Food Sustainability

Obviously we humans influence the environment. Just look around and realize how much different all your surroundings would have been had there been no humans.

Consider the fact that if all insects where to become extinct all life on earth within 50 years would die off. If all humans would become extinct all life on earth without any exceptions within 50 years would thrive.

Basically were not hurting the environment, instead were in the process of killing off our selves. The earth is not in danger – we humans are.

Key here is to understand what tremendous damage and negative effects we have via agriculture. Agriculture in fact is biological cleansing.

Let’s focus on the positive side. As an example if all prairies in the US would be restored to its original status, with perennial grass, this alone would make US as a country a positive carbon dioxide contributor. This also considering no changes relative emissions from the industrial sector and also considering all transportation, all cars, SUVs etc would carry on as usual.

Bottom line – eat only grass fed meat and avoid all agricultural products as much as possible.

As an added benefit you’ll in this process also improve your health.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Grass-Fed-Meat-Benefits.aspx

Peak oil sure is a real challenge facing us humans and bottom line in fact is what is causing our financial breakdown.

As economic growth without growing supply of oil is impossible then also and as our current financial system depends on growth our monetary system as we know it must be restructured.

But we’re running out of time as we today within our current economical mindset and system deplete basically all recourses we need to thrive as humans on this earth.

As an example were soon facing a real challenge in regards of availability of Top Soil as were entering an era of rapid and aggressive top soil depletion.

Britain facing food crisis as world’s soil ‘vanishes in 60 years’
British farming soil could run out within 60 years, leading to a catastrophic food crisis and drastically higher prices for consumers, scientists warn.
A University of Sydney study, presented to the conference, found soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes.
In Europe that figure is 17 times, in America 10 times while five times as much soil is being lost in Australia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/6828878/Britain-facing-food-crisis-as-worlds-soil-vanishes-in-60-years.html

Considering theses facts and add to this that some 70% of all grain produced in the US as well as some 70% of all antibiotics in fact is used to feed and manage the health of cattle in the us. This as cattle originally designed to eat grass instead are feed cord and grain gets sick, their immune system gets messed up and as a result they then need to get antibiotics.

Just imagine then the immense positive health effects on cattle as well as humans and also considering the tremendous environmental benefits restoring the prairie to its original condition and its clear what path we as humans need to take going forward.

The green revolution that started in the mid 50ties was the result of us humans getting of an agricultural production system based on the photosynthesis and replacing it with stored sunlight (oil). This with the implementation of fertilizers, big machinery, diesel bumps to pump up fossil ground water and food production has exploded.

It’s now becoming increasingly clear with e.g. the depletion of oil, fossil ground water and top soil were at a cule de sac. We have reached as far as possible and now the system in a more and more rapid phase is on the verge of breaking.

Thus we have to start implement a sustainable food production system based natural perennials, natural fertilization and natural rain watering rather than depleting our fossil water.

A well-known example of fossil groundwater is the Ogallala Aquifer situated under the “corn basket” in the Mid West of the US. This huge underground lake presently supplies close to 30 percent of the irrigated land in the US and it is drying up. Ever since large scale irrigation began some decades ago, water levels in the aquifer have fallen 10 to 20 meters and according to some estimates it may dry up entirely in as little as 25 years.
http://waterandfoodaward.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/is-water-reaching-a-peak-of-production/

Clearly desalination is a very, very energy intensive business and as such, given likely future restrains on energy, will not be able to provide for a viable solution relevant the world food production.

