This video makes me cringe. Why aren't we making a healthier transition and instituting agricultural reforms to pull us out of this recession. How many people are aware that one of the reasons that the United States, this giant land mass we live on, doesn't have enough food to supply the people who live here the food they need is not because we're not donating enough cans, but because we aren't feeding the food that we produce here to people. Development and destructive conventional farming techniques have compacted the soil, filled the soil and water with toxic chemicals and gives priority for the food that we produce to the production of dirty renewable energy or to feed cattle for food.
Worse yet, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Index
The vast majority of energy used in the U.S. food system (around 80 percent) goes to processing, packaging, transporting, storing, and preparing food.
Produce in the U.S. travels, on average, 1300 - 2000 miles from farm to consumer. Since 1970, truck shipping has dramatically increased, replacing more energy efficient transportation by rail and water.
Local food systems can reduce "food miles" and transportation costs, offering significant energy savings. Consumers also benefit from fresher, better-tasting, and more nutritious food, while more food dollars stay within rural communities (ATTRA).
And yet why are President Obama's advisors encouraging him to tell people to continue to purchase and drop off cans of food to local food banks while they ship off our tax dollars overseas to jeopardize the safety of American citizens to protect and negotiate our arms for foreign oil? There is a reason why many environmental activists and progressives are up in arms about his deplorable contribution to the Copenhagen Summit. Is this social and environmental neglect occurring because President Obama has been simply misinformed? Or does our democratic system simply allow too many shortcomings to allow our leaders to make the appropriate decisions without shielding too much controversy from the masses? So what part of the picture are we missing here?
According to the Foreign Affairs Magazine article,Arms and Oil: U.S. Military Strategy and the Persian Gulf , published by the Council on Foreign Relations and reviewed by Andrew J. Pierre back in 1985,
The appropriate role of military force, arms transfers, and diplomacy are carefully and broadly discussed in this excellent Brookings volume. Although focusing on American military strategy, McNaugher would encourage countries such as Jordan, Pakistan and Great Britain to continue their historical involvement in Gulf security (McNaugher).
Alternatively many of President Obama's critics have attributed President Obama's recent decline in approval ratings due to his failing public agenda. They assert that epidemics such as swine flu, or some future geopolitical crisis must be engineered in order to save President Obama's rating of approval. As Paul Watson notes in his website Prison Planet, "Recall that vice-president Joe Biden “promised” and “guaranteed” that there would be an “international crisis” within six months of Obama’s presidency that would cause him to make unpopular decisions. This crisis is now overdue since it’s just over six months since Obama took office (Watson)."
The problem is the energy and economic crisis has been looming even before Obama took office, but for some reason, Americans seem to prefer to turn a blind eye to a very REAL very simple answer to why today they are facing issues such as poverty and joblessness.
Obama's Stimulus Plan: Failing by Its Own Measure
The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected.
Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983 (Gandel).
To read more click here
There are many conservatives that criticize peak oil theory, no one can deny that even today there is a direct correlation between the number of dollars we spend on oil and the price that we pay for inflation of food. Approximately 1:02 in this video on peak oil, we see how the chemical inputs that we use for food production in the way of fertilizers, food coatings and to fuel farming machinery leaves us vulnerable not just to fluctuations in gas prices but also increase the cost of production for food, which we see translated into the price tags on the shelves. In 2008 I worked in a major chain grocery store hanging price tags and was completely astounded how items such as 40oz bags of rice and a gallon of peanut oil spiked literally overnight $10 in the price.
The sad thing is, as much as we're spending on oil these days, at this point, over $80 per barrel, [1 barrel = 42 US gallons = 158.76 litres ] and as oil becomes more scarce, it's going to cost us even more in military expenditures to ensure that we can purchase our oil from foreign suppliers and keep up with the competitive rates.
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| 78.67 | 78.87 | 79.35 | 79.39 | 81.52 | 81.74 |
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| 76.59 | 76.65 | 77.62 | 77.91 | 79.05 | 79.27 |
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| 201.79 | 201.15 | 204.47 | 204.85 | 209.6 | 211.38 |
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| 197.36 | 196.26 | 200.12 | 203.48 | 208.7 | 209.38 |
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| 210.29 | 208.65 | 210.72 | 212.35 | 215.1 | 211.88 |
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Notes: Weekly, monthly, and annual prices are calculated by EIA from daily data by taking an unweighted average of the daily closing spot prices for a given product over the specified time period. Reuters Ltd. no longer reports gasoline ARA 50 ppm sulfur; it has been replaced with gasoline ARA 10 ppm sulfur. See Definitions, Sources, and Notes link above for more information on this table.
