Agriculture Future Trends & Food Security
The future is EcoCover:  Read why.

Modern day American agriculture is extremely dependent on petroleum for motive power for equipment, chemical herbicides and pesticides, nitrogen fertilizer made mostly from natural gas, and fuels for transporting food over long distances mostly by truck and airplane.  The average meal travels over 1,500 miles to get to the dinner table.  We are consuming nearly 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce 1 calorie of food.  This is not sustainable.

We are at or very near (some say we have already passed) peak oil production.  The price of oil will continue to rise due to increasing demand for energy to fuel emerging economies like China and India, the two most populated countries in the world.  If world population continues to increase at the rate of 70 million people a year, the future of agriculture is clear.  Population and energy trends are in direct opposition to food security.

Background:  From Lester Brown's book Outgrowing the Earth

From 1950 to 1984 world grain production expanded faster than population, raising the grain produced per person from 550 pounds (250 kilograms) to the historical peak of 750 pounds (339 kilograms), an increase of 34 percent. This positive development initially reflected recovery from the disruption of World War II, and then later solid technological advances. The rising tide of food production lifted all ships, largely eradicating hunger in some countries and substantially reducing it in many others.

Since 1984, grain harvest growth has fallen behind that of population, dropping the amount of grain produced per person to 670 pounds (308 kilograms) in 2004, down 9 percent from its historic high point. Fortunately, part of the global decline was offset by the increasing efficiency with which feed grains are converted into animal protein, thanks to the growing use of soybean meal as a protein supplement.

Several long-standing environmental trends are contributing to the global loss of agricultural momentum. Among these are the cumulative effects of soil erosion on land productivity, the loss of cropland to desertification, and the accelerating conversion of cropland to non-farm uses. All are taking a toll, although their relative roles vary among countries.

Now two newer environmental trends—falling water tables and rising temperatures—are slowing the growth in world food production. In addition, farmers are faced with a shrinking backlog of unused technology. The high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and corn that were developed a generation or so ago are now widely used in industrial and developing countries alike. They doubled and tripled yields, but there have not been any dramatic advances in the genetic yield potential of grains since then.

News item January 18, 2007: China Grain Crop Could Drop by A Third

The use of fertilizer, which removed nutrient constraints and helped the new high-yielding varieties realize their full genetic potential during the last half-century, has now plateaued or even declined slightly in key food-producing countries. Among these are the United States, countries in Western Europe, Japan, and now possibly China as well. Meanwhile, the rapid growth in irrigation that characterized much of the last half-century has also slowed. Indeed, in some countries the irrigated area is shrinking.

The bottom line is that it is now more difficult for farmers to keep up with the growing demand for grain. The rise in world grain land productivity, which averaged over 2 percent a year from 1950 to 1990, fell to scarcely 1 percent a year from 1990 to 2000. This will likely drop further in the years immediately ahead.

If the rise in land productivity continues to slow and if population continues to grow by 70 million or more per year, governments may begin to define national security in terms of food shortages, rising food prices, and the emerging politics of scarcity.

The Future of Agriculture is Localization:  by Ron Castle

Food crops other than grain face the same future challenges that Lester describes above.

Since 1950, American corporate agribusiness has consolidated food supplies into a relatively small number of companies.  This consolidation was made possible by cheap energy which has also resulted in relatively cheap food prices.  We use more energy per capita than any other country in the world.

Corporate agribusiness has resulted in the major demise of the family farm and the loss of local food supplies.  Long distance transportation has replaced local food resources in many areas.  The days of cheap energy are fading quickly.  The rise in oil prices will directly impact both food prices and eventually the reliability of supply.

Local agriculture for local markets is the trend of the future, which is history repeating itself.

I have collected old books on farming for almost 30 years.  On my shelf is a book written in 1864 titled "Ten Acres Enough: A Practical Experience" published by James Miller, Bookseller, Publisher and Importer, 522 Broadway, New York.  The author, who decided to remain anonymous to avoid people pestering him (his words), sold his small manufacturing business in Philadelphia in 1855 and moved his family to an 11 acre farm in central New Jersey.  He paid $1,000 for the land and house, over the course of three years invested $1,970.86 in inputs and sold $4,658.94 in farm products while feeding his family of five from the production of the farm.  He raised strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches, early cabbages and other produce and sold his crops to the fresh markets in New York City and Philadelphia which were supplied overnight by train.  Now we know why New Jersey is named the Garden State?  He also sold berry plants to his neighbors, a significant source of income.  He used no fossil fuels, herbicides or pesticides.  He fertilized his soil with composed leaves, wood ashes, plaster (a source of lime) and manure.  A typical wage at the time was about $12 a month and perhaps three times that for a factory manager.  An average income over three years of $896.02 was well above average. 