Desalination as currently practiced is driven almost entirely by the combustion of fossil fuels. These fuels are in finite supply; they also pollute the air and contribute to global climate change. The whole character of human society in the 20th century in terms of its history, economics and politics has been shaped by energy obtained mostly from oil. Almost all oil produced to date is what is called conventional oil, which can be made to flow freely from wells (i.e. excluding oil from tar sands and shale). Of this vast resource, about 1600 billion barrels have so far been discovered, and just over 800 billion barrels had been used by the end of 1997. It is estimated that there may be a further 400 billion barrels of conventional oil yet to be found. With current annual global consumption of oil being approximately 25 billion barrels, and rising at 2 per cent per annum, the "business as usual" scenario would suggest that the remaining oil will be exhausted by 2050.
http://www.desware.net/desa4.aspx

Actually our food production looks very bright, that is if we in time and before too much of capital destruction has occurred due to peak oil and de likely downfall of the monetary system as we know it can start implementing a new structure.

It will allow us to implement a local, environmental friendly new food production based on long term sustainable principles. In this context I’d like to highlight one of many absurdities in our current system. This time I’d like to focus on the slaughtering of cattle.

In Sweden what may in fact be one of the world’s most centralized food production systems we have some 60 slaughter houses and a total population of some 9 million people. Compare this to Austria where there are 5000 local slaughter houses and some eight million people.

Just imagine the huge positive environmental benefit (not mentioning the quality aspects) in Sweden by implementing and allowing local slaughtering and this reduce transports to an absolute minimum. Add to this then also the clearly very important humane aspect then relative the handling of the cattle.
http://www.eldrimner.com/core/files/fler%20sm%C3%A5skaliga%20slakterier(1).pdf

I sure can recommend you all to read Michael Pollands – “The Omnivores Dilemma”
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823

In that book you can read the wonderful story about Joel Salatins “Polyphase farm in Vest Virginia. Here is a short outtake:

” The simplest way to capture the sun’s energy in a form food animals can use is by growing grass: “These blades are our photovoltaic panels,” Joel says. And the most efficient – if not the simplest – way to grow vast quantities of solar panels is by management-intensive grazing, a method that as its name implies relies more heavily on the farmer’s brain than on capital – or energy intensive inputs. All you need, in fact, is some portable electric fencing, a willingness to move your livestock on to fresh pasture every day.”

- Why then is this such a productive food production system?

”The important thing to know about any grass is that its growth follows a sigmoid, or S , curve, Joel explained. He grabbed my pen and notebook and began drawing a graph, based on the one that appears in Voisin’s book. “This vertical axis here is the height of our grass plant, okay? And the horizontal axis is time: The number of days since this paddock was last grazed.” He started tracing a big S on the page, beginning in the lower left-hand corner where the axis met. “See, the growth starts out real slow like this, but then after a few days it begins to zoom. That’s called the “the blaze of growth”, when the grass has recovered from the first bite, rebuilt it’s reserves and root mass, and really taken off. But after a while”- the curve leveled out and around day fourteen or so-“it slows down again, and the grass gets ready to flower and seed. It’s entering a period of senescence, when the grass begins to lignify (get woody) and becomes less platable to the cow. “What you want to do is graze pasture right at this point here “- he tapped my pad sharply-“ at the very top of the blaze of growth. But what you never, ever want to do is to violate the law of the second bite. You can’t let your cows take a second bite of grass before it has had a chance to fully recover”.

“Management intensive” it is. Joel is constantly updating the spreadsheet he keeps in his head to track the precise stage of growth the farm’s several dozen paddocks, which range in size from one to five acres, depending on the season and the weather. The amount of time it takes a paddock to recover is constantly changing, depending on temperature, rainfall, exposure to the sun, time of year, as does the amount of forage any given cow requires, depending on its size, age, and stage of life: a lactating cow, for example, eats twice as much grass as a dry one.

As destructive as overgrazing can be to a pasture, under grazing can be almost as damaging, since it leads to just right – grazing the optimal number of cattle at the optimal moment to exploit “the blaze of growth “ yields tremendous amounts of grass, all the while improving the quality of the land. Joel calls his this optimal grazing rhythm “pulsing the pastures” and says that at Polyface it has boosted the number of cow days to as much as four hundred per acre; the county average is seventy. “In effect we’ve bought a whole new farm for the price of some portable fencing and a lot of management”.
Then while you at it why not also have a go at this book?

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804