For more info on oil prices you can click here
Fuelling a Food Crisis: The Impact of Peak Oil on Food Security
Syndicated from Post Carbon Institute on Fri, 2007-01-12By Caroline Lucas, Andy Jones and Colin Hines
DWINDLING oil stocks and EU trade and energy policies threaten food price hikes – and could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War, according to a new report by Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas.
The report calls on the Government to establish a Royal Commission on Food Security to examine the issue – and for the UK 's Competition Commission to consider its findings in its ongoing investigation of the supermarkets' dominance of the food retailing sector.
From the introduction to the report:
Introduction
• "When the price of oil climbed above $50/barrel in late 2004, public attention began to focus on the adequacy of world oil supplies – and specifically on when production would peak and begin to decline. Analysts are far from a consensus on this issue, but several prominent ones now believe that the oil peak is imminent." 1 US Department of Energy, 2005
Over recent months, there has been much speculation about the causes of higher oil prices, and over the likelihood of whether or not they will continue. Commentary has focused on the geopolitical instability in the Middle East; increasing dependence on Russia; governments in Latin America retaking control of their oil industries; and supply bottle necks such as refining capacity.
The geological constraints on future energy supply, known as peak oil - the point at which oil production stops rising and begins its inevitable long-term decline – have received much less attention, however. Yet while the majority of constraints on access to oil could potentially be overcome through political or economic means, the geological reality of ever-dwindling fossil-fuel supplies is non-negotiable
While it has taken 145 years to consume half of the 2-2.5 trillion barrels of conventional oil supplies generally regarded as the total available, it is likely that, given the huge increases of demand from China and India in particular, the other half will be largely consumed within the next 40 years. Some 98% of global crude oil comes from 45 nations, over half of which may already have peaked in oil
production, including seven of the 11 OPEC nations. Major oil field discoveries fell to zero for the first time in 2003, while the excess capacity held by OPEC nations has dwindled, from an average of 30% to about 1% of global demand today.2 World oil and gas production is declining at an average of 4-6% a year, while demand is growing at 2-3% a year. The implications of this, for every aspect of our lives today, are overwhelming. Some analysis has begun on the impacts on our transport systems, and on how we heat our homes. Very little has so far focused on the implications for our food systems. This report makes the case that, unless we take urgent action, as oil security deteriorates, so too will food security. It is fast becoming the case that decisions made by government departments of energy, on whether to continue promoting fossil fuels or to shift to renewable energy sources, could have a greater effect on long-term food security than any actions taken by departments of agriculture.The amount of energy is concentrated in even a small amount of oil or gas is extraordinary. A barrel of oil contains the energy-equivalent of almost 25,000 hours of human labour. A single gallon of petrol contains the energy-equivalent of 500 hours of human labour. And across the world, food production systems make use
of this stored energy from fossil fuels on a massive scale.The industrialisation of farming accelerated dramatically in industrialised countries after World War Two, and began in many poorer countries as a result of the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. These trends transformed food production around the globe, with world grain harvests increasing by 250%. Yet this reliance on fossil fuels - in the form of fertilisers (which accounts
for around a third of agricultural energy consumption), pesticides, and hydrocarbon-fuelled farm machinery and irrigation systems – means that industrialised farming consumes 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture; in the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more. It has been estimated, for example, that 95% of all of our food products require the use of oil.3 Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires 6 barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. (To read more, click here).
Interestingly enough, after the collapse of the Soviet Union back in 1991, The Republic of Cuba found itself in a similar economic crisis when the Soviet distribution of oil was cut off limiting the petroleum based inputs for transportation, energy and agriculture leaving Cuba in an economically destitute, abandoned and forcing ALL Cubans to live off of rations of half a banana [and a cup of rice] per day. Further sanctions through the U.S. embargo, made it even more difficult for the Cubans to secure access to their imported supplies, which caused the country's economic collapse and brought production to a standstill.
Peak oil preview:
North Korea & Cuba
A tale of two countries: How North Korea and Cuba reacted differently to a suddenly diminished oil supplyThat peak oil is coming is no longer a question. It’s only a matter of when. The global food system we are familiar with depends crucially on cheap energy and long-distance transportation—food consumed in the United States travels an average of 1,400 miles. Does peak oil mean inevitable starvation? Two countries provide a preview. Their divergent stories, one of famine, one of sufficiency, stand as a warning and a model. North Korea and Cuba experienced the peak-oil scenario prematurely and abruptly due to the collapse of the former Soviet bloc and the intensified trade embargo against Cuba. The quite different outcomes are partly due to luck: the Cuban climate allows people to survive on food rations that would be fatal in North Korea’s harsh winters. But the more fundamental reason is policy. North Korea tried to carry on business as usual as long as possible, while Cuba implemented a proactive policy to move toward sustainable agriculture and self-sufficiency.
