effort that dwarfs the propaganda efforts made during the world wars and the cold war. It would require cooperation (or, at least utilization) of the PR/advertising/marketing industries. By itself, it would be an enormous (and expensive and politically daunting and potentially panic-inducing) undertaking.

However, without such an undertaking, only an actual crisis (or more likely, an extended series of crises) will generate the societal and political will to actually understand the current situation, consider the inevitable situation, and then to ask hard questions. And you cannot get answers until you ask the questions. Eventually, limits to growth will generate crises sufficient to move public and political opinion. Period.

Do we want to wait for the limits to move opinion, or do we want to move the debate as soon as possible so that we can get on with formulating and implementing some kind of response? And the related question, if we do wait for the limits to force a change in opinion, will there be any responses left from which we can choose, other than "hide and watch"?

Brian

So clearly there are societies that can afford high priced petroleum products.

Not true - oil is fungible, in Europe, as a society, we pay the same price for it as you do in the USA - what is different is where essential taxes are levied.

In Europe we chose to tax some fuels, in the USA you tax different things ... but the net result is we pay the same for fuel and the same % of income for taxes.

If you have ever travelled in the world you will know that most people do not consume anything like as much energy as the USA, and many societies still use sustainable organic farming using draught animals. Only a small % of the world's population live in OECD countries - the vast majority do not live like you!

Demand of gasoline for personal use isn't likely to drop much in the short term since it is more or less non-discretionary - we are all more or less locked into our way of living/working /shopping/schooling so have no option but to pay the price. Our ways of life are non-negotiable - if it is based on consumption of gasoline that means less money for discretionary purchases.

So, the demand that will fall is for the oil embedded in discretionary purchases - such as flying long distance to go on vacation, trucking the goods we don't buy etc. Demand for those fuels is already way down, as we would expect.

Europe has for some time been paying prices for FF products that are much higher than any prices ever seen in North America.

The above figure illustrates OECD Europe total petroleum consumption for the period June 1987 through November 2008 as reported by EIA plotted against the left hand axis. NOTE: Axis not zero scaled. A 12 Month Moving Average (12 MMA) is added (black line) to smoothen seasonal swings in consumption. The diagram also shows the movements (thick red line) of the average monthly oil price (Europe Brent Spot FOB) plotted against the right hand axis.

What the diagram also illustrates is that oil/energy needs to be affordable. In any society demand destruction will happen as the prices moves northwards.

Europeans don't pay any more for oil than we do. Individual consumers do, true, due to taxes, but that merely redistributes income within the society. The actual cost, in real terms, is no different.

Bop I guess you and all your friends must be rather prosperous, and therefore vaccinated against any understanding of folks with just enough money to get by day to day or week to week.

I personally know lots of working or at least recently working textile workers, furniture workers,loggers etc.The ones who have lost thier jobs don't eat at Mcdonalds anymore, and when gas hit 4 bucks, I know that friends of mine starting packing thier lunch so thier kids could still have school lunch money.

Many tens if millions of us right here in the good old USA had to park the second car, give up the occasional weekend at the beach, rent a movie instead of going to the movies,put off getting their teeth cleaned or filled.

Now I wiil not argue with the proposition that we can and will adjust to high energy prices, given time,but I believe it would improve your understanding of what life is like for the bottom third of us yankees if you had to live for a few years on twenty or thirty thousand gross while making car payments, rent or house payment,groceries,dental and prom for the kids etc.

Never mind about the second and third world, where twenty thousand is simply unimaginable to most folks.

As all these people in the aggregate cut back on their relatively few discretionary purchases,and wear their jeans and shoes longer, and substitute beans for vegetables, and continue to drive the old car without fixing the dented fender,and get buy with the furniture they have,things sort of snowball if you see what I mean.The snowball might even eventually roll over the business or industry that provides your paycheck.

Gail is in my estimation one of the most interesting and thought provoking bloggers anywhere.Give her credit for mixing in a little every day commonsense with the hard numbers so beloved of the financial types.If I remember correctly, the entire lot of them , with all their graphs and spreadsheets and software and tech support and presumably copipous access to inside information(given the fact that most of them work for banks, govt,big biz in general)failed to predict the biggest crash in modern history.

Europe has for some time been paying prices for FF products that are much higher than any prices ever seen in North America.
So clearly there are societies that can afford high priced petroleum products. And if this statement is true then your assertion is false.

Flawed critique there. Sure there are some people in Europe/uk who have been paying those high prices. It doesn't follow that all or most have been able to do so easily. (I myself haven't driven a car within near-living memory.) The fact that some societies can supposedly (not noted the onset of devastating economic breakdown yet?) cope with high prices does not prove that all can do so easily. Europe/UK just happen to be so much more efficiently set-up than American dreamland is. And some other countries are poorer.

If you have all this knowledge and understanding

Gee, you appear to be in a mood BOP. Gail is not engaged in some showing off exercise here, she's just trying to contribute a useful post. Not the most logically-presentationally brilliant, sure.

then it should permit you to provide a set of testable conclusions by which we can determine if you are right or wrong.

Firstly, Gail presents several lines of thinking rather than one. Secondly, there's your nice fallacy that a theory must be on notice to provide "a set of testable conclusions by which we can determine if you are right or wrong". In repudiation of which please see the last paragraph of this paper http://cogprints.org/5207

BOP, do you use FF? What is you personal experience compared to the "unsupported assertion"? I know my personal experience. I have talked to many other people to gage their experience. I have heard and read accounts of many other people. Their experience is largely consistent with my experience. I think the assertion is "reasonably" supported. Observation and experience, together with simple logic provide perfectly valid support for an assertion. If you disagree I'll like to hear your agrument.

"Europe has for some time been paying prices for FF products that are much higher than any prices ever seen in North America."

Nonsense on its face.

Everyone pays the same price for FF products, subject to subsidy or tax by a local government. If taxed, those monies flow into other governmental programs for someone's benefit somewhere, presumably other areas of society. If subsidized, those monies come from other governmental operations.

