This month Wrights Register have printed an article by Peak Food entitled, Farming in the Greenhouse on their climate change page (p16):

It isn’t surprising that so many people are still skeptical of climate change in spite of overwhelming evidence that proves warming is happening. Denial is after all a well-understood psychiatric term meaning defence mechanism against painful thoughts, and this is exactly what makes people discount all evidence to the contrary, however compelling.

Some of us choose to believe that serious climate change is not happening because the consequences are just too appalling to contemplate. Tackling it would lower our standard of living in the short-term, and who wants to give up their 4 x 4 and holidays abroad?

Many people though can recall a specific television report or newspaper article that changed their thinking. My own moment of acceptance came when I realised that the natural greenhouse effect (which has been understood and accepted for many years) has made the world warmer, and that without the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, life as we know it would not be possible. Greenhouse gases trap heat energy, reducing the amount that is radiated from the earth back into space, acting as a partial blanket and causing a difference of about 21C between the average temperature that we would have and the actual average of the earth surface temperature. By increasing the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere we are enhancing the greenhouse effect. The earth is responding just as we should expect it to by warming up.

So, what will global warming mean to farmers like you and me? Well, weather patterns changing relatively quickly will be very difficult for us to deal with. Except where reliable irrigation is available, the biggest constraint on crop yield is lack of soil moisture at critical times. Farmers plant the type of crops that suit their soil and normal weather, but if the rain does not fall at the right time or is insufficient, the yield can be slashed. Of course to some extend lower yields will be offset by rises in food prices, but this shouldn’t make us complacent.

At the same time as our climate is changing we will be affected by a host of worldwide problems including a rapidly increasing population, a greater demand in Asia for the diet and lifestyle we take for granted, and competition for land from biofuels and the building of new cities and roads.

On top of this there will be oil and gas shortages to deal with. And again, before you dismiss this as far into the future, remember that both oil and gas are finite resources and many analysts believe production has already peaked. It is only a matter of time before fertilisers and diesel become more expensive.

With world carry-over grain stocks at dangerous levels, we badly need a series of good harvests to avoid the panic, hoarding and speculation that would happen if we have a series of bad ones caused by changes in weather patterns. Governments seem to have no idea of what is on the horizon, or they would be making food production and the rebuilding of grain stocks the priority it should be.

Our thanks go to Janet Richardson for printing it. What do you think?

Unfortunatly, they seem to think that it will be easy to increase production by using the same methods that have allowed the world population to triple in the past 70 years.

We have been able to replace animal muscle power by engines to free up the 30% of land that was needed to feed those animals, and use fossil derived fertilisers and pesticides to push up yields to unbelievable levels. In farming we now use about 10 calories of finite fossil energy to diliver 1 calorie of food energy. This worked well when those supplies were cheap and plentifull, but will fail when they inevitably become very expensive and scarce.

World leaders should be putting huge amounts of money in to finding sustainable ways to convert more of the abundant solar energy that reaches us each day in to food energy.

Robert Mugabe being there makes the whole conference look like a farce.

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.

This is understandable given that one result of the high demand for biofuels is the destruction of rain forests in order to grow Palm oil or soya for biodiesel. The release of CO2 from burning the forest added to the fuel inputs needed to grow and transport the biofuel mean that it will be many years, if ever, before there are any gains. This type of production is clearly of no benifit to the planet.

However, it would be a great shame if governments stopped encouraging all biofuel production as if it is done sensibly, biofuels have  a crucial part to play in future food production. Targets and incentives are needed to speed up the developement of cellulosic ethanol which can deliver greenhouse gas reductions of 85% compared to conventional fuels.

Cellulosic ethanol can be made from straw and other crop residues as well as from woodland waste and dedicated crops such as miscanthus. This must be the way foreward, but experts warn that first generation biofuels must develop the market until these second generation fuels come along.

It ought to be possible to devise a system of auditing the energy balance of present biofuels so that only those with a positive balance can be used to meet government targets.

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.

Some of David Richardson’s recent articles have correctly pointed out that we once again face the prospect of food shortages. He estimates that over the next 40 years it will be necessary to double the total production of food while using less land and less water.

I fully agree. But, to appreciate the size of this task, we should consider the way that we have managed to increase food production over the past 60 years and decide if we can rise to the challenge.

The massive increases in yields have been achieved using equally massive inputs o resources such as phosphate and potash, but, most importantly, fossil fuels in the form of oil and gas to provide us with power, nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides.

Farming has become a highly efficient way of converting prehistoric sunshine – conveniently stored for us as oil and gas – into food. We now use, on average, 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. This conversion rate works well when oil and gas supplies are cheap, reliable and infinite, but doesn’t work well when the opposite is the case.

In the early 20th century, about 30% of farmland was needed to feed the millions of horses used in farming, transport and the army. Mechanisation released this land to grow crops for human consumption. Then came improved varieties, both in the west and those were used in the ‘Green revolution’ in Asia and Latin America. These gave huge increases in yield compared with old varieties, but only if greater inputs of fertiliser, pesticides and water were used.

But we have to accept that the world is running out of cheap land, water, oil, gas, phosphate, potash and other resources. There is going to be less of these per capita, and therefore, less food per capita.

One of the greatest dangers we face is a sudden shortage of oil due to an event such as war in the Middle East or concerted terrorist activity. Strangely, western governments worry about energy security, but not about food security. They don’t appear to realise that if our diesel tanks run dry we can produce no food.

David Richardson’s suggestion that we should have an immediate injection of cash for research and advice is a good one. But I would suggest that the cash injection needs to be massive.

We need to greatly reduce fossil energy inputs compared with food energy output and find ways to recycle nutrients instead of flushing them down the sewers of the great cities. It’s going to be one of the biggest challenges o the near future.

This is just the sort of public reaction that will happen on a far exaggerated scale in the event of a REAL shortage of food or fuel.