The 1990s famine in North Korea is one of the least-understood disasters in recent years. It is generally attributed to the failure of Kim Il Jung’s regime. The argument is simple: if the government controls everything, it must be responsible for crop failure. But this ideological blame game hides a more fundamental problem: the failure of industrial chemical farming. With the coming of peak oil, many other countries may experience similar disasters.
North Korea developed its agriculture on the Green Revolution model, with its dependence on technology, imported machines, petroleum, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. There were signs of soil compaction and degradation, but the industrial farming model provided enough food for the population. Then came the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. Supplies of oil, farming equipment, fertilizers, and pesticides dropped significantly, and this greatly contributed to the famine that followed. As a November 1998 report from the joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program observed:
The highly mechanized DPR [North] Korean agriculture faces a serious constraint as about four-fifths of motorized farm machinery and equipment is out of use due to obsolescence and lack of spare parts and fuel. … In fact, because of non-availability of trucks, harvested paddy has been seen left on the fields in piles for long periods.
North Korea failed to change in response to the crisis. Devotion to the status quo precipitated the food shortages that continue to this day. Cuba faced similar problems. In some respects, the challenge was even bigger in Cuba. Before 1989, North Korea was self-sufficient in grain production, while Cuba imported an estimated 57 percent of its food1, because its agriculture, especially the state farm sector, was geared towards production of sugar for export.
After the Soviet collapse and the tightening of the U.S. embargo, Cuba lost 85 percent of its trade, and its fossil fuel-based agricultural inputs were reduced by more than 50 percent. At the height of the resulting food crisis, the daily ration was one banana and two slices of bread per person in some places. Cuba responded with a national effort to restructure agriculture.
Cuban agriculture now consists of a diverse combination of organic farming, perma-culture, urban gardens, animal power, and biological fertilizing and pest control. On a national level, Cuba now has probably the most ecological and socially sensitive agriculture in the world. In 1999, the Swedish Parliament awardedthe Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” to Cuba for these advances.
Even before the 1990 crisis, primarily in response to the negative effects of intensive chemical use as well as the 1970s energy crisis, Cuban scientists began to develop bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers to substitute for chemical inputs. They designed a two-phase program based on early experiments with biological agents. The first stage developed small-scale, localized production technologies; the second stage was aimed at developing semi-industrial and industrial technologies. This groundwork allowed Cuba to roll out substitutes for agricultural chemicals rapidly in the wake of the 1990 crisis. Since 1991, 280 centers have been established to produce biological agents using techniques and supplies specific to each locality.2
Though some alternative technologies were initially developed solely to replace chemical inputs, they are now part of a more holistic agroecology. Scientists and farmers recognized the imbalances in high-input monoculture, and are transforming the whole system. In contrast to the one-size-fits-all solution of the Green Revolution, agro-ecology tailors farming to local conditions. It designs complex agro-ecosystems that use mutually beneficial crops and locally adapted seeds, take advantage of topography and soil conditions, and maintain rather than deplete the soil (Wen).3
Where the concern lies, rather than address the consumption model that FDR used in the New Deal, why is the Obama administration continuing to adopt Roosevelt's consumption model when it is clearly the pattern of behavior that is facilitating the food and energy crisis on America's shores.
The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn.
![[Commentary]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AI950_ohania_DV_20090201191451.jpg)
Corbis: A man selling apples during the Great Depression.The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office. Total hours worked per adult, including government employees, were 18% below their 1929 level between 1930-32, but were 23% lower on average during the New Deal (1933-39). Private hours worked were even lower after FDR took office, averaging 27% below their 1929 level, compared to 18% lower between in 1930-32.
Even comparing hours worked at the end of 1930s to those at the beginning of FDR's presidency doesn't paint a picture of recovery. Total hours worked per adult in 1939 remained about 21% below their 1929 level, compared to a decline of 27% in 1933. And it wasn't just work that remained scarce during the New Deal. Per capita consumption did not recover at all, remaining 25% below its trend level throughout the New Deal, and per-capita nonresidential investment averaged about 60% below trend. The Great Depression clearly continued long after FDR took office (Cole).
The primary criticism seems to be that President Obama continues to try to carry out the Bush stimulus plan listening to the same economists that have contributed to the economic collapse instead of charting off toward a more secure frontier and rebuilding our economic infrastructure to ensure that America's basic needs are met. We need to redefine how we picture our notions of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," into a framework that will allow us to reach the realization of equity productivity and the ability to provide essential human needs. Among these goals include quality education, good health and technological prosperity, goals which could be achieved by focusing our priorities in more of the right places (Firey).