So when a European pays at the pump whatever they're paying now, say $US8.00 a gallon compared to a $US2.50 gallon in the States, both those pump prices are above a global market price of, say, $US2.00 a gallon.

The 6 dollars and 50 cents per gallon, respectively, go to pay for different amounts of societal support, like healthcare, road repair, the military, or governmental boondoggles masquerading as strength, prestige, and wealth.

The Europeans aren't paying more for their gas than the Americans. They have their gas taxed differently is all, with different benefits received from the larger tax revenues than the Americans have.

The argument isn't about Europeans paying more for their gas. The argument is about what those additional tax revenues above the market price of fossil fuels go toward paying.

And, clearly, many people who are part of this debate about money and fossil fuel affordability have forgotten that money is only an abstraction for resource exchange. And it is the resource exchange, not the money, which matters most.

When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

When your only tool is money, everything looks like it can be bought.

On making informed guesses about the future. as per FarmerMac

Ok...but to me some things are pretty evident and I would suppose its not fair to call them facts since the crowd here on TOD is big on facts.

I am not so big on facts. For many reasons and not to go into that right now but here is what I see as pretty much inevitable.

Things will collapse. They already are collapsing. I see no silver bullets that can save billions of people. Light rail,PV,Solar,Wind etc. Its not going to work long-haul wise.

What we have done is utterly destroyed what might have worked, (forests,wildlife,aquatic life,the weather,stole all the elements for fuel and gadgets et) ..worked in the future but are now gone are fast disappearing.

So its factual to me that given the above we will have to heat our bodies when it gets cold and need a way to cook food. Two of Thoureau's biggies I might add. Body heat. Clothing is next to preserve that heat. A small type of dwelling to alter the weather in the small confines.

What does it take to do this then?
Wood as fuel,wood as a building material,wood for the fiber or other plants to make clothing or animals skins.

Note all those are gone or are disappearing.

This to me is a fact. I see it and I read about it. It exists.

Timber takes a long time to grow. Various types of timber is already mostly gone. Oak is a very valuable timber. Its gone almost. We cut all the good timber in most of the Eastern USA forests. We are still destroying. Hardwood has properties that are very important.

So there it is. A huge lack of the earth's resouces and a very large number of inhabitants.

It will be Mad Max. If we are lucky. Bartertown hopefully.

But what little is left of those natural resources could easily be decimated by raving hordes in very short order.Then we will have nothing and will be remembering how this happened in many areas of Africa and other now barren countries already.

And there are no more buffalo chips!...What then Kemo Sabe?

I keep my Fox Fire series of books close at hand. I keep a good watch on the woodlands. I only plant open pollen varieties. I only have a few more good years. These are also Facts to me.

Airdale-you may call me a dreamer,and I might be the only one
(At least around my area)..but what else is one to do?

PS.Hunter-gatherers? Whats left to hunt? Whats left to gather?
No mushrooms grow like they once did. I found exaclty ONE morel in the woods this spring and can't find one sprig of ginseng. 5 years ago I could find enough for a meal. 30 years ago they grew like magic in the woods,overnite even. I used to harvest enough ginseng to last a year. Now I see none. Gone. Perhaps for good.

Its the same with everything else. I have pretty much given up on getting some honey bees. No candles then for the dark. No sweetening for the future. We killed them. EROEI is not good for bees.

Swine Flu may help...

Now, if this current modest 1.3% per year could continue, the world population would grow to a density of one person per square meter on the dry land surface of the earth in just 780 years, and the mass of people would equal the mass of the earth in just 2400 years. Well, we can smile at those, we know they couldn't happen. This one make for a cute cartoon; the caption says, “Excuse me sir, but I am prepared to make you a rather attractive offer for your square.”

There's a very profound lesson in that cartoon. The lesson is that zero population growth is going to happen. Now, we can debate whether we like zero population growth or don't like it, it’s going to happen. Whether we debate it or not, whether we like it or not, it’s absolutely certain. People could never live at that density on the dry land surface of the earth. Therefore, today’s high birth rates will drop; today’s low death rates will rise till they have exactly the same numerical value. That will certainly be in a time short compared to 780 years. So maybe you're wondering then, what options are available if we wanted to address the problem.

In the left hand column, I’ve listed some of those things that we should encourage if we want to raise the rate of growth of population and in so doing, make the problem worse. Just look at the list. Everything in the list is as sacred as motherhood. There's immigration, medicine, public health, sanitation. These are all devoted to the humane goals of lowering the death rate and that’s very important to me, if it’s my death they’re lowering. But then I’ve got to realise that anything that just lowers the death rate makes the population problem worse.

There’s peace, law and order; scientific agriculture has lowered the death rate due to famine—that just makes the population problem worse. It’s widely reported that the 55 mph speed limit saved thousands of lives—that just makes the population problem worse. Clean air makes it worse.

Now, in this column are some of the things we should encourage if we want to lower the rate of growth of population and in so doing, help solve the population problem. Well, there’s abstention, contraception, abortion, small families, stop immigration, disease, war, murder, famine, accidents. Now, smoking clearly raises the death rate; well, that helps solve the problem.

Remember our conclusion from the cartoon of one person per square meter; we concluded that zero population growth is going to happen. Let’s state that conclusion in other terms and say it’s obvious nature is going to choose from the right hand list and we don't have to do anything—except be prepared to live with whatever nature chooses from that right hand list. Or we can exercise the one option that’s open to us, and that option is to choose first from the right hand list. We gotta find something here we can go out and campaign for. Anyone here for promoting disease? (audience laughter)

We now have the capability of incredible war; would you like more murder, more famine, more accidents? Well, here we can see the human dilemma—everything we regard as good makes the population problem worse, everything we regard as bad helps solve the problem. There is a dilemma if ever there was one.

Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy

Why are we limited to the earth's resources? We need an international effort on a space program that allows continued growth along with an agressive program to slow and eventually stop the depletion of our local (earth based) resources.

I swear I will never read The Oil Drum ever again while drinking coffee!
when I read this comment it came out of my nose in a high pressure stream and sprayed all over my laptop screen and keyboard.

Nice one! Then we can mine all the green cheese on the moon too!

