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Organic price tags may be hard to swallow
Carly Weeks, Globe and Mail
The organic, free-range, hormone-free chicken is a staple of the yuppie cookbook. But the price is becoming increasingly hard to swallow as the reality of tough economic times sets in.

People have been buying and selling organic food for decades. But until recently, most of that activity was done on a local scale for a limited number of customers. In the past decade, organic food has exploded in popularity, evolving into an industry that resembles the traditional grocery model, complete with frozen-food aisles, weekly flyers and rows of cashiers.

The current crisis marks the first time organic retailers will have to face a sharp economic downturn since the industry's boom began. "Organic food has a huge problem," said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior research analyst with Mintel International Group Ltd., a global consumer-research firm. "It's always been premium-priced."

... Certain organic items are expected to weather the storm better than others.
(18 March 2009)

Doomer Dinner Party - Challenge
Peak Oil Hausfrau
One of my friends recently joked that we should have a Doomer Dinner Party - a meal made only of our preserved foods, food storage, and what is currently growing in the garden. Food storage + party? = a great idea in my book! Of course, in the spirit of Transition Towns it should probably have some sort of upbeat, positive name - like New Opportunities Dinner Party or Support Local Food Dinner Party, but I think Doomer Dinner Party is catchy and funny, so I'll stick with that name.

This is basically a variation on the theme of "Prep Practice", when a family shuts off the breakers and pretends no gas is available... but with guests. I think it would be fun to get together and have some peak chat, swap recipes and discuss how we can help each other and our community. I want to do it!

I started thinking about how I would go about hosting such a party. If the scenario is that the gas is all out, should I require everyone to show up on foot, on bike, or in a stroller? Should I imagine that the water is still running? How about electricity? Do I have to cook on the campstove / Sun Oven? Do we have to wear black? Whatever the scenario, I draw the line at requiring my guests to use a latrine.
(11 March 2009)
Recommended by Sharon Astyk in Other People's Challenges.

How Might We Be Fed? Part Two
Phil Harris, The Oil Drum

In Part One, I looked at trends in primary production and their consequences. Here, we look at possible bases for more sustainable approaches, including the biological fixation of nitrogen and the Village Ecosystem approach. It is likely that changes will be hard in a complicated world.

Even within ‘Western’ agriculture where NPK fertilizer is fully available, there are different productivities per acre and the primary yields of calories and protein can be handled in very different ways. According to this USDA booklet:

To average consumers, U.S. agricultural production seems uncomplicated – they see only the staples that end up on grocery store shelves. The reality, however, is far from simple. Valued at $200 billion in 2002, agriculture includes a wide range of plant and animal production systems.

This complicated web of sub-systems, input/output budgets, economics and ‘demand’ has sent ‘Western’ agriculture ‘upmarket’, to promote meat and a-seasonal fruit and vegetables, and has even taken large ‘Western’ acreages out of production. Biofuels are seen as a smart (subsidized) way of using spare land. The system extends much wider than the USA. In the big picture, urbanization underpinned by industrialization continues to expand globally. But just as in the story of the Great Plains: “… they had no strategy for the very long term.” We must again talk about food security.

Agricultural ecosystems

We don't always think about it, but whenever there are cities, it is not just the calories and protein that are shipped to the cities. The soil nutrients are also shipped to the cities, depriving the soil of nutrients needed to maintain its fertility. In the book On the Great Plains, we read that the 1000 year accumulation of soil nutrients was quickly spent:

They applied manure as it was available, rotated legumes when it was convenient. But they had no strategy for the very long term. By the 1930s, Rooks County fields had been planted, cultivated, and harvested sixty times without rest. Soil nitrogen was about half what it had been at sod-breaking and crop yields declined steadily. And now no western frontier remained. From the vantage of 1930s, crop agriculture in Kansas does not appear very sustainable. All the arable land in Rooks County - and in the nation for that matter – had been identified and plowed. Soil nitrogen and organic carbon drifted steadily downward, and with them yields and profits. Faced with this dilemma, farmers implemented a dramatic innovation in soil nutrient management. Rather than adopt one or more of the ancient strategies, farmers (and the industrial nation behind them) created a new option. They appropriated abundant cheap fossil-fuel energy to import enormous amounts of synthetically manufactured nitrogen onto their fields. …” page 219, ‘On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment’, Cunfer 2005; preview in googlebooks

Now, as the world faces long term decline in fossil fuels, certainly of the cheap and convenient variety. Looking ahead there has been one very large, hopeful albeit academic claim (Can organic agriculture feed the world? C. Bagdley et al., 2005) that biological farming could supply world needs, in terms of total calories and adequate nitrogen. Not surprisingly, this was greeted with skepticism, and cries of ‘bad science’. The authors though make a good point: “Food security depends on policies and prices as much as on yields”.

(March 19, 2009)
Phil Harris, a plant scientist based near the Scottish border in the UK. He has worked for government agencies in such areas as food safety and plant quarantine. Since 1997, he has worked amid the agricultural results of system-collapse in ex-communist countries of Europe.