Agricultural Carrying Capacity as Provided by Petroleum
 

In 1860 our pre-oil agricultural system (man and horse provided labor input) population was roughly 31 million.

In 2000 the census recorded 280 million souls dependent upon agribusiness and cheap oil.

lots of moving parts of the question. and the USA isn't the only player in the scenario either.

i'd break it down into smaller chunks, and look at type of food, and where the oil use is, eg:

type of food:
grains/legumes for humans,
grains/legumes for food animals
fruits and veggies
dairy/eggs
processed food

oil use:
fertilizer
pesticides
irrigation pumps
tractors, tilling, harvesting
transportation to market
processing (drying, freezing, canning, etc)

then realize that as oil prices rise, consumers will change what they eat, and businesses will change their processing and transport. eg, the first to go would be perishable kiwi fruit flown in from new zealand every day, while non-perishible wheat from the midwest will be shipped by train for a long time and still be economic.

also, consumers would switch from meat to beans, freeing up a lot of animal feed for human consumption, since it takes several pounds of animal feed to make a pound of meat. gardeners can easily grow veggies and some fruits, but harvesting grains on a small scale just isn't going to work all that well, compared to the efficiency of a combine.

and processed food will become much more expensive due to the energy efficient processing, so more consumers are likely to switch to simpler home-cooked meals. eg, compare the energy costs of chicken mcnuggets with beans and rice, and peak oil will force many consumers to switch, and that oil consumption will be freed up for other uses.

re: fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation, tilling/harvesting.
not my area of expertise, but hopefully some knowledgable farmers will chime in on this. for irrigation, high oil prices will likely make some land uneconomic and it will be shut down. (some places have dropping aquafer levels already, and may well become uneconomic anyway.) lower fertilizer/pesticide use will lower yields and/or increase spoilage. it'd guess that tilling/harvesting are pretty much a fixed amount of energy no matter what, with not much potential for energy savings here at all.

non-ag demand destruction
the biggest use of oil in the US is transportation, particularly commuting, but also freight trucks. i'd guess before oil for ag use is unavailable, that a lot of commuters driving their hummer a hour each way in california will be forced to carpool, move closer to work, or lose their job. and the trinkets and baubles the trucks are carrying to wallyworld will also peter out too, causing more demand destruction, freeing up more oil for ag use. and some freight will switch to rail, which is more energy efficient. of course, this is also taking place on a global scale, commuters are also competing with motorscooter commuters in india and factory trucks in china and oil-heated homes in new england.

food surplusses/deficits and geopolitics
a year or so ago, i saw a nice graphic chart (and posted it on this forum somewhere), showing which areas of the world produced more food than they consumed, and which less. there were 2 areas that had very large food surplusses (particularly grains i think), the USA being one of them. (can't remember the second, but i think it was south america in argentina/brazil, but not sure.) china had a large deficit, and it dependent on imports. also a couple other countries in asia and africa had smaller deficits. i think it's quite likely that food will be used as a weapon in a geopolitcal battle between the US and china over food/energy/international debt/etc.

lastly, gov't policy, rule changes, subsidies, wall street commodity speculators, etc, will all create quite a bit of wiggles along the way.

i'd expect that as municipalities lose tax revenue, that they'll be upping the taxes on whoever is left (eg, homesteaders, after the mcmansions are abandoned and foreclosed as being out of affordable commuting distance.) and probably making ag-exemption for tax purposes much harder for small fry. (news shows will of course show the mcmansions with the horse pasture owned by the "rich people" with low ag-exempt taxes to gain popular support, but the folks in the doublewide with chickens just barely scraping by will be the ones to get hit with it with losing ag tax levels.) monsanto and ADM and tysons chicken, being almost as crucial to life as goldman sachs, will get additional tax breaks and subsidies in this national emergency. thank you for your patriotic support.

once global carrying capacity is exceeded, there's likely to be a rather short voilent period where the it's brought back in line -- famine, war. gov'ts will do their usual graceful crisis response. maybe they'll implement price controls to prevent price gouging. or rationing coupons. and make sure everyone produces as much as last year unless they have a good reason for a crop failure. uneconomic production at the gov't price is no justification for shirking your patriotic duty to feed the world, and according to our nais database... or maybe they'll just use emminent domain to consolidate some small farms/homesteads into a larger more efficient farm. having land that is unsuitable (eg, too hilly, too soggy, small tract with no consolidatably neighbors) for large "efficient" farm machinery might be a saving grace during such a transition.

my personal view is, the challenge is to survive the several year transition period when the crisis hits and gov't goes crazy with new programs and rules and war is most likely. after the population is thinned out and it's within some new steady-state at lower food and energy consumption, you're probably have an easier time of it for a while.

so, not sure if that helps answer your question as you asked it, but i think there's too many moving parts to get a real accurate answer anyway. but if your real question is how to think about surviving peak oil/oil embargo, perhaps useful start at thinking about it.