Gravity.

There is a lot of it to overcome. Here and at the destinations.

- It would be like driving to the next state to get gum.

..and it's Uphill both ways.

..and you probably have to buy a new car and repave your driveway each time you do it.

Duder,

You mean there is oil on Mars!?

Sweet!

Paperguy,

I presume you are kidding. Otherwise, this needs to go to the top of the list.

Why are we limited to the earth's resources?

Gravity is one good answer.

We need an international effort on a space program that allows continued growth

1) You assume that growth is good.
2) Plenty of 'space problems' that can be solved on earth 1st.
Like:
AI's that can actually run a space mining operation
Material science that can handle -300 to +300 degree temp shifts (how about -300 to 2000+ for the metal smelting furnace in space), the radiation, the abrasion of mining on the equipment.
Materials to make the launch of whatever into space possible - like the space elevator idea.

If the same girl waited till she was 39 to have her first child, there would only be two generations in the same time, and she would be unlikely to have a second child.

Yes but the child would be at increased risk of things like Down's Syndrome etc... So while it may sound like a good idea at first glance there may be unintended societal consequences.

We certainly need to find ways to reduce the population growth rate. I'm a supporter of global family planning programs. Preventative birth control, condoms, Plan B Morning After Pill and even as a last resort legal abortions.

As for those who object to such ideas based on religious beliefs all I can say is that their beliefs are detrimental to the general good and they should either reexamine them or offer workable solutions, BTW abstinence programs don't work...

One problem I have with the post is that it does not bring up the military element. As Klare (and others) have pointed out in the book by the same name, resource wars have been common and will become more frequent and will have a large effect on how much oil comes out of the ground, where, who has control over it, and how much oil is wasted slaughtering people.

It's not just that resource wars waste oil and destroy infrastructure. In primitive warfare, the tribe that outpopulates its neighbors will usually win. The developed world has been able to leverage its limited population with the use of complex, fossil-fueled killing machines and also superior training and discipline, but future isn't bright for either discipline or maintaining complex machinery. For this reason, I'm a pessimist about humans voluntarily limited their population.

Deliberate agriculture allows much higher population density than hunter-gatherer, even if the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is easier and healthier (which it probably is). Farmers outbreed and kill the hunter-gatherers. Been there, done that. The world is not going back to hunter-gatherer.

I ran a guest post in October 2008 called Agriculture: Unsustainable Resource Depletion Began 10,000 Years Ago. It argued exactly what you are saying. Tilling the land causes erosion. People don't get a very good food mix with what they themselves can grow. It is terribly difficult work, especially without animal labor.

At the beginning of my paragraph describing the situation, I said the method used long ago "sort of worked". Hunter-gatherer seemed to work better, but then population limits were much lower--maybe 5 million.

On substitution, that's where a pile of the oil has been going:

* Energy to drive less efficient processes, because the quality substrates for easy methods are gone.
* Mining
* Deeper water wells
* Materials (plastics) to replace plant-fiber cloth, metal, glass, and wood.
* Glue to hold together what passes for 'wood' in much of construction and furnishing.
* Heating, instead of other sources like wood.
* Transport to redistribute what resources are left.

Oil is THE reason we've been able to keep this up this long, and push all the other resources to the brink in such a synchronized fashion. It substitutes, it compensates, it's cheap. For now.

The tax code presently gives equal benefit for every additional child; that could be modified. Public policy & finances in general could be "reset" so that parents themselves bear more of the full cost for large families.

I think one of the issues on having children is that most of us talking about the subject have already had children ourselves. Telling our children not to have children, or other people's children not to have children, does not go over well.

Also, with peak oil, pension systems and social security systems are seriously in doubt. If you don't have children who outlive you, who are you going to count on?

But sadly the Transition Towns movement shows great unrealism in this regard. We have discussed this before. Needs to be smallish 100-300 groups of genuine cooperators (and remote from urban) rather than just some town/city having delusions of becoming a genuine mutually-supporting community by sheer hope and determination alone.

I have gotten to a fairly advanced age without ever really realizing just how world-dominating the US military really has become. I became more aware of this reading "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman, recommended. At the start of WWII, eg 1939, Britain was the country who, with their naval fleet, dominated the world. 60 years on, the US now dominates the world militarily by such a larger margin than Britain ever did it is mind-boggling. The US can put naval forces at any place on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans simultaneously which are impossible for any other country to even consider matching in a contest even on their own waters. Each of those naval forces carries sufficient air power to challenge any hostile air force it might encounter. Then there is the independent Air Force with sufficient power to obliterate any other air power in the world, plus the attached air arms of the ground forces which in close support can again independently challenge any foreign air power likely encountered. The mechanized ground forces are formidable now, their only weakness being the US citizen's unwillingness to sustain even minor casualties overseas. Once the "DOD" perfects robot ground soldiers, that last limitation will disappear, along with any further need to recruit, train, supply and motivate human battlefield soldiers. Then there's the underseas forces, with attack subs sufficient to independently obliterate any foreign naval fleet, and with silent attack missile subs which can obliterate any target in the world many times over. Then there's the minor and auxiliary forces, often themselve having sufficient strength to challenge mid-sized countries.

Added together, it an incredible array, which does do a decent job of removing major war as an option in inter-continental diplomacy. I suppose my only question is "Is Washington the proper place where such power should be totally controlled?"

Dmitry Orlov has talked about the defense spending issue as well. He views this as one of the causes of USSR's collapse, and sees that it will play a role in the collapse of USA.

Someone else pointed out that this is a way to employ young people. If you can sell bonds to fund the military (or just print money), it is possible for the country to do this for virtually no cost.

It seems as though the financial system will be the deciding factor on the amount spent. If the US can get away with its current approach, it will continue to do so. At some point, the rest of the world will blow a whistle on our approach. But once this changes, a whole lot of other things will change as well.

Gail is a whole systems thinker.

