Energy for Power

This is the first post I am making in order to demonstrate why I think our modern food production system is built on a house of cards. I have about six topics I intend to blog about. I've been wanting to do this for a while, so here goes. If you think my argument is off track on any one of these, challenge me, and we will see where that goes.

We have built a food production system on the assumption that energy will always be cheap. Because of that assumption, we have developed numerous ways to make the people producing food on the land more efficient. So today, a farmer can do in one day what it would have taken his grandfather two months to do, and today's farmer can probably do the job better than his grandfather. This is a considerable achievement. But this improvement in human efficiency has all been possible because we were able to substitute fossil energy for human energy. The energy substitutions we made were economically rational because of the market value of fossil energy and human energy.

I spent 11 years in Africa. During that time I was involved in a wide array of activities, but the one I found most challenging and interesting, and the one I put the most energy into was what we called "oxenization" -- working with farmers to help them substitute animal power for human power. Books have been written on that topic. We had mixed success. The disincentive to making that switch was that, net, perhaps using animal power was not more efficient. If you factor in the labor that goes into looking after the animals, both during the time the animals are working, as well as through the rest of the year, maybe the use of animals is not in fact, efficient. The point that is relevant to this discussion is that the farmer made a decision as to whether he would apply his human labour here or there, in-season or off-season. So his labour in the off-season had significantly less value than his labour in peak season, so it made sense to care for animals in the off-season if the animals would make his labour more efficient during peak season. All rational decisions.

But such decisions, when a non-renewable fuel enters the peicture are not as rational. What is a reasonable price for the non-renewable fuel? Were future generations at the table bidding for that fuel even as we bid for it, we might argue that the market is displaying a fair price. But they are not. But we don't even have to go that far. But I won't go there now. I think we can all agree that there are non-market forces that distort the market price of energy.

So what is going to happen in agriculture as fossil energy prices go up? This is not clear by any means. There are those who argue that as this time comes, the need for political stability will force governments to keep food prices low, and the best way to do that, will be to either subsidize fossil fuels for agriculture or ration it for agriculture. I would not favour that, because that would only serve to postpone a real solution to the problem.

So what is the real solution? Obviously finding more efficient ways of producing food. There is movement in that direction -- minimum tillage, zero tillage, mulch farming. These are all promising techniques. But market forces are not yet pushing strongly in that direction. The leaders in the development of these technologies are ideologically driven, not market driven. They see the writing on the wall. and see this as the way of the future, even if their generation will not benefit.

But the biggest problem with correcting this trend of substituting fossil energy for human energy is that of labour availability. As the substitution has occurred over the last 70 years, people who would have been contributing agricultural skills and labour are now in factories building widgets -- some useful, many simply catering to consumerist fancies.

I'll give you one example. Corn grown in climates where the winter is characterized by cold rather than drought, needs to be dried. This describes most of North America, perhaps all. 70 years ago this meant that corn was harvested into corn cribs. These cribs, sheltered from rain, but open to air circulation, allowed the corn to dry. This was labour intensive technology. Today corn is harvested and passed over a natural gas heated drier and then stored in big bins. The time is coming when that natural gas will be too expensive to be used for this purpose (because it will be needed to heat our cities), and there will be appeal in going back to the corn crib technology -- or maybe some technology we are not even aware of at this time. I have no idea how much time we will have to make that transition to some other technology, and I have no idea how much time we will have. The market will determine that it will be more labour intensive than what we now have (the market will be responding to a situation where human labour is cheaper, natural gas more expensive). But where will that labour be? In the cities, of course. And how long will it take for that labour to relocate to the farms where it is needed? Think of housing, services, and most importantly, attitude. I don't envision a pretty transition.