Egypt, Revolutions and Food

“The future is as follows: decreased agricultural land, decreased water, decreased cheap oil (which is what our agricultural system rests on.) The inflation figures say “there is no inflation”, but that’s a lie, pure and simple. Food prices are up, energy is killing people and commodities are up.”

Speaking solely on U.S. policy, but we pay people to not plant on perfectly good land. We pay people to grow crop X when we need crop Y. Cut the subsidies. And on a much smaller scale, we grow corn (and some other crops) for the sole purpose of creating energy. There is a serious shift towards biomass energy production right now.

Until there are serious talks, actions, and changes about energy in this country, I’m not worried about food. Globally? That’s a different story. It always has been. The U.S. is just about perfect to be one giant farm. Rest of the world? Not so much. And I say this knowing that current giant, corporate, mono-farming practices are not sustainable. On that front I worry we’re heading towards some awful not-to-futuristic version of a Dust Bowl.

I’ve been hearing way too much talk about water lately. I work with and work in circles with groundwater and surface water specialists that do all sorts of modeling. When I get the chance, I ask them how much water in the U.S. is above ground and containerized at any given point – in bottles, in pipes, in tanks, in towers, in pools, in treatment stations, etc. How much fresh water have humans effectively removed from the water cycle? 1%? 2%? 5%? And then, what would happen if we put it all back? When it’s illegal for people in Las Vegas to have pools and green lawns, then I’ll worry about water.

I’m concerned about these issues. They need to be dealt with. But there are speculators out there already making sick profits, i.e. the current commodity market.

“Virtually every oligopoly in the world is trying to grab as much money as it can by raising prices in collusion while not improving service or goods quality unless they absolutely much.”

This. But it’s much too early for the push that’s being made. The push being made now is based purely on speculation, fear, and greed and not out of true scarcity. On the flip side, this is why I say the U.S. should be buying the hell out of Middle Eastern oil right now. Buy it all up. Save every drop we get out of Alaska and the northern Midwest oil sands. Save our stuff for when it becomes really rare. Because oil isn’t expensive yet. Funny how I say “our stuff” like it helps me in some way. It’s the isolationist in me. We can help others, but let’s take care of ourselves first. That sounds terrible as I type it.

I’m not joking when I say one of the best things you can do for yourself is grow a vegetable garden. Even if you only have room for a tomato plant in your dorm room window or an herb garden on your apartment patio. Do it. Not just for mother nature, but for your own health. Make the regular quality shit, charge for the stuff that isn’t crap, right?

Aquifer levels are dropping in multiple areas of the world, including huge swathes of the US, China and India. In India some areas have gone dry already.

Recent news item about how climate change is affecting the water supply in Europe:

http://www.truth-out.org/europe-begins-run-short-water67086

But there are speculators out there already making sick profits, i.e. the current commodity market.

From a recent analysis:

Wrong reason number 2: The price hike is entirely because of real demand and supply imbalances. This is simply not possible given the volatility and sharp movements of prices that can be seen from the charts. Once again, it is likely that a combination of panic buying and speculative financial activity is playing a role in driving world food prices up well beyond anything that is warranted by real quantity movements.

Frenzy in Food Markets

In other words, don’t believe Dow Jones, which wants to divert hungry people’s attention away from speculation that affects their ability to stay alive.

“The future belongs to the nations that figure out the next energy model and impliment it. The US won’t, because the winners of the last economy will block it to the bitter end, just as Britain did not move to the oil economy except militarily, until far too late.”

Ian/others, any links to essays/texts dealing with this topic?

“The future belongs to the nations that figure out the next energy model and impliment [sic] it. The US won’t, because the winners of the last economy will block it to the bitter end…”

I don’t have a specific link to share, but Ian Welsh’s prediction appears to me to be correct in that it is an accurate observation of what has been occurring (that is, the fossil-fuel industry has been blocking any substantial move by the u.s. gov’t. to develop competition to the fossil-fuel industry, including spreading disinformation about the effect that CO2 is having on the planet’s climate).

The future belongs to the nations that figure out the next energy model and impliment it.

I’m afraid there is no “next” energy model to implement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPR108kwNo4

Exchange “Sputnik Moments” for Cowboys, and the song makes even more sense.

OIL……good to the last drop., just like Maxwell House.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzic86OWnS8

I’ve been worried about water management for quite some time. I did a piece for the Baltimore Sun about it back in 2003:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-05-11/entertainment/0305120627_1_water-wars-jordan-river-water-management

But as with so many things, I don’t see people doing anything about it until they’re forced to. Yes, I’m a pessimist.

On cheap clothing – a rant.

