Rising fossil fuel energy costs spell trouble for global food security

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/jul/rising-fossil-fuel-energy-costs-spell-trouble-global-food-security

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Rising fossil fuel energy costs spell trouble for global food security[/font]

07/01/2015

[font size=3]CORVALLIS, Ore. – Ongoing efforts to feed a growing global population are threatened by rising fossil-fuel energy costs and breakdowns in transportation infrastructure. Without new ways to preserve, store, and transport food products, the likelihood of shortages looms in the future.

In an analysis of food preservation and transportation trends published in this week’s issue of the journal BioScience, scientists warn that new sustainable technologies will be needed for humanity just to stay even in the arms race against the microorganisms that can rapidly spoil the outputs of the modern food system.

“It is mostly a race between the capacity of microbe populations to grow on human foodstuffs and evolve adaptations to changing conditions and the capacity of humans to come up with new technologies for preserving, storing, and transporting food,” wrote lead author Sean T. Hammond, a postdoctoral researcher and interdisciplinary ecologist in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University.

Hammond developed the analysis with colleagues at the University of New Mexico, Arizona State University and Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos in Mexico.

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[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Eh?

I'm home canning food with methods in use for a hundred years or more and haven't had any particular problems. I can break out a jar of jam that I canned a couple of years back, and feel safe in eating the product. Heck, I'm not even using purchased fertilizers in my garden, just compost and planting cover crops that fix nitrogen. And the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has stated that they feel the way to stay ahead of global food issues is through personal family farming, not agribusiness. At least that was one of the tweets I got in my twitter feed this last week or so.

[cprise]

2. Its perplexing until you realize

* People over 100 years ago were not 7 billion in number (so even canning has a far larger footprint today)

* Those people had a hard life and had to devote a larger share of income to putting food on the table

* Women who are leaving limited roles as 'babymakers' to focus on careers generally demand freezers and frozen foods to help make domestic life compatible with school and work; Frequent trips to market for fresh ingredients is out.


With that said, I commend your own efforts and also agree with the UN statement you cited: More family-sized farms and urban farms will reduce the hardships we're facing.

But I don't believe it will be enough to head off some constriction in food availability to poorer people in the coming decades. There is also an old kind of counter-cultural romanticism attached to "Getting back to the garden", the idea we could all become rural and agrarian again to solve environmental problems. But 7 billion people headin' for the hills is a recipe for denuding the entire landscape, everywhere; It certainly isn't compatible with the demographic situation we live with today.

What we need are carbon taxes that will help give smaller, less monocultural farmers a foothold... especially with sales to their surrounding communities. Carbon taxes would also penalize massive food waste and the overconsumption of high-carbon foodstuffs like beef. It would force supermarkets to stop wasting energy with vertical and open-air coolers, and put far-flung supply chains in the red.

[GreatGazoo]

3. Electric tractors and local food could spell trouble for status quo

Tractors are especially well suited to using electric motors because the torque is more important than speed and range. Combining electric farm gear with solar has increased productivity and independence for farmers in Africa.

Also, there are many inefficiencies in the US food production system. For example in the US 66% of food production goes to animals and only 12% of those calories are ultimately available to humans. Worldwide the figure is 36% for animal feed. Shifting this production to foods which human can eat directly would increase the carrying capacity of world agriculture by 4 billion humans.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034015/

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Note that this study is not about food production

It is about transportation and preservation of the food after it is produced.

[GreatGazoo]

5. yes so the type of food produced and where it is produced is part of the problem they cite

meat has to be kept frozen in order to inhibit spoilage of lipids and growth of microorganisms. Compare that to something like locally grown dried beans, grains, quinoa, etc. which were the basis of agriculture for thousand of years before refrigeration.

It is all one system -- harvest, processing and storage are all part of food production. Corn prices are low, silos are full so they want more storage capacity built out and taxpayers will be on the hook for more and more un-needed, unprofitable (subsidized) corn.

Maybe the answer is not more storage and new poisons but rather alignment of production with consumption and elimination of the ag subsidies which perpetuate global warming and destruction of soil.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. They’re not promoting “more storage and new poisons”

…

“We can transport any food, even foods that spoil quickly like fish or fruits, to any point on the surface of the planet before it goes bad,” Hammond said. “That’s pretty amazing, but I think we need to question whether we should. Maybe the local-food movement is less of a trend in modern society and more of a necessity.”

…

[GreatGazoo]

7. Not specifically but they do advocate "innovations" in storage and for "ranchers and fishermen

... to become more efficient and productive....to produce more food per acre."

To me the article is a little vague and perhaps self-contradicting. They want innovative, sustainable storage and transport systems for meat and fruit in one paragraph, then they want local food in another. They want "innovations" but are not specific.

Agree that they don't say "poison" -- I was reading between the lines on all their talk about the growth of microorganisms but they don't say pesticides or antibiotics there, only "sustainable innovations."

Personally I advocate a more efficient food production/storage/delivery system and a transition from low efficiency foods like beef, milk, and fish to more efficient foods like whole grains.