I generally appreciate whole systems thinkers as they see the the big picture where others get lost in the details. These whole systems thinkers have alerted us to the big issues of our time when others were caught up in believing the impossible. I've listed what I consider to be the big issues in chronological order of appearance in the US:

1. financial crisis
2. energy shortfall
3. political crisis
4. food shortfall

(I've only included issues that are apparent at the individual level. Climate change and over-population will be manifested at the local level as one or more of the above. In other countries the order may need to be arranged.)

My problem with whole systems thinkers is that they present their insights as if the whole system were the only system.

The fact is that the reality for individuals and communities is much more local and need not look like what happens at the more abstract whole system level. Local communities are of course influenced by what happens to the whole system but I believe there is much more autonomy then some at TOD believe.

A couple of historical examples:

1) In 1936, whole systems thinkers in Jewish stettels in Poland would have advised their kin that "the end of the world is coming". For their immediate communities they were absolutely right. Throughout central Europe some of their predictions would have come close to the mark. But South America and West Africa, though affected by the war, saw something entirely different.

2) In 1985, whole systems thinkers in the Soviet Union would have seen the "end of the world as we know it". And they would have rightly predicted an impending collapse, details of which Dmitry Orlov has documented for us. But most of the rest of the world suffered little negative impact.

Now I don't mean to sound like a nay-sayer. I believe that energy issues are very important and will affect a large percentage of the global population. But I feel like sometimes the discussion about what is going to happen to the world as we know it is really about what will happen to certain American suburbs.

And I happen to be very optimistic about the amount by which we can reduce our energy consumption. As I like say to my friends: "The best and worst think about the American lifestyle is the level of waste. What's bad is obvious but what's good is that we can cut our level of consumption of everything by half and still live like kings compared to most of the world."

Of course there will be political fallout and a massive restructuring of the kinds of jobs people have but is that really "the end of the world"?

I live in a functional, in-city neighborhood in Seattle which has a mild climate, lots of hydropower and an educated and concerned citizenry. We own both the utility that provides us electricity and the entire watershed that provides us water. Washington is a food exporting state with a port for low-energy transportation of goods. I happen to believe that my community will do tolerably well going forward even if we have to cut our energy use by 20% - 50%.

I think one of the reasons people predicting capital 'C' Collapse are surprised is that they imagine our society is primarily engineered and susceptible to catastrophic failure whereas I believe that my local community is primarily organic in nature and more robust to change.

Call me an optimistic pessimist if you will but I see the list of crises before us as a huge opportunity to do things differently (better) than we have before. Yes, some people will get hurt along the way. They always have. And yes, more of those that get hurt may live in America than in years past. But some countries and cities (like Seattle!) will show the way forward into a newer, more sustainable future.

-- Jon

I agree. The fact that this is a difficult and time consuming process means we need to start on it now, even if there is some chance we can put off the absolute need for them for 20 years.

It was crazy to lose what we had. Some of the plants might now be useful for slightly different areas. Using these seeds will make agriculture more resilient when faced with drought or excess water, and will limit the need for irrigation. But it will also lower yields per acre, which some may object to.

Seed costs.

Last I heard I believe hybrid/genetic seed corn (perhaps BT as well) was in the neighborhood of $200 / bag. There may be discounts or not. Depends.

Now a bag will usually plant about 2 1/2 acres depending again on what it known as 'poplulation'...which is seed drop spacing and row spacing.

Both of which has been getting smaller and smaller so 'pops' keep getting higher and I will note that this is somewhat smallish ears. Compared to open pollen that is. And usually no more than two ears per stalk.Sometimes just one...and if the heat gets high then the yield is dropped and the corn doesn't pollinate very well. High temps kill pollen.

So around here its about break even at a little bit under 3 dollar corn. Avr yields are 150..which is nice but you will hear of braggarts shouting they get 200 and over.

The usual USA average yield is close to 150.

I once kept some of this corn from the combine. Not anymore.
I far prefer the open pollen which I harvest about 2 or 3 bushels of and thats plenty for my needs. Plus I get the cobs and the shucks.
And its sweet enough to eat for dinner as well. Truckers Favorite.

I once asked a sorta friend who did owe me some favors since I sold him some big round hay bales at a very cheap price , asked him for a small amount of seed corn...maybe a gallon jar...but he whined and bitched and said I needed to buy my own. Next time his cows got on my land I told him to get them off,or the sheriff would impound them or I would fill them with buckshot.

He wasn't raised here so he is a fathead , and has a fat ass as well. I look the other way when hes around.

If we crash so hard that we wind up farming and consuming on the local level as a matter of necessity,and the seed and fertilizer companies are all out of business, then all this fuss about hybrids and engineered crops versus the older open pollinated strains and varieties will mean something.If,however, we continue to have a viable industrial base,even if it is much smaller than currently, then the vast majority of our crops will continue to to be grown from hybrid seed and ,increasingly, from genetically engineered seed.

The fact that farmers are subject to the hayseed stereotype does not mean that they can't keep books.Some of us are (not me!) quite as at home programming and spreadsheeting as your average accountant.All of us who earn a living farming are pretty good at tallying up costs and returns.The SIMPLE reason that hybrids dominate is that, taken all the way around, they are FAR more productive,FAR more disease resistant, FAR better suited to long distance shipping,FAR better suited to mechanical harvesting,FAR fewer days to harvest,FAR longer or shorter,as desired, in terms of days that the crop can be harvested.

For example,we grow tomato varieties that produce just about all summer right up to frost in our garden, but commercial growers want successive fields to ripen to picking stage a few days apart so as to keep their employees and equipment busy.The canneries and supermarkets want as nearly constant supply as possible.We grow commercially developed varieties of apples and peaches for the same reasons.The earlier varieties enable us to get to market sooner.The later varieties of peaches extend our sales season,as peaches don't store well.When our nieghbors who grow cabbage have problems with a particular fungus or virus etc, they plant a resistant variety the following season. Fewer days to harvest means some vegetables and grains can be double cropped.

