Why UN urban growth projections may be wrong. Cities depend on invisible energy subsidies that are failing. The biggest migration in history might reverse.
1. Ammonia. For all my life there has been no progress on nitrogen fixation, but recently there are several lines of work that are promising. In particular, electrochemistry is really moving into industry and there are some good results of N fixation with this technique. If it works we can have small units using locally generated power.
2. Other fertilisers. We are getting much more efficient at not losing K and P to runoff, so cutting the amounts required.
3. Transport should transition to EV quite easily, as heavy trucks have quite a short life. This reduces the energy required by a factor of around 4.
4. Agricultural machinery will get lighter as we move to autonomous vehicles and minimum plough methodologies
5. Solar farms have proved compatible with livestock and to some extent arable, so farms can generate power for themselves and for export to cities.
6. I see no mechanism which translates a breakdown in the current system into a flow reversal. If anything increased demand for food makes agriculture more profitable, so increasing the value of productive land relative to converting it to housing. Society can handle a transition to high cost food so long as there time is long enough.
It will happen as the cost of inputs rises. And, of course, none of this is the fault of farmers. They are constrained by the system and the opportunities.
Thanks Gustav, I appreciate the comment. I have no problem with any of the observations except for the intensification elephant. Nutrient and energy additions are a disaster for soil biology, which means that if (when) we go to more efficiency and moderately less energy waste (ultimately the reason we think its all about climate), then we cook the soil forcing us to ever more efficient input-output systems. I doubt very much this is going to feed 8 billion for more than a few generations.
I have just reread Hannah Ritchie's recent post on world food production. The bit things that comes over is how fertiliser use has been falling continuously for about a century, and that in particular, for China fertiliser and pesticide use is dropping, having peaked about 10 years ago. Soil quality is harder to quantify, but at least in the UK it is taken seriously, with farmers being fined for excess runoff. In the US there are now productive farms where in the 1920s there were dustbowls.
Thanks for this post. Some great quotes--I restacked it twice and could have a couple more times.
I like the term stratification. Cities are built, and their allure sold, on multiple layers of dependence. You can live in the city, as I did for a good part of my life, and never see much of what sustains you. Your water, food, sewer, heat, electric power etc,....is all trucked, pumped, cabled etc,... to you. This complete disconnect from the natural world, which supports all of our needs, makes possible our continued reliance on high energy consumption. If 80-85% of North Americans live in urban areas, including our policy makers--they just don't have any relationship to or visibility of their life support systems.
I am impressed you are suggesting positive directions for our high-energy Western societies to go in. I'm afraid I'm not as hopeful.
Thanks John, appreciate the comment and stacks. Hope is a slippery fish and not as tasty as your wildcaught edibles. But it saves me from writing what I really think will happen.
Dr. Dangerfield: What a thoughtful piece full of insight. I have shared it with those in the next generation of my family who will be grappling with this after 2050. The theme of subsidies is poignant for me. I have made my living as a farmer since renouncing city life 38 years ago, and I’ve always been nagged by this idea of hidden subsidies; I am a beneficiary, and I’ve suspected that so many, so called, successful farmers must have a hidden subsidy. The late editor of Stockman Grass Farmer, Alan Nation coined “unfair competitive advantage”. Fairly ironic when you think we’ve all been subsidized, one way or another. “Functional equivalent of a feed lot”: perfect.
Thanks Pierre, very pleased you passed it on to the next custodians. I always wondered who the best audience for this information might be. Perhaps not those already addicted to the energy subsidy… not boomers for nothing.
Been mulling this over. The bottom line is that the population will grow, although quite unevenly across the world. That means we need more food. All the historic data on fertiliser user and crop productivity shows this to be handleable. All production, whether counters or wheat, requires energy, but our energy requirements per head are ot rising, except in developing countries. Our total energy consumption should fall as we electrify. The gain is potentially halving it.
You also assume continuing high beef consumption. It is falling in most developed countries, except the US.
All you have left is the proportion of the work force working the land, a d you assume no productivity gains there.
Good, thought provoking, so here are my thoughts:
1. Ammonia. For all my life there has been no progress on nitrogen fixation, but recently there are several lines of work that are promising. In particular, electrochemistry is really moving into industry and there are some good results of N fixation with this technique. If it works we can have small units using locally generated power.