--sgl

There's no question in my original post, only food for thought ... which you seem to have used most readily. :)

My view is the same as yours only I think the transition period might be longer than just a few years. We're talking starvation on a grand scale.

Some factors I think that might increase your chances of survival:

1. Distance from hungry population centers
2. A variety of self-sufficiency cycles providing you food
3. Early recognition of the problem

I'll add to it by saying that much of our farm land is incapable of supporting life by itself and the only way to grow food on it is by using chemical fertilizers (many petrolium based) and pesticides.
We're not the only ones in trouble, America and its farm technology feeds the world.

Mother Nature always balances things, one way or another.

duplicate post

Self sufficiency is dependent upon being able to keep your food supply safe. It stands to reason that starving people aren't going to sit and starve while you eat. That opens up a whole new can of worms----speaking of worms LOL maybe nobody would steal them-----

I'm not sure it,s going to be an accurate comparison to say pre oil production vs petrochemically fueled would give an indictation of what modern farms can support. If farms lost petrochemicals for their inputs it would be difficult to truely guage what kind of population it could carry. We have better plants (not even counting the GMO's), bio-diesel, far better tillage planting and harvesting techniques/technology. We might be OK or we might be in worse trouble than the OP's comparison suggests!

i'd appreciate hearing your view of how long the transition period would last, and what it might look like.

--sgl

I think water may be a more serious limiting factor even than petrochemicals, especially in the West (of the US).

In the long run, barring the water issues, human labor could, and probably eventually would, make up the difference after the loss of the petrochemicals. You only have to look at Southeast Asia to see how that could be possible. Right now we have huge farms worked by a few people with big machines. But the yields per acre could be MUCH higher if those same acres were intensively worked by hand labor. The problem is the transition period. Right now, very few people in this country have the skills, the physical fitness, and the will to work (all combined) necessary in order to make a hand-labor agriculture work. It would take a long time, a long period of necessity and starvation, to develop that labor force. I don't think any of us WANT to see that period of necessity and starvation, but I also think most of us are aware that it's very likely coming whether we want it or not.

Kathleen

When oil disappears, we'll shrink back to pre-industrial age populations... basically lose a minimum of 90% of our population.

The transition time? Less than a year. Most souls that are going to die would die in the first few months... unfortunately, none of us know whether we'd survive the weeding out process... we could be the best prepared, with skills and tools and dirt... but could fall to raiders, disease, or accidents.

I've seen pictures of hundred or so women hooked up to harness, plowing on the Western Canadian prairies... the first settlers had it rough.

I can't imagine thousands of urbanites turning into slave-mules, working every daylight hour in the fields and hours afterwards on other projects, in back breaking labor, all on starvation food levels. IF folks survived the first bleak year, everyone alive would be willing to become mules, in order to eat. And those not willing to work, wouldn't eat.

Our entire civilization has grown with cheap oil... there is nothing to replace it. When it is gone, civilization dies. Two years ago, when oil was over 150, food production suffered, charity dried up, hungry people got hungrier.

If oil stopped flowing, every single person living on ss, pensions, welfare, afdc, whatever (mailbox money... entitlements) would suddenly find themselves starving. Everyone without land, tools, and skills to feed themselves would find themselves starving.

Three days without food, you have a revolution.

Ten days without any oil, and you have a revolution, on foot, by starving people...

Unless someone discovers some magic potion distilled from unicorn urine... there's no replacement for cheap oil... civilization as we know it is over. If people can maintain some semblance of humanity, after most everyone is dead, then some sort of utopian agrarian society might arise.