Now the primary reason most of these varieties are available can be summed up in two words:hybrids and more hybrids.The only real difference between hybridizing crops and developing new open pollinated varieties is that the first method takes a few years and the second a few decades or even longer.Of course the seed companies get patents,and you must buy seed every year,but generally speaking,hybrids out compete open pollinated crops on a commercial farm the same way a tractor outcompetes a horse. I can't afford a workhorse as long as diesel is less than maybe 25 dollars or even more a gallon, because I can do more work in a day with my small diesel tractor than my Pa used to do in two weeks with a mule.As a matter of fact,I believe I could pay fifty dollars cheaper than I could work a horse.

This is not to say that we are as a society not missing out on some wonderful eating experiences, or that if you want to be self sufficient that you shouldn't stick to the old open pollinated crops.You will certainly get yields sufficient for your purposes, assuming you are competent.On the other hand, you will find that you still have just about the same problems with Mother Nature"s freeloaders(rats, mice,viruses,fungus,mites,worms,bugs,slugs,grasshoppers,rabbits,deer,birds,aphids)as you would if you were to be growing hybrids.

Most of our agricultural problems that have to do with pests and diseases are rooted in the fact that we are locked into the monoculture system.Replacing a thousand acres of hybrid corn with an open pollinated variety will not cure this problem.Monoculture is a xxxx big complicated issue and I can't write about it without spending a lot of time organizing what needs to be said.Perhaps someday if someboby else doesn't do it here, maybe...

You will find that as fertilizer and irrigation become more expensive, the seed companies will be coming out with varieties that out compete any existing open pollinated variety grown in adjacent fields with comparable inputs. This should not suprise anyone any more than the fact that newer model cars get better mileage than older ones,and will continue to do so if the typical buyer shops on the basis of fuel economy.Farmers shop on the basis of profitability.

Incidentally ,there are quite a few farmers who as a matter of prudence, tradition, or historical interest are growing hierloom varieties of various crops and tree fruits.There are also a number of organized seed banks that are preserving the older varieties as an insurance policy against the loss of genetic diversity.

If the numbers change back in favor of the old time varieties due to unforeseen circumstances you will be amazed at just how fast farmers can change their strategies.If we need it, a thousand acres of open pollinated corn grown for seed this year will provide seed enough for one hundred thousand or more acres next year. This kind of exponential growth is not generally encountered in the business world ,so it is not suprising that most folks are unaware of just how fast things can be done an a farm.

If however we do need to go back to open pollinated corn, we will need to expand the acreage by maybe 50 per cent, which means a lot more plowing,cultivating, or spraying herbicide at the least etc. Fifty percent more corn acreage means less acreage for wheat or soybeans or whatever, or maybe just reclaiming a few million acres of farmland that has been going back to forest or converted into subdivisions.

Let me summarize that when it comes to problems with our food supply, worrying about hybrids is about like worrying about the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I suspect technology will still do a few more things, but it is difficult to overcome so many other obstacles.

Though I agree with much of your sentiment, I believe you have much of the technical incorrect. a) bird kills by modern wind turbines is a very insignificant problem (mainly a particular species of raptor in a particular part of CA with a particular outdated design of turbine.) b) curently common solar PV is agreed a deadend, but is not the benchmark by which solar generation should be measured. Small distributed solar-thermal-stirling-engine systems and/or optical rectenna if R&D can survive that long, are the proper evaluations.

Anyone reading this article actually know how to make a rope or feed themselves from the wild?

Yes.

And I still prefer every effort to retain and judiciously employ whatever technical and other common knowledge we've accumulated in the past several thousand years.

Maybe 1/3 of the world's population doesn't use the internet or cars. I would question whether many of them are still independent from our current situation.

In China and India, the types of rice are grown that are quite water dependent and fertilizer dependent. If the countries went back to older varieties and stopped using chemical fertilizers, it is likely yields would decline and they would not be able to feed their populations.

There are now huge cities in many quite poor countries. These cities depend on food being brought to them by some means of transportation, and on public water supplies.

Imagine a group of hunter gatherers feasting on the last known herd of mastodons which they had just recently run off of a cliff, bemoaning in their imaginations the famine to come. Even their wisest elders could not think of where they would go in order to find another herd. They were just going to need to subsist on wheat seeds for a while until more herd meat showed up. This subsistence might have lasted many generations but its outcome was agriculture.

I hope you were trying to be funny.

You sound like a cornucopian in a hard lander's clothing.

I appreciate your thoughts.

What end state do you see us arriving at and what means of transition do you think will be feasible? Have you seen the Transition Town movement? Are you a lifeboat proponent?

All well and good EXCEPT there are, in the present political-economic system operating in most countries, advantages to elites from increasing populations and disadvantages from decreasing (reductions in tax base, gross labour force, military age potential soldiers etc. etc.) Until I see a workable worldwide resolution to those issues, I'll continue to believe that any small local steps will be countered by elites.

Where do we get all of the batteries from? It is not just the $7,000 that is the problem.

If the price goes up, more people start defaulting on their loans, and we have more financial problems. They also stop buying discretionary items, and more people are laid off from work. But we are likely to get more oil, at least for a time, before production starts declining again.

I think the financial system will determine where (or whether) equilibrium is reached. If there is a complete breakdown in the financial system, it will be difficult to buy anything, oil-related or otherwise.

Lots of very smart people think the same (with variations, of course). I did too, for a while, but then, I got to thinking- Something wrong here, we aren't ALL stupid, are we? I thought of the retreat of the French army from Moscow. Everything a mess, no coordination, Nappy ran off to France, Cossacks butchering frienchies for sport and plunder. Everybody starving and freezing.

But, some people HAD looked ahead, knew what was coming, and prepared for it. Individual units, led by capable and energetic officers, got themselves ready, stored up food and furs, stuck together against the Cossacks, and came thru.

We can do the same-- some of us. Where I live, I know lots of people with the skills to grow food, make electricity, handle animals, make things out of trash, and on and on. And even more important, we have local leaders who can lead--I think.

You all should be concerned about nuclear war...support the 'A World Free of Nuclear Weapons' concept. Even if we don't use them, we and everyone else are spending ridiculous sums on these things, and the strategy that supports them...things that contribute NOTHING to solving any of the World's problems.