While Barack Obama’s economics team hammers out its $800 billion fiscal stimulus plan, the commentariat is battling over the effectiveness of what some consider the prototype stimulus package, the New Deal.* The suppressed (and problematic) conclusion to all this punditry seems to be: Because government spending under the New Deal helped/didn’t help to end the Great Depression, the Obama stimulus plan will/won’t help to end the current recession (Firey).
In his article, How the Government Prolonged the Depression, Harold Cole continues to explain,
So with that said, what exactly SHOULD we be doing? Well, for starters, take a look at this article:The main lesson we have learned from the New Deal is that wholesale government intervention can -- and does -- deliver the most unintended of consequences. This was true in the 1930s, when artificially high wages and prices kept us depressed for more than a decade, it was true in the 1970s when price controls were used to combat inflation but just produced shortages. It is true today, when poorly designed regulation produced a banking system that took on too much risk.
President Barack Obama and Congress have a great opportunity to produce reforms that do return Americans to work, and that provide a foundation for sustained long-run economic growth and the opportunity for all Americans to succeed. These reforms should include very specific plans that update banking regulations and address a manufacturing sector in which several large industries -- including autos and steel -- are no longer internationally competitive. Tax reform that broadens rather than narrows the tax base and that increases incentives to work, save and invest is also needed. We must also confront an educational system that fails many of its constituents. A large fiscal stimulus plan that doesn't directly address the specific impediments that our economy faces is unlikely to achieve either the country's short-term or long-term goals(Cole).
How youth in Kenya's largest slum created an organic farm: An interview with an organic pioneer, Su Kahumbu
by Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com
December 9, 2008
Source: Mongabay.com
Kibera is one of the world's largest slums, containing over a million people and one third of Nairobi's population. With extremely crowded conditions, little sanitation, and an unemployment rate at 50 percent, residents of Kibera face not only abject poverty but also a large number of social ills, including drugs, alcoholism, rape, AIDS, water-borne diseases, and tensions between various Kenyan tribes.
However, the majority of Kibera's residents are just trying to live as well as possible under daunting circumstances. Proving that optimism and entrepreneurship are very much alive there, in July of this year the slum's only organic farm began selling its first harvest of ripe green spinach and kale, while sunflowers unfurl upward from soil that had once been a garbage dump. The idea of the farm came from boys and girls in Kibera's Youth Reform Program. They had the vision and the ambition, but in order to make their dream a reality they needed help.
Su Kahumbu, a tireless advocate of organic farming in Kenya, was quickly enlisted. Her participation came with one request: it must be an organic farm. Kahumbu is a true pioneer in Kenya. In 2004 her farm was the first in the nation to receive organic certification. Since then her organization, Green Dreams, Ltd. (greendreams.edublogs.org), has started up several successful organic groceries in Nairobi, and Kahumbu campaigns continually for small farmers and the promise of organic farming in Africa.
Su Kahumbu in front (Paula Kahumbu)
But how does anyone turn a garbage dump into an organic farm? "It started with the removal of the garbage," Kahumbu told Mongabay.com. "This was done physically and took three weeks! From there we started the seed beds as we prepared the growing beds on the cleared land. The beds were dug up and levelled before adding farmyard manure... Drip irrigation and a water tank were installed just as the seedlings were ready to be transplanted, after which the transplanting was done. Later we added a vermiculture set- up. And all the while the guys were learning how to tend their future and budding crops. Voila!" Vermiculture refers to producing nutrient-rich organic fertilizer by composting with the help of particular species of earthworm.
Kahumbu sees incredible possibilities in Kibera's small organic plot. "I think it is absolutely vital we take this example of success seriously and recognize the implications if we could cut and paste it in our African slums."
Kenya's slum of Kibera as taken by Google Earth. Many of the residents of Kibera have migrated here from rural lands, seeking a better life. Just north of the slum is the Royal Nairobi Golf Course.
Her optimistic spirit, seemingly boundless energy, and past experiences have given Kahumbu a deep belief in the power of small farmers growing natural produce. She sees in such values a remedy for the food crisis: "The solution to the global food crisis is increased production. We have to ask ourselves why we have problems with production. We rely on the poorest of the poor to feed the world. Something is wrong. It's time farmers gained respect and fair prices for their products. We need to invest in farmer education and support so that they opt to stay in the fields and feed the world. It is a vital job (Hance)." To read more of this article, click here.
This is one of a few models for agricultural production and economic revitalization that has proven to be effective and beneficial for teaching the impoverished the skills that they need in order to empower the community AND themselves.
To read more about the Kibera Initiative or what Cuba has done to train its communities to become more effective and locally productive citizens click the following links:
&
The Agriculture and Ecology in Cuba Educational Video Series
or begin watching the first video below
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