Imminent agricultural disaster: must-read article

[Guest guest]

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil_summary.html

The full article is available only by paid subscription ($35/yr), but IMO

it's worth the price of entry all by itself.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/100303_eating_oil.html

Some highlights from the full article:

>In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due

>to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence

>between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is

>a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture

>increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then,

>energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in

>crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to

>soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing

>energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern

>agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to

>maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

>Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources.

>Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26

>Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in

>the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is

>diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface

>water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder,

>and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground

>water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of

>rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground

>water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer

>that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern

>and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its

>recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter

>of decades.28

>

>We can illustrate the demand that modern agriculture places on water

>resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that

>produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of

>water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize

>requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is

>done to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to

>propel the United States into a water crisis.

>

>In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the

>U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.30

>This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation

>practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a

>monoculture.31 This results in an increase in corn pests, which in turn

>requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had

>increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically

>engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still

>risen 4-fold.32

>Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40

>that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable

>economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population

>by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed

>approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of

>the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness

>from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41

>

>None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel

>production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned

>agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not

>become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production

>(and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North

>American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this

>agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S.

>population reduction of one-third will not be effective for

>sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half.

>And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from

>the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over

>two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without

>relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global

>level such as never experienced before by the human race.

>This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture

>of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis

>and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which

>civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more

>than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario,

>conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population

>would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those

>survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of

>their civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families.

>Those survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.

And the relevant footnotes:

>3 Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population

>Size, Pimental, and Pimentel, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum,

>1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm

>5 The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of

>Agriculture, Giampietro, and Pimentel, , 1994.

>http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm

>11 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary,

>Pimentel, and Giampietro, . Carrying Capacity Network,

>11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm

>6 Op Cit. See note 11.

>

>27 Ibid.

>

>28 Ibid.

>

>29 Ibid.

>

>30 Op. Cit. See note 3.

>

>31 Op. Cit. See note 5.

>

>32 Op. Cit. See note 3.

>40 U.S. and World Population Clocks. U.S. Census Bureau.

>http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

>

>41 A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.

>

>42 Op. Cit. See note 40.

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