The major threat is nuclear terrorism (Los Angeles suddenly gets creamed from a device on a container ship) or an exchange between Pakistan and India.

I do not see any deliberate act from the major nuclear powers to end civilization...unless hard-core religious end-times fanatics somehow rise to the top positions of power in one or both of the top-two nuclear powers. That is motivation enough to dismantle these dangerous device, and blend down the innards to 'burn' in civilian nuclear reactors.

I am continually amazed at the justified concern about AGW, whilst everyone seems to think that the threat of nuclear Armageddon vaporized with the fall of the Berlin wall. People have short attention spans and excellent denial mechanisms. Unlike AGW, nuclear disarmament does not require trillions of dollars and potentially huge lifestyle changes, just some adults at the table who agree to put the guns down, then saw them in half.

I was one of Jay's supporters on the USENET during the 90's and once had the opportunity to visit with him in Hawaii. The Dieoff site was remarkable. He established energyresources and other groups at a site later purchased by Yahoo and was the first to post the Hubbert Center Newsletter on the internet. At the moment he seems obsessed with Milton Friedman. I found the situation regarding the possibility of nuclear war to be far scarier in the years following the late 40's.

Climate change, if it's caused by humans, could be such a limit. But the consequences of climate change are very small and mild and they will be for the next 30 to 50 years.

Tell that to the people of Victoria (Melbourne region) Australia where grain production has fallen by half.

There is a new one: http://noteviljustwrong.com/

Michael Moore may be popular and recognizable, and while not exactly disingenuous with his documentaries, he isn't exactly ingenuous either. I'd avoid him.

Here you go:

http://www.michaelmoore.com

Contacting Michael
If you have something you want to tell Michael directly, contact him at: mike at michaelmoore.com

Gail - why not consider going to the 'local' film school, finding some students who'd share your passion and do the documentary "yourself".

Any film needs an accountant.....

Perhaps I don't fully understand the issue.

There are several reason why open pollinated seed seems desirable:
1. No dependence on a vulnerable long-distance seed company.
2. Farmers can save their own seed and re-use it.
3. Non-hybrid seed will have more variability, and thus at least some of the seeds will survive, if the weather is too hot/ cold / wet/ dry.
4. Many of the older seed varieties were better adapted to water levels without irrigation, and to natural fertility levels. If we lose irrigation and purchased fertilizer, we will need seeds adapted to the condition of the land, as it really is with modern improvements, even if yields are lower.

How do you see seed companies surviving long-term? Can they get along with virtually no fossil fuels? How are farmers going to afford purchased seed, if they are very poor?

Would farmers be able to save seeds and replant with self-pollinating rice, wheat, and barley?

All of this would probably make good material for a post.

It is possible for 'both sides' to be both right and wrong about plant breeding issues. A few points
1. Grains provide about 2/3 of human calories (for reference see Dyson 1999 in my guest-post in March http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5181 )
2. We should not confuse 'farm-saved' seed with 'open pollination' or indeed with self-pollination'. 'Hybrid seed' is a special issue. Farmer-saved wheat for example can continue a lineage for thousands of years. Hybrid seed is a one-off, and needs purchasing each year. (The big example is corn / maize, although there are many modern hybrid-seed vegetables). US corn crops have benefited since the 60s-70s from higher yields from 'hybrid vigor'. This was not without a hiccup early on because most of the US crop at one stage derived from a single maternal lineage, and therefor contained the same mitochondrial genome (a non-nucleus genome).This happened to make the whole crop susceptible to a previously minor pathogen, which proceeded to a continent-wide epidemic. They had to change that situation.
(As has been pointed out, it is still possible to grow non-hybrid corn.)
3. Susceptibility to disease is indeed a problem. Vast areas under monoculture do provide potential for pandemics or serious regional losses. The modern varieties of cereals have been bred to take advantage of high soil nitrogen (thus allowing per capita production to keep up with human population increase - see again my March post).
High selection pressure during breeding though means that there has been a loss of some genetic potential in the modern genomes, and pest resistance has had to be 'bred back in'. This is much more difficult than having a very wide range of resistance already there 'on background'. Modern varieties tend to need routine protection from pesticide, particularly fungicides. (I grow small amounts of an ancient cultivated species of wheat, Emmer Wheat, used in the bronze age, ancient Egypt etc. It has been remarkably free of pathogens for 25 years using my own saved-seed. Yields are small compared with modern wheat although the high protein content >20% compensates a bit for that.)
4. There has been a vast loss of diversity even in farm-saved seed where high yielding varieties have taken over. A 1979 estimate calculated that most of the 30,000 traditional rice varieties in India were replaced by just 10 varieties in 73% of the cultivated area. Similarly, of 10,000 wheat varieties in China, 1000 remained by 1995. Maintenance by farmers world-wide of local 'landraces' has been judged essential for the future plant breeding.
5. Ownership of the world inventory of crops is a very big issue, and this has increasingly come into the hands of international corporations, initially based in the USA. I have short accounts of points 3 and 4 in a chapter I wrote for a technical book on biotechnology published in 1998.

Are you looking for good stock tips?

Or are you interested in real life or a make believe gambling game?

It is the financial folken that have been responsible for one of our immediate crises.

I really don't give a shit what stocks you hold. I don't see this as a place to lay off tips and play the frigging market.

So flag me then. I don't care.

I didn't come here to garner ideas on stock manipulations.

Airdale

Agricultural land. However be aware that we have a huge bubble in this area. If your going to invest you need to spend a lot of time looking at prices where agricultural land can cash flow. You probably want to buy in a area your familiar with and frequent. In general if you read you will find the best land probably is not worth more than 2000 and acre using old pre peak assumptions. I'd suggest post peak its probably a lot less.

At some point I suspect we will see America's export market for food begin to collapse as our customers countries unravel. Egypt and Pakistan for example. Its not that they don't want or need food but these countries could easily become so disrupted that your talking about food aid that difficult to deliver.

Next a lot of the grain is used to feed animals for meat expect people at some point to cut down on meat this will lead to a large surplus of grain for human use.

All of these factors point towards a collapse in grain and soybean prices.
Next of course peak oil means input costs should skyrocket.

