Food and agriculture - essential reading

From the Energy Bulletin archives - some essential reading:

The Oil We Eat’ Following the Food Chain back to Iraq
The journalist’s rule says: follow the money. This rule, however, is not really axiomatic but derivative, in that money, as even our vice president will tell you, is really a way of tracking energy. We’ll follow the energy.
first published January 31, 2003.
(A true classic article which might change the way you think about food.)

Eating Fossil Fuels
As Peak Oil and its effects become a raging national controversy it’s time everyone reads the story that puts the most serious implications of Peak Oil and Gas into perspective. Your biggest problem is not that your SUV might go hungry, it’s that you and your children might go hungry.
first published October 2, 2003.

Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren on Energy Descent
David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept and author of Permaculture: Principals and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, speaks with Adam Fenderson from www.energybulletin.net about permaculture and its role in an energy constrained world.
first published June 6, 2004.

Is Sustainable Agriculture an Oxymoron?
Jared Diamond calls it “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Bill Mollison says that it can “destroy whole landscapes.” Are they describing nuclear energy? Suburbia? Coal mining? No. They are talking about agriculture.
first published August 16, 2006.

Some recent articles on urban and sustainable agriculture:

Don’t be Wasted on Grass! Lawns to Gardens!
Heather Coburn, excerpted from the forthcoming Food Not Lawns (Chelsea Green 2005).
French aristocrats popularized the idea of the green grassy lawn in the eighteenth century, when they planted the agricultural fields around their estates to grass, to send the message that they had more land than they needed and could therefore afford to waste some. Meanwhile, French peasants starved for lack of available ground, and the resulting frustration might have had something to do with the French Revolution in 1789.

Today, 58 million Americans spend approximately $30 billion every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of over a third of an acre and $517 each. The same size plot of land could still have a small lawn for recreation, plus produce all of the vegetables needed to feed a family of six. The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.
(Cheers to Brad for sending us this one.)

Social Fertilizer: The big growth potential of urban agriculture

Community gardens are primarily hobbies here in Vancouver, but internationally they are known for their ability to feed entire cities.

Berkeley: Urban farmers produce nearly all their food with a sustainable garden in their backyard
An approximately 6,000-square-foot yard provides generous space for a bustling urban farm. From the street it is impossible to tell that the property holds everything from apple trees to tomato vines, rabbits to goats, and chickens to domesticated pigeons.
first published April 25, 2005.

Sustainable agriculture in CSIRO newsletter (584-Kb PDF)
Elizabeth Heij (editor), CSIRO Sustainability Network Newsletter
Includes two great features:
Soil fertility management for more sustainable farming systems;
Sustainable agriculture and the challenge to make it pay.

See Food & Agriculture news at Energy Bulletin for more:

http://www.energybulletin.net/news.php?cat=37

2 Comments »

  1. Tony Boys said,

    May 22, 2008 @ 3:30 pm

    Good, interesting list of refences. We really need to clear this hurdle for the EDAP, because if we can’t eat then the plan is useless. Somewhere on the net there is a paper or article by Christos,Vasilikiotis, “Can Organic Farming “Feed the World”?”. I also talk about this a little in one of my papers available at the URL above, Energy and Agriculture update, Jan 2005.

    On the kinds of things that can go wrong with countries regarding the connections between food and energy, please see my material on food and energy in Japan in the 21st century and my paper on the problems in North Korea (2004 version), which are available in PDF from the URL above. For some hints on what sustainable agriculture with no fossil energy inputs might be like, please see some of my material about the Karen people in northern Thailand, also at the website mentioned.

    There are lots of good ideas about sustainable farming ‘out there’. Reading about it is fine, what we really need, especially in highly urbanised societies, is that people get “reskilled” in the skills of food production. Good luck!!

  2. serge said,

    June 1, 2008 @ 10:51 am

    great writing.

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