Anyway, you know how I love to point out how idiotic all these biofuel initiatives are, and how everything about agriculture is larded with hidden energy costs that nobody ever bothers to mention in any sort of public venue, although my favorite people are the ones who say that, yes, we have all kinds of hidden energy costs producing food, so let’s get rid of them by producing a bunch of food, which we will then _convert_ to energy, which we will then use to produce food! Ha! God bless America!

Sorry. Got derailed a bit. Here was the quote I wanted to share:

In the United States, the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers’ access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.

When the folks living in the exoburbs and rural areas start feeling some of those hidden costs when they buy their frozen pizzas, that’s when we’re really gonna come face to face with the unsustainable nature of the current state of affairs. I’m not looking forward to that day. But with a bit of industry, it need not be a total loss:

An even simpler approach has been successfully used in Cuba: converting urban parking lots and other empty bits of land to raised-bed agriculture. Instead of continually trucking in vegetables and other food, it is much easier to truck in soil, compost, and mulch just once a season. Raised highways can be closed to traffic (since there is unlikely to be much traffic in any case) and used to catch rainwater for irrigation. Rooftops and balconies can be used for hothouses, henhouses, and a variety of other agricultural uses.

Frankly, the most depressing part for me is that I have zero of the skills that will be useful in the new world order. Growing shit? Hunting? Carrying big baskets of vegetables on top of my head? I would prefer to hit the ground running, and not decay into ruin before either dying or else figuring out some new compromise with the world, but this will be one of those things that you never take steps to deal with until it’s too late.

Perhaps I could revive the living god thing we started at USC.

UPDATE:

I can’t stop! This article is so good! Behold:

Here we are, only a year or so later, and I am most heartened to see that the US auto industry has taken my advice and is in the process of shutting down. On the other hand, the government’s actions continue to disappoint. Instead of trying to solve problems, they would rather continue to create boondoggles. The latest one is the idea of subsidizing the sales of new cars. The idea of making cars more efficient by making more efficient cars is sheer folly. I can take any pick-up truck and increase its fuel efficiency one or two thousand percent just by breaking a few laws. First, you pack about a dozen people into the bed, standing shoulder to shoulder like sardines. Second, you drive about 25 mph, down the highway, because going any faster would waste fuel and wouldn’t be safe with so many people in the back. And there you are, per passenger fuel efficiency increased by a factor of 20 or so. I believe the Mexicans have done extensive research in this area, with excellent results.

It’s the last line that got me.

Well, now food, agriculture, and nutrition have moved out of the airy and effete realm of health and into the Real American, ‘Aw Shucks’/Horse Sense domain that even a Republican doesn’t have to be embarassed to discuss. Terry Gross of Fresh Aire fame recently did a great interview with Michael Pollen, who’s written a number of books in this area, including a very smart and controversial editorial in The Times that shows just how food production is tied up in more familiar topics:

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.

So if you’re interested in these topics, the interview is fourty minutes well spent, and the editorial is awesome, if long. Pollen’s work in general is eye opening and smart, the stuff educated Citizens should know.

Well, the glorious market might solve this for you, though not quite like you think:

Farmer Michael’s feed costs have risen 400 percent in the last twelve months. To make a profit on the beautiful turkeys his family is raising in time for Thanksgiving, he’ll have to charge a hundred bucks a bird. At Momofuku, I’m paying 150 percent more for humanely raised pork belly than I was paying at this time last year. And at the hyperglobal megachains that feed most of America, the only way they’ll be able to keep selling one-dollar hamburgers is to grow their “protein units” in petri dishes, add even more filler to their products, and outright enslave the workers whose backs they’re already breaking to keep costs artificially low.

That’s from this short article. Now, I’m not naiive, and I do realize that other outcomes are possible. For instance, maybe people will start eating way more Cap’N Crunch when they can’t afford to go to Arby’s anymore. That kind of industrial-scale super corn agriculture will still be the most efficient way to grow shit, as this nation’s corn infrastructure is the “pride” of the world, especially with dipshits trying to convince you that growing loads of corn and processing it into fuel is actually an efficient way to produce energy. (Hint: it isn’t.)

So yeah, less meat != healthier. But if you’re going to eat horribly, eating horribly minus the meat probably trumps eating horribly WITH the meat. And maybe people will eat more of the right kinds of plants when all those massive feedlots have to be converted into something.

It’s weird to think about how much of the American Way of Life has been utterly defined by cheap oil. Most people can’t even begin to know how intertwined into everything it is. I know I certainly have no idea, but at least this particular ignorance will be rectified in time, whether I want it to or not.