Can you say flat broke farmers ?

This situation should result in a huge collapse of the large collective farms. Now whats interesting is in some ways these farms are to big to fail often covering several thousand acres. The first ones that go under will be bought but fairly quickly no one will be willing to buy several thousand acre blocks of farmland.

Next of course you have large blocks of farmland bought speculating in the price bubble and in the housing bubble at some point the owner of this land will be forced to dump it. There is and enormous amount of land primarily agricultural thats been tied up in multi-decade speculation. More bought recently with leverage.
Expect huge tracks to enter the market and simply have no buyer at effectively any price.

Eventually they will be forced to sell these huge in smaller chunks piecemeal at rock bottom prices.

Finally at this point esp if you do your homework land is a good investment. I'd suggest if your serious about this spend some time with the Amish and find out what they are willing to pay for land that can cash flow using their methods. Also organic farmers but take any number they give and cut it by 70%.

In any case at some point farming won't look so bad to a lot of people and smaller farms would become viable. The nice thing is if your in the land for cash at a cheap price you can become your own bank and accept part of the crop as payment from someone willing to farm it. In the interm you can put the land under a restoration program for several years. Probably use it as grazing land etc. Eventually once things start to settle down you should be able to get it back into production and cash flow of the crop.

Probably more to it than that but farmland has value in the sense that you can always plant a crop and sell it. If you can sell it for more than it cost to grow is a open question but at some point obviously the system will balance such that farming is profitable. It has to :)

One rule of farmland is buy when the oldtimers buy and sell when they sell. But productive land is always capable of providing some return if your careful maybe not every year and you have to be able to not plant or plow the crop under as needed but its one of the few areas that will on average make a profit if you have zero debt. Certainly not every year and its not a easy business by any means but you have a fairly steady supply of customers.

Also once mechanized farming collapses because of ruinous fertilizer costs coupled with all the financial factors I mentioned a lot of that land will be worthless for sustainable agriculture as its really just a material to hold the chemicals. Land bought earlier and restored to the point its capable of sustainable agriculture would have value vs the vast tracks of chemical wasteland that no one can do much with.

A lot of our farmland is really desert and this is hidden by irrigation and chemicals. And of course speaking of irrigation if you dig you will find that huge tracks of US farmland are maybe years away from being rendered useless as the aquifers run dry. So again large tracks of farmland will be rendered useless because they can no longer be irrigated. Obviously your looking for land that can be irrigated easily with surface water or were rainfall is sufficient to grow crops. Preferably both.

http://www.uswaternews.com/archives/arcsupply/6worllarg2.html

The Ogallala aquifer, the vast underground pool that feeds faucets across the Great Plains, is running low, forcing farmers and towns to find other sources of water and pay dearly for it, too.

"Out here, water is like gold," Mayor Ed Wiltse said as he ran his hands over a chart of the town's faltering wells. "Without it, we perish."

The Ogallala aquifer is the world's largest underground water system, irrigating one-third of the nation's corn crops and providing drinking water to Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. It contains enough water to cover the entire United States to a depth of one and one-half feet.

But because of heavy usage, some water experts have pronounced it one of the fastest-disappearing aquifers in the world.

Peak water has been covered some on the oildrum generally the dynamics are about the same as oil fields.
You can bet if the experts are saying 25 years that we will face real problems a lot sooner.

Also in my opinion there is a very good chance of a return of the dustbowl I don't agree it was purely a man made event. Farming practices certainly played a role.

But..

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2166

The researchers, based at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (both affiliates of Columbia University’s Earth Institute) used a computer model to simulate a 1930s drought driven only by the change in sea-surface temperature. This showed a 5% drop in rainfall, centered over northern Mexico and the U.S. southwest, where little agriculture then took place. This would have affected the Great Plains too, but probably would have not brought disaster. Then the modelers added in the effects of dust, using data from the ‘30s that indicated dust sources, and allowing the computer to create dust storms. This yielded a simulated event eerily like the real one, with a full 10% drop in rain—to just 18 inches a year--and centered over the prairie farm regions of north Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.

Lead author Benjamin Cook, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration postdoctoral researcher affiliated with both Lamont and Goddard, said the effect occurred because dust particles suspended in air reflect solar radiation. Studies by researchers in other parts of the world show that this causes a drop in temperatures at or near the soil surface, lessening evaporation of moisture into the air, and thus decreasing precipitation even further. Dust on the Great Plains helped draw the drought northward like a siphon, said Cook. “This is what made the Dust Bowl the Dust Bowl,” he said. “It was a process that fed on itself.”

Given global warming and a collapse of irrigation and lands left fallow you have this situation of large tracts of land that have yet to develop sustainable grass cover opened up to be blown by the wind a almost exact duplicate of conditions during the dust bowl.

My opinion is the chances of this are close to 100% within the next 20 years esp with global warming.
At some point as the US is dealing with peak oil it will be hit with another dust bowl.

My personal opinion is the trigger was the fast drop in particulate emissions following the Great Depression. Coal was still a huge source of energy in the 1920-1930's. In todays world the primary source is China but as China finally falls to the global depression we should see coal usage cut back dramatically as plants are closed. Another huge source is shipping. A few years after the global economy winds down if I'm right we will have the same conditions that started the dust bowl. Global dimming from short lived particulates should drop rapidly and soils all over the world will see a marked drying. This probably will result in dust bowls in several regions not just the US. China, Parts of Russia and the Stans and maybe even parts of eastern Europe and of course parts of Africa. South America maybe also I just don't know where Argentina ?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=37057

Now this prediction hinges on my believe that changes in particulate pollution plays a huge role in soil dryness. One major way this works is that without particulates diffusing the solar radiation more of it hits the ground in less diffuse form warming the top layer of soil and more importantly causing a secondary effect. With the heating concentrated now at the soil level you have a dramatic increase in the formation of thermals which leads to a large increase in wind speeds esp close to the surface these new stronger surface winds dry the soil more and actually lead to the acting more like a mirror as they become lighter but still hot soil. These winds dry the soil even more. Now my really "outlandish view" is that the soil drying under thermals actually acts like a Fresnel mirror.

http://www.sunspot.org.uk/ed/

http://books.google.com/books?id=tP__y5xRd0oC&pg=PA530&lpg=PA530&dq=patt...

