Originally Posted by
PhilJohnson
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Oil has also increased the carrying capacity of farmland. I worked around and with the Amish for the past 8 years or so. Their farming methods are similar to those used 80 years ago or more. It's painfully obvious that going back to the old method of farming will result in much higher food prices and possible starvation. The yields for the Amish are at best half of a modern farm. Average dairy production is half to a quarter of what a similar sized herd of cows. Not to mention horses eat up a lot of extra land that could be productive farm land otherwise. Their farms are much more sensitive to weather changes because plowing and harvesting is so much slower. Task that take minutes with powered machinery take hours by hand. Large families are required to make such farms work. Obviously large farm families worked in the past when the population was much smaller. To think we could go back to that now and not run into issues of starvation is pure fantasy.
Also food will have to be much more expensive for smaller farms to survive. The only farmers who can compete with mainstream commercial operations on price are the Amish who use child labor and live like it's the early 1900s. Very small farms rely on niche markets where price is secondary to other considerations. An increase in food prices means less disposable income for other goods and services. It's part of the reason why food is so heavily subsidized, it's a form of economic stimulus.
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I have seen a couple of studies that seem to indicate that the Amish farms are actually more productive per acre than many factory farms. Mechanization has allowed fewer people to produce more food, but they are not nearly as efficient.
My daughter is in an Environmental program where they are teaching large organic farming techniques, it is labor intensive, however crop yields are close to what you get from the mechanized factory farms, without the massive chemical applications. Yes the cost of food is going to rise. Currently the US has one of the lowest percentages of income spent on food ~12% vs 15% in the EU and 46% in Pakistan. Interestingly enough that number has dropped in the US from in the past, in 1949 it was 22% of income. Americans are notorious for eating out.
No matter what happens it is going to take a re-education as well as a skill shift to survive, people that are flexible and willing to accept change are going to come out way ahead of the game, the ones that insist on things staying the same and expecting to have cheap energy forever are the ones that are going to be in trouble.
Aaron
