May 21st, 2008 by John Gossop
>???????? ????? ????????he world tries to grow more food and biofuels, the problem of raising the availability of inputs becomes clearer.
Last year I bought nitrogen fertiliser in July for £145/tonne with payment the following January. Yesterday I was told that I would be allowed just 70% of last years tonnage at £330/tonne with payment in 28 days.
The price of phosphate and potash fertiliser has gone up even more with autumn prices likely to be around £500/tonne. The price of tractor diesel has gone from 34p/litre a year ago to 64p today.
The point is that farming has, over the past 70 years become a method of converting cheap, finite fossil fuels and other resources in to food. As the world population continues to rise and more people in the east are able to afford a “better” diet with more meat, the earth will not be able to provide enough of these inputs.
These finite inputs have TEMPORARILY raised the carrying capacity of the earth to a level far above the level possible when they are no longer so easily available. In addition the availability of irrigation water and cropland per person on earth is going down.
Until about 70 years ago in the west and much more recently elsewhere, the energy inputs into farming were from the sun through the food for horses and workers. Fertility was maintained through crop rotation, the use of legume crops such as peas, beans and clover to provide nitrogen and the return of other nutrients to the soil through animal and human manure.
The price of fertiliser will most likely go down in the next year or two as the price encourages more production, but the present supply problems give us an insight of the more severe problems to come.
Posted in Threats to Food Supply | 3 Comments »
May 2nd, 2008 by admin
Peak Food thanks Mr Hellstrand and Mr Ohlsson both from Kil for being the first people from Sweden to buy a copy of Famine in the West. We hope you enjoy it, Mr Hellstrand and Mr Ohlsson!
Posted in Threats to Food Supply | No Comments »
There are many reasons why food production cannot keep up with population growth in the medium and long term such as loss of land, water shortages, improved diets and the use of cropland for biofuel production; but a real problem is modern farming’s huge dependence on finite resources including oil and gas.
There is of course an ongoing debate about the timing of Peak Oil. Some experts say that it is already here and that world production will soon go in to rapid decline while others say that new discoveries and the exploitation of shales and tar sands will allow production to keep up with demand for some time. Whatever the truth, the very high prices of the last few years have not caused the expected rapid production response and some big fields such as Cantarell in Mexico are in serious decline. We should realise that although there will be fluctuations in prices, the age of cheap oil is over.
In agriculture, the recent high prices are causing farmers all over the world to try to increase production, but it’s not all that easy. Most suitable land, and some that is unsuitable, is already being farmed. Rain forests are being destroyed, but mainly for biofuel crops while old cropland is being lost at the rate of 25 million acres every year.
Demand for the inputs needed to increase food production has sent the price of nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertiliser from about £145/tonne to over £300/tonne since last June. Pesticide prices have also soared and some products are hard to obtain. The price of land is also rising but the amount available here is not increasing although in eastern europe some neglected land is being brought back in to production.
We can, I think, expect some short term extra food production provided that climatic changes do not cause too much disruption, but like the oil industry, we do not have the resources to constantly keep up with increasing demand and any serious oil and gas shortages caused through Peak Oil or geo-political events would cause a similar or greater shortage of food.
We have allowed food production to become dangerously linked to the production of ever greater amounts of finite resources. If nothing is done to reverse that, disaster is inevitable.