Mini dust dunes act to reflect the light horizontally the thermal acts to create a circular wind pattern around the base with wind rushing in form all directions equally. Regardless you get patterning of the surface into light and dark regions which serves to reflect the light back at and angle increasing the solar absorption closer to the ground. Only once the soil is fully dessicated does this effect cease.
Obviously regardless of the details unless grass cover is reestablished quickly desertification is rapid.

Here we find hints of wind speed anomalies during this period.

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/part-2-of-large-sst-discontinuity...

In particular
http://s5.tinypic.com/i3um47.jpg

We know for a fact that the fast drop in industrial production certainly resulted in lots of wild weather in the following decades.

So yes there are other opportunities. And yes you probably will make money but more importantly if you have the money are are willing to invest in husbanding and renewing agricultural land outside the region I've mentioned it probably will become very valuable. Obvious place are the lower Mississippi the Ohio rive basin and numerous other places with both decent rainfall good soils and irrigation from river water.

I've said enough about Oregon that it should be obvious that I expect the Willamette valley to eventually become important as a basic supplier of crops. As far as eastern Washington and eastern Oregon I really don't know they will suffer similar effects but its a different micro climate.

Not that its without problems.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/oregon_water_demand_ope...

But in my reading the situation in this area does not seem as dire as in the Great plains.

But its not good either.

http://www.oregonshowcase.org/index.cfm?mode=resources&page=duststorms

This suggests that the well watered western regions will again be called on to provide food and the suburban tracks and horsie estates replaced with productive use. And yes I absolutely hate "horse properties".

I recommend "hard" assets - food, land, tools, water, materials, and things needed to survive.

Paper assets like stocks, bonds, and money will all become worthless at some point.

I recommend soft assets - skills.

Learn low-tech medicine and medicinal herbs, water supplies and irrigation, surveying, arboriculture, basic wooden construction. If you're inclined, learn counselling, leadership, negotiation, military strategy, metalworking, boatbuilding, working with animals.

Paper representing money (bonds, equity certificates) won't be worth much. Paper in the form of books may have some value. Other hard assets can be "commandeered."

The global peak is not a halfway point, because the backside of the global production curve won't look anything like the front side.

I take it you missed this graph up-thread.

Also, stop and think about paying back your mortgage, if each year you get a pay cut. (Or the federal government, meeting its debt obligations, if each year it collects less taxes). It is not going to work. If you want to think the future is going to work out nicely, think about all of the debt defaults (or perhaps, attempts at inflating away debt). All these problems don't look like much, until you start examining the situation more closely; then they are very apparent.

also {gail} re 'collapse as inevitable; & we all fall down':

http://anthropik.com/2006/01/thesis-26-collapse-is-inevitable/

this is by jason godesky

In collapse, all the rules reverse themselves. Sustainabilty becomes not only feasible, but advantageous. Small, egalitarian groups out-compete large, hierarchical ones. Human nature becomes adaptive, rather than something we must suppress. That process is the inevitable end of any civilization, because nothing can grow forever and without limit in a finite universe. Moreover, that process will begin sooner, rather than later. It has already begun, and in all likelihood, most of us alive today will live to see its completion.'

i think jason overstates at times, but is very correct about our civilization failing as a system- like gail[i believe u would say] proposes. the word civilization 'hits' me harder; but i believe is more accurate.

It would cost about $150 Billion/Yr to replace 10% of the World's Petroleum with Bio-refineries.

The GDP of Plantet Earth is about $45 Trillion/Yr. What's that? About 0.003? About three tenths of one percent, annually?

Nah, I don't think we're all gonna die-off over this monkey.

Hello HAcland - Some people are suggesting that farming only uses ~10% of oil, or food supply only uses x% more than that, so "therefore" the food will easily be supplied even if oil shrinks by a big percentage, say 50%. They reason that governments will allocate the fuel to the food supply. I'm sceptical of that. It depends on there being someone organising that allocation. It depends on it not being corrupted, such that the rich and powerful get to hog it rather than farmers. It depends on markets not being paralysed by panic. Any thoughts on such notions?

I have a hard time seeing this working out well.

For one thing, public officials have a hard time facing up to problems, so I expect the problem will be unaddressed.

For another , I think that our fertilizer problem is more than replacing nitrogen fertilizer. We also have a problem with phosphorus, and a number of other elements.

We have a two fold problem:
1. The amount of phosphorous available is declining.
2. With lower oil availability, it will be more difficult to mine what is available.

We somehow have to get back to recycling the nutrients in the soil, or we will be losing them to the oceans. To do this, you really need people living in the area where the food is produced, and recycling them locally.

Even if we wanted to allocate enough oil to food, so as to take care of its problems, I doubt that we could do it, because of details like the fertilizer problem.

Steve,

Yes I watched the video of A Farm For The Future.

Here is the catch. England is a small place. They have a certain type of climate.

The USA is very big. We have many diverse climates and soil types.

What works in the video is not a one-for-all-solution. This is not a choice for the whole world either.

It takes a long time for fruit trees to mature. It takes a long time to revert to other forms of 'fiber'. In fact I don't think we could make do with fig leaves any more. So the sheep the woman was raising had good value.

I saw it. I liked it. Will I do it? Not on your life.

I am planting my own berries and fruit trees but just like the massive ice storm killed most my fruit trees. This is part of the problem then. Crazy weather is coming. We already had ours.

It can destroy trees easily. Even a bad spring like we had two years ago and you get ZERO ,,,that is ZERO fruit. Zero ..like ZERO berries.

Have to go dig groundhogs out of the ground then.

Yet its something that many could do...depending on a couple of factors. I just say its not something that I could do here.

Airdale-I don't think there is a 'one size fits all' for homesteading

Thanks. I think people miss the networking. That is a big reason we can't plan for the next 20 years to look much like the last 20 years.