2. Other fertilisers. We are getting much more efficient at not losing K and P to runoff, so cutting the amounts required.
3. Transport should transition to EV quite easily, as heavy trucks have quite a short life. This reduces the energy required by a factor of around 4.
4. Agricultural machinery will get lighter as we move to autonomous vehicles and minimum plough methodologies
5. Solar farms have proved compatible with livestock and to some extent arable, so farms can generate power for themselves and for export to cities.
6. I see no mechanism which translates a breakdown in the current system into a flow reversal. If anything increased demand for food makes agriculture more profitable, so increasing the value of productive land relative to converting it to housing. Society can handle a transition to high cost food so long as there time is long enough.
It will happen as the cost of inputs rises. And, of course, none of this is the fault of farmers. They are constrained by the system and the opportunities.
Thanks Gustav, I appreciate the comment. I have no problem with any of the observations except for the intensification elephant. Nutrient and energy additions are a disaster for soil biology, which means that if (when) we go to more efficiency and moderately less energy waste (ultimately the reason we think its all about climate), then we cook the soil forcing us to ever more efficient input-output systems. I doubt very much this is going to feed 8 billion for more than a few generations.
I have just reread Hannah Ritchie's recent post on world food production. The bit things that comes over is how fertiliser use has been falling continuously for about a century, and that in particular, for China fertiliser and pesticide use is dropping, having peaked about 10 years ago. Soil quality is harder to quantify, but at least in the UK it is taken seriously, with farmers being fined for excess runoff. In the US there are now productive farms where in the 1920s there were dustbowls.
Thanks for this post. Some great quotes--I restacked it twice and could have a couple more times.
I like the term stratification. Cities are built, and their allure sold, on multiple layers of dependence. You can live in the city, as I did for a good part of my life, and never see much of what sustains you. Your water, food, sewer, heat, electric power etc,....is all trucked, pumped, cabled etc,... to you. This complete disconnect from the natural world, which supports all of our needs, makes possible our continued reliance on high energy consumption. If 80-85% of North Americans live in urban areas, including our policy makers--they just don't have any relationship to or visibility of their life support systems.
I am impressed you are suggesting positive directions for our high-energy Western societies to go in. I'm afraid I'm not as hopeful.
Thanks John, appreciate the comment and stacks. Hope is a slippery fish and not as tasty as your wildcaught edibles. But it saves me from writing what I really think will happen.
Dr. Dangerfield: What a thoughtful piece full of insight. I have shared it with those in the next generation of my family who will be grappling with this after 2050. The theme of subsidies is poignant for me. I have made my living as a farmer since renouncing city life 38 years ago, and I’ve always been nagged by this idea of hidden subsidies; I am a beneficiary, and I’ve suspected that so many, so called, successful farmers must have a hidden subsidy. The late editor of Stockman Grass Farmer, Alan Nation coined “unfair competitive advantage”. Fairly ironic when you think we’ve all been subsidized, one way or another. “Functional equivalent of a feed lot”: perfect.
Thanks Pierre, very pleased you passed it on to the next custodians. I always wondered who the best audience for this information might be. Perhaps not those already addicted to the energy subsidy… not boomers for nothing.
Dr Dangerfield - Thankyou so much for this authoritative provocative rural urban rural thread. Magisterial. Still reflecting.
Please could you see if you can get this link working in the piece:
https://open.substack.com/pub/mindfulsceptics/p/why-nobody-knows-how-much-food-wellr=4o0vy1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Thank you Matthew, and apologies for the broken link.
Try this one
https://www.mindfulsceptics.info/p/why-nobody-knows-how-much-food-well?r=4o0vy1
Been mulling this over. The bottom line is that the population will grow, although quite unevenly across the world. That means we need more food. All the historic data on fertiliser user and crop productivity shows this to be handleable. All production, whether counters or wheat, requires energy, but our energy requirements per head are ot rising, except in developing countries. Our total energy consumption should fall as we electrify. The gain is potentially halving it.
You also assume continuing high beef consumption. It is falling in most developed countries, except the US.
All you have left is the proportion of the work force working the land, a d you assume no productivity gains there.
Not convinced.