This doesn’t go so much to unrest as it does oligopolies selling crap. I am so sick of crappy clothing. It used to be that if you were willing to pay a bit more, you could get decent stuff. Now, even when I go to one of the “good” stores (e.g, Nordstrom), most of the clothing is crap. It’s ill-fitting (cheaper to sell it in “s”, “m” and “l” than actual sizes), made of synthetic material that looks and feels cheap, and the buttons, threading disintegrate quickly. I used to invest in Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts. They were wonderful. They lasted for ever and looked great. Five or Ten of those shirts lasted me years as my primary dress shirts. Now, the women’s shirts are so thin, you can see through them (slutty and cheap!). I bought one that was a darker color so you couldn’t see my bra and after less than 15 wearings I ran my fingers through the tail when I was tucking it in. (WTF?). Meanwhile, today I’m wearing a sweater I bought in 1995 and it still looks wonderful. I’m not even going to go into the lack of decent suits.

Does anyone believe that the aforementioned issues are going to resolve themselves with the availability of higher quality clothing and solar powered greenhouses and water wells? Come on folks, that’s ludicrous. Let’s take the solar panels, for example. Presumably, if they are ever a viable option, they will be produced using the Capitalistic Business Model which requires planned obsolescence so a revenue stream can be guaranteed in perpetuity. That alone means you will still be extracting the world’s resources, yes not oil per se, but all those solar panels come from somewhere, not just out of thin air, at an ever increasing rate until there’s nothing to extract any longer except us (think Soylent Green).

I think we need to face it. The consumeristic/materialistic gig is up for the majority of us. As Mandos said a while back, maybe the Singularity will upload us before the real tsunami hits. The sea is drawing out right now, the momentum’s building, and man oh man, it’s going to be one hell of a wave. Of course, I think the reservations on that Singularity Ark have all been taken. If you don’t have one, it’s probably a good idea to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnuijDieOvY

I don’t think anyone here is disputing this. We’re just trying to figure out how to live in the meantime. I mean, short of offing oneself, one does have to live.

That’s lovely, Lisa. While people are starving in ever-increasing numbers, without nary a shirt on their back let alone any scrap of cloth, and what we are talking about here is very much related to that….because it is the cause of it, I can’t help but react to a comment like this:

I used to invest in Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts. They were wonderful. They lasted for ever and looked great.

The apocalypse could care less whether your clothes are wrinkled. It’s very indiscriminate.

We pay people not to plant on some land because you can’t just plant on the same land year in and year out, especially if you’re planting the same crop and monocropping the field.

But under the industrialized agriculture regime, a farmer will be out of business if he starts practicing good rotation/fallow techniques. The only way to make it is to plant more and get bigger yields, which actually drives prices down for the farmer so s/he must plant more and get bigger yields to make as much as last year.

Also, a lot of the “perfectly good” land is not perfectly good anymore. It’s been heavily degraded by bad horticultural practice and when that happens it is often completely choked by weed growth. There’s also a lot of perfectly good land that had all its topsoil stripped so that housing developments could go up.

When we were seeing food riots in ’08, it needs to be kept in mind that ’08 was a record harvest. The food production system (especially in the US) is an accident waiting to happen. Ending subsidies is worth talking about, but in and of itself it will just crush American farmers, even though those subsidies currently benefit mostly seed/input companies and traders (who can buy subsidized crops low in the US and sell high on the world market).

But there’s no structure in place to replace what we have. The small farm sector is growing rapidly, but it’s constrained by backdoor subsidies to the industrial sector. Food safety regulations are, more often than not, just backdoor ways to beat down small farmers. For example, the RFID tagging of cows. If you own a small herd, every cow has to be tagged, but if you run a feedlot you only tag one out of one hundred.

Americans are, however, insulated from agricultural commodity price swings because so little of their food uses those commodities as anything but starting points for chemical recombination. Wheat may be going up, but you won’t see it much in the price of a Ho-Ho.

As a backyard gardener (plus one off property location) and a professional horticulturist, i love the idea of people growing their own. It’s not, unfortunately, enough. Sure, every little bit helps and the best motto for 21st Century America is “one grid at a time”, but it’s not going to save us. It may save a few of us with access to land and skills and a network, but most people lack all three of those.

It’s too easy, and lazy, to lay the wrath of speculative inflation that is now being unleashed on QE. It has its part, but all the other things mentioned here also have their part,

It’s called a catalyst. Introduce a new stress on an already fragile system and watch it collapse.

The last thing any one who knows me IRL would call me, is a Saint. Quite the opposite. They’re more likely to refer to me as the Anti-Christ because of the discomforting cognitive dissonance I bring to bear. Of course I am as guilty as all the rest for this Egregore (definition italicized below) we feed, and that feeds us.

An egregore is a kind of group mind which is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose. Whenever people gather together to do something and egregore is formed, but unless an attempt is made to maintain it deliberately it will dissipate rather quickly. However if the people wish to maintain it and know the techniques of how to do so, the egregore will continue to grow in strength and can last for centuries.

