Please read this editorial and I encourage you to comment below. If you don't understand it, or aren't sure what it means, I suggest saying so.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2009/0911.html
Timely article. Here are my comments:
1. This underlines the need to grow your own. Ensure you are allocating around 70% toward calorific crops (most people go overboard on salads)
2. See Atash's comments elsewhere on storability without energy inputs E.g. "winter" squash, corn, dry foods like beans
3. If we destroy all the cash in the world we could still produce all the food the world needs to eat.
4. On Yields, seemingly impressive until you realize that the starting point represented an extremely inefficient setup. Be humble enough to learn form cultures that have several thousand years of fine tuning their perrenial polycultures for superior yields. Annual, monoculture, industrial farming is a glitzy disaster. I never plant to own a tractor. Ever.
5. "Organic agricultural methods could support roughly 4 billion people – but the global population has grown to over 6.5 billion" Organic methods outyield "conventional" methods and thus can support a greater population. Sustainably. The real topic of discussion should be on rates of population increase. Poverty is generally correlated with a higher birth rate (the theory is increasing chances of survival) while wealth a low birth rate (more certainty, higher costs but perhaps also selfishness). If we convert to an organic high yielding system, will we just turn around and populate the world with 10 billion people (See the book Overshoot. Also agent smith from the matrix on humans as a virus)
6. The Western diet has far more than 7:1 energy ratio, more like 40:1 once you factor in oil based herbicide, pesticide, sowing, reaping, threshing, packaging, cooling, transport, advertizing etc. Law of diminishing returns make the green revolution look like the foolishness it is.
7. Water solutions - polycultures, perennials, natural mulches, rocks, recycle cardboard, compost in place, swales. There are places growing traditional crops on 6 inches of rain per year. How? Again humility to others yields wisdom! There is the same volume of water on the planet as it always has been. And plants can grow well in properly diluted ocean water.
8. Westernized diets are evil. Spread them and spread evil.
9. Second lastly, consider a grain free diet. (Just 4 crops among 100,000 edibles Corn, rice, wheat, (potatoes?) make up 80% of the worlds food consumption?) These plants represent a juvenile stage in ecology. A mature tree will outyield these 4:1. And you can still grow your juvenile shrubs, vines etc under the tree....
10. Lastly: when will people get their facts right on ethanol. 88% of corn in the US is NOT grown for people. It is animal feed. Ethanol from corn in by far NOT the best choice. It is simply an outcome of taxes for subsidies. A higher volume of ethanol can come from mesquite growing in ditches in the desert. Unirrigated and wild. Ditto for seaweed. As for the numbers, why doesn't anyone quote a study that states the actual EROEI for ethanol. And dare I even say the EROEI for diesel or gasoline! Ethanol is being used as a scapegoat while we know that gasoline and diesel have no long term future. See David Blume (book, DVD, website, youtube) for total destruction of ethanol myths. Oh and he patented a technique of using the "waste" for corn ethanol production as a herbicide (which proved to destroy about 90% of the common weeds if I recall).