I use this example because most people have no idea about agriculture before fossil fuels or how the large cities of that time got their food.  The produce from the Ten Acres Enough farm was hauled by a horse drawn wagon to the train station in the late afternoon and was delivered by rail overnight to the markets.  Compare that to California tomatoes that have been picked green, stored for months in refrigerated warehouses, loaded into trailers, ethylene (a hydrocarbon) gassed to make them turn red and trucked 1,500 miles to your grocery store.  And we wonder why they taste like cardboard?

Affordable food of the future will be locally produced and locally consumed.  Small scale agriculture will be profitable again.  And, food will be more seasonal in nature, as it still is to a large degree in current day Italy.  Organic agriculture will be the rule rather than the exception.  Weed control, water conservation, soil moisture retention and ways to increase agricultural productivity without petroleum and natural gas will be increasingly important.

Why EcoCover?

• EcoCover replaces plastic film used for mulch.  The worldwide market for agricultural plastic presently exceeds 30 million acres.  Plastic film is made from petroleum or natural gas.
   
• EcoCover significantly increases crop yields.  Read about the research on yield improvements for tomatoes and peppers.
   
• EcoCover conserves soil moisture better than plastic.  Read about the research on soil moisture conservation.     Read Drought as the New Normal.
   

• EcoCover is price competitive and will be even more so.  The price of plastic resin to make agricultural film has risen over 120 percent over the past 16 months and will continue to rise as oil and natural gas prices increase.  The EcoCover EcoCrop™ is directly price competitive with better grades of plastic film today.  Read Plastic Product Prices Rise As Natural Gas Prices Soar.

  In the United States, the "feedstock" for plastic resin is natural gas. The rest of the world is more likely to use petroleum. "For every $10 increase in the price of (a barrel of) oil, typically, plastic resin goes up 5 cents a pound," said Dr. Thomas Kevin Swift, chief economist for the American Chemistry Council.
   

• EcoCover is organically certified, 100 percent biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
   
• EcoCover is profitable.  Our products are branded, patented and environmentally sustainable.
   
• The future demand is huge.  One EcoCover manufacturing plant will produce about 1,200 acres of EcoCover EcoCrop™ running two shifts, which translates into a future world market exceeding 11,000 manufacturing plants.
   
• Humans need to eat.  There are a lot of things we can get by without, but food isn't one of them.  Agriculture is an essential market regardless.
   
• Agricultural land loss due to over-population, rising seas from global warming and desertification advances in many parts of the world makes increased agricultural productivity imperative for the future.

The replacement market for plastic film presently exceeds 30 million acres per year worldwide, or over 12 million hectares.

There is a competing interest in producing fuels from food - biodiesel and ethanol.  Will this work?  Read Lester Brown's article Starving People to Feed the Cars.  The answer is no, it won't work in the long run, may be OK for the short term.

 

If you are interested in a sustainable manufacturing opportunity producing organically certified products serving an essential industry with real growth ahead, look at EcoCover.

If you are not aware of the need for sustainable products, read my friend Lester Brown's books Plan B 2.0 and Outgrowing the Earth available from Lester's web www.earthpolicy.org.

You can download William McDonough's tenth anniversary edition of The Hannover Principles, a remarkable work on the need for sustainable design, products and processes.

For more information about the future of local economies, read:

http://www.newrules.org/misc/whynewrules.htm  Note that these new rules are not related to author, comedian and political pundit Bill Mahr of HBO fame.

Read about the Institute for Local Self Reliance and their Waste to Wealth programs and recycling as a local Economic Development Tool.

Read about the goal of a zero waste world.  EcoCover is a zero waste manufacturing opportunity.

Read about new initiatives to localize economies Localize the Bay Area Economy.

If you are interested in a sustainable ground floor manufacturing opportunity producing organically certified products serving an essential industry with real growth ahead, the time to talk is now.

Learn more about the EcoCover ground floor opportunity.  Please contact me today.

The future is EcoCover.

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