An egregore has the characteristic of having an effectiveness greater than the mere sum of its individual members. It continuously interacts with its members, influencing them and being influenced by them. The interaction works positively by stimulating and assisting its members but only as long as they behave and act in line with its original aim. It will stimulate both individually and collectively all those faculties in the group which will permit the realization of the objectives of its original program. If this process is continued a long time the egregore will take on a kind of life of its own, and can become so strong that even if all its members should die, it would continue to exist on the inner dimensions and can be contacted even centuries later by a group of people prepared to live the lives of the original founders, particularly if they are willing to provide the initial input of energy to get it going again.

I’m in the midst of watching the latest release of Zeitgeist. This latest film is entitled Moving Forward. I’ve watched 42 minutes thus far and I’m thoroughly impressed, if not enraptured. It has validated much of what I think and feel, and actually mirrors many things I have deposited here and elsewhere on the intertube. Here’s a link for those who feel compelled to view it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w&feature=player_embedded

I’m all for removing subsidies for crops, or more precisely for subsidizing the right things in order to promote them. It’s good government policy to carefully build. The Japanese and Koreans became manufacturing powerhouses by subsidizing and protecting until the sectors helped could compete on their own terms.

The current structure of agricultural subsidies in the US is loathsome. It doesn’t just benefit the big processors like ADM, but also the input suppliers (which are so vertically integrated so tightly at this point that they may as well be a cartel). We’re talking the likes of Monsanto. A lot of those subsidies also end up in the pockets of absentee landlords.

But, we must recognize that we don’t have a replacement for the current system. I wish we did, but we don’t. The big commodity crop farmers live up to their eyeballs in debt. Combines don’t come cheap. They are, in many ways, indentured. Yank the rug without a well-thought out plan for moving ahead and there will be real trouble.

Lex – start reducing the subsidies for commodity crops a few percent a year.

Here’s how ridiculous it is (or was – it might have changed). When my wife & I purchased 55 acres we had a corn set-aside come along with the land. If we did not plant corn we’d get something like $90.00/acre/year. We could plant any of the other commodity crops – rice, milo, sugar cane, wheat, soybeans, … and still receive the check as long as we didn’t plant corn.

But if we planted an apple tree for market we were dead. We’d lose the set aside. Or strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, … That is an example of how utterly politicized and idiotic the system is.

We never picked up the checks. not a single one. They sit in the desk at the local USDA office collecting dust. They quit calling.

Gee. As it turns out, learning to grow one’s own food is sensible. Not a “hobby” at all. Who would have thought.

If my area grocery store was no longer able to get food to stock its shelves, it wouldn’t matter to my life whether I have a garden or not (I don’t own any land to plant one). If I had one and managed to keep all of the food, I still would not have enough food for a year. And I forgot to plant fruit trees a decade ago. And I don’t have a chicken coop or goats or a barn for the cow that I don’t have. And if I did, the thousand (or more?) people who live in a quarter-mile radius around me don’t. And they would likely show up either at night or day to helpfully harvest my garden to feed themselves or their families soon after the area grocery store could no longer get food.

Yep. Many people are not so privileged to own significant amount of land and space. If we ever reach a point where mass reliance on personal gardens in necessary, well…

I’m not arguing in favor of subsidies at all. Our current system is destructive, enriches the wrong people, and severely distorts markets.

All i’m saying is that a grand statement of yanking all the agricultural subsidies would put a whole lot of people in the very hungry boat discussed in comments above. What we need is a plan, a good plan, to move American agriculture away from what it is today to what it could/should become. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely.

There are good parallel institutions developing, but they’re hampered by the current system and nowhere near ready to replace it in any case.

I’d love to believe in the umpteen million victory gardens will feed us dream. Unfortunately, i have too much first-hand knowledge of horticultural reality. It’s easy to talk the suburban homestead talk when the grocery store stands as a safe backup plan, but even then, a lot more people fail or realize meager returns growing their own food than succeed wildly. Now if you know what you’re doing, have good garden infrastructure, excellent light and a fair bit of luck you can do a lot in a small space…but those are a lot of variables to rely on.

It would be easy for me to say it can be done. I have the aforementioned necessities and my two best friends run a small farm. Not to mention that i work in a large greenhouse complex that gives me access that most people don’t have…including property my boss doesn’t use and lets me use. I’m off the industrial meat grid and mostly off the produce grid (depending on how i choose to live). I could make it without the current food system. I’m also in a tiny minority.

All that being said, it’s foolish to not use whatever space you have to grow whatever you can and learn as much as you can, because there may well come a time when your knowledge is what stands between hungry and starving. Also, it’s not something you can just decide to do and succeed. There are other skills that can be developed. Preserving food that you purchase when it’s cheap means fewer trips to the grocery store in the winter. And growing food is the easy (labor wise) part of the equation. Processing all the produce so that it doesn’t end up as just compost is the hard part.