Replenish the soil — new agriculture

Replenish the soil —
new agriculture in a post oil world

The crisis

Oil is about to become far more expensive — bankrupting many farmers.

Agricultural businesses consume oil in many ways:—

The ironically named ‘Green Revolution’ burns gas ‘mining’ Nitrogen from the air (Haber Bosch) and burns oil mining PK fertilizers from the ground.

These fertilizers are then transported hundreds or thousands of miles to where we grow our food.

They are then spread by plane or tractor.

The crops are often watered with diesel-operated pumps.

The food is then harvested with massive agricultural combine harvesters (which these days house the driver in a high air-conditioned cockpit, more like the pilot of a 747 than a tractor!)

Once harvested and washed, dried, and packed the goods are freighted all over the country and even internationally. This uses even more oil.

Another profoundly stupid side effect of cheap oil is that because it enables cheap transport, we no longer care about the nutrients in our sewerage! We need to close the wasteful one way NPK trip through the agribusiness maw and down the city toilets out to sea. The cycle must be closed! (Maybe the sea's NPK can gradually be returned to the soil if we recycle our sewerage. If we limit fishing to sustainable yields it might slowly add nutrients to our "humanure" over generations... and in some areas, seaweed fertilizers might become a practical industry.

Nutrient concerns for phosphorus seem especially acute as a result of generations of our one way nutrient cycle out to sea. Please read "Phosphorus, the most critical nutrient".

All of this damages the topsoil, which is basically dead. Our topsoil is blowing and washing away 30 times faster than nature can generate it.

The challenge

To quickly transform one way nutrient trips out to sea into closed loops that are endlessly repeatable. To do so on a massive scale, retrofitting our sewerage processing and doing so in a safe way.
Ban industry from dumping poisonous heavy metals into the sewerage, our new fertilizer — and find new ways for industry to reduce and dispose of waste.
Radically undermine a powerful globalized agribusiness monster that will fight tooth and nail to resist any competition, prior to its own inevitable death when its foundation collapses, cheap oil.
Reinvent local economic relationships that have largely been lost.
Analyze where the soils have lost so many nutrients that food will be of a poorer quality and find ways to improve soil quality.
Store food while experimenting with new business models and agricultural systems.

The solution

The soil must live to produce healthy plants and nutritious food. The NPK has to get back into the soil somehow, and stop washing out to sea.

There are a variety of methods for doing this.

Nature takes 500 years to produce just one inch of topsoil. Bio-intensive farming can produce that in just 8 or 9 years.

Read all about John Jeavons bio-intensive farming.
Try the 1 hour, 15 minutes interview with John Jeavons.

Cities may have to grow food inside their borders, on rooftop gardens or old car parks using the 'no dig garden' method to avoid extra work tearing up the concrete (only to expose toxic earth underneath — unless of course you need the concrete or bitumen to build a wall, and want to dig up a few inches of toxic topsoil to build a mound. I'd rather leave all that nastiness under the concrete.)

Please read 'How Cuba survived peak oil' by Community Solutions writer, Megan Quinn

We must limit nutrient losses and stop "mining the soil".

We must rotate crops, let the soil rest, compost, bring the soil back to life... and basically try different things in different regions.

Important Links

Permaculture at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

David Holmgren, one of the "fathers" of permaculture, has a site
http://www.holmgren.com.au/

Also check out the latest newsletters from the CSIRO Sustainability Network.
http://www.bml.csiro.au/SNnewsletters.htm

The British Institute of Science and society maps out sustainable food and some steps to achieving it. Needless to say, it involves more employment back in country and rural areas.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldComing.php

Solutions for phosphorous depletion at —
http://www.holon.se/folke/lectures/agri/agriculture.shtml

Try the "Crop and Cow" rotation of bio-farming mentioned in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's show, "Landline".
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2004/s1216126.htm

For a taste of how to reform desert, eradicate salt problems and do it all on a fraction of the water wasted in industrial agriculture, watch the Flash movie "Greening the Desert" at...
http://www.permaculture.org.au/

Try this "Permaculture Primer"

New methods of soil improvement have been developed for biomass energy farming. While biomass may have some very limited role in future energy supply (I favour solar & wind), my concern here is how efforts to reduce "soil mining" in energy farms may have also produced a new system for replenishing the soil quickly for food farming. Together, these methods might just speed up restoring life to our soils.
http://www.eprida.com/hydro/

How does mass agriculture relate to New Urbanism?

I have attempted to highlight some bio-farming methods that might help bring our soils back to life, using current agricultural harvesters and technology but without pesticides or fertilizers. Farm equipment will have to be one area qualifying for a "fuel pass" to use the remaining prioritised diesel and petroleum products until alternative fuels can be channelled to these essential services, or we find that our cities can grow their own food locally without harvesters at all!

I don't know just how local New Urbanism food production will have to become. I’m not attempting to mandate the ultimate goal, just some methods we might use to prevent a famine. There are far worse things than working a local food plot a few hours a week.

What is the final goal? What is the final distance from farm to eco-city districts? If you establish an effective electric rail system, will 500 km away be the upper limit for farms that supply your city? Or will it be more like 100km? Or is the ultimate goal to scale right back so that we grow all of our own food in our own neighbourhood plots? I just don't know — I have not asked my local council mayor yet. ;-)

Or will there be stages of change, as we transform suburban sprawl back into local agricultural districts for eco-cities over the next generation? Will food come in from further away initially, and gradually be grown closer and closer to the home city? That would seem to be the wisest course of action in a lower energy world.

I'm not sure what the ultimate destination is. I am not attempting to develop definitive policy on town planning and how it relates to food. I am just highlighting the concerns, and how oil depletion might affect agriculture. As far as I can tell, these are just some of the alternative methods of farming that might be feasible in a post oil world. The bottom line is the soil must live. We must live more energy efficient lives. These are the imperatives that will shape our future. You can imagine what they mean for our cities.

One thing is clear. The remaining fuels have to be prioritised to essential services. The rest of us will have to ride a bike, catch a bus, car pool, or walk — unless we want food systems to collapse! Large-scale bio-farming is not about maintaining the status quo. It is simply to prevent the famine discussed in dieoff literature, as we address living without oil as a species and begin to discuss the overall implications for a sustainable population.