Do you guys lay awake nights thinking this stuff up, I don`t think we will lose 90% of our population and agriculture as we know it will not go on. I do belive we will revert back to human or animal based agriculture. Probly won`t be horses either, more like oxen as draft animals. Very simalar to what cuba has gone through. All land that is currently being used will be used in one form of production or another, it may not be what they had been using it for. The hungry masses will have to learn to work togeather to grow a crop,harvest and produce food from it. My only worry is the government will be expecting their fare share of everything, and we will have to nip that in the bud right away in order to keep this country free. The politicians can work right next to the rest of us growing what we need to survive this new fronteir. TY Marc

We won't run out of oil all at once! The last vehicle to stop running will be a tank, the second last will be the tractors, third last trains but nukes will run electric trains for the coming generations, fourth last ships.... and we'll have nuclear powered freighters and sail power for a long long time. It's a bit narrow sighted to think the loss of oil means the loss of humanity! If you want an indication of the last of the oil coming in look for massive construction of nuclear powered navy ships of all sizes, followed by new nuclear plants just about everywhere.... possibly even nuclear powered super trains. Look for rationing, $150 oil was a stunt at best to shake up the markets and make even more money for rich fat men. Real rationing will ban everything but hybrids and essential service vehicles. Look for even more massive farms, I have long suspected the real reason corporate farming has the green light to go huge and centralize production is to simplify the system to supply fuel and crop inputs to them. Never mind GPS guided autonomous tractors they'll be replaced with huge train powered gantry frames 10 miles wide that drag implements across the land for hundreds of miles. Be sure to get your home marked off so they can lift over you..... until you sell out or get expropriated!

This is only a problem for central planners and urban dwellers.

Well, I don't think we're going to go down overnight. As oil supplies decrease then the price will just get further and further out of reach for the average man. Food will have to be priced accordingly.

In specific areas you'll start to see food riots. The government will begin to distribute food to areas that are the most severely affected, and prone to civil disruption.

The wealthy are going to flee the United States in droves. Other countries will welcome then in with promises of security.

There will be fits and starts of improvement that will look like it's going to help. Gardening fads will become popular, but the effort and labor it takes to grow food on depleted soils and lawns will prove too much. New oil reserves will be found that may buy us a year or two.

When the population weakens enough then diseases, some new and some old, will begin to decimate the population.

Diminishing food and oil supplies will spark war with China.

Ernie..... I honestly think you are trying to find some solace in the notion that there is so much time left. Things happen much faster these days.
Patience has been bred out, and it is the troubled masses that will bring this to a quick head.

Not to be coy, but didn't a certain fellow post about peak already happening in 2007? :cowboy:

It has been and will continue to be a slow slide. People have already changed what they do and will continue to. Who would have thought you'd see an insurance commercial on tv saying how it's wise to switch to ground beef and how not going out to restaurants is wise!

When will oil become as expensive as human labor? It is after all in it's unending rise. When is the paradigm change from HP to animal power and finally to human power? Well currently for about 3 dollars you can move a ton and a half about 30 miles(in 30 min. no less). Pretty cheap. No? So the oil doom IMHO is a way off. But it's coming.

Oil may be rising in price and dropping in availability, but we still have lots of other fossil fuels to substitute with. And hey, Nat Gas is cheap right now, right Texican. Might not be a bad idea to find a CNG vehicle to buy.

Actually, what I'd like is a tri-fuel auto. LPG/NG/gas.

We have several hundred years supply of coal still in the ground too.

Add in some minor <10% solar & wind power, & we'll be good to go. Along with nuke of course.

So how long will it take to raise enough oxen or draft horses to pull these non-existant plows? DO you think there are enough old plows in museums to plow all the fields? how about the harvest, do you know most food supplies are harvested mechanically these days? by what? machines that use petrolium. How will those crops get to the market? Horse and buggy? and even if they got the crops into the cities how would the people get to the distribution points?
You may think we lay awake nights thinking this, but its better than burying your head in the sand.

I'd sure like to know where this cheap natural gas is cause its expensive as H#ll here. My gas bill this year was 3x what it was last year and last year it was double what it was the year before.

I'll be chopping as much wood as I can this year

Well, I tend to try to give the "best case" scenario. Any number of things could cause the situation to detoriate very rapidly and compress the schedule.

Say for instance that the price of gasoline goes up, starting riots across the United States. Law enforcement and military will then need to be moving about a lot more, burning yet MORE gasoline and depleting our overall supply that much faster.

That's what I see happening, generally.
An event will trigger a bigger event and the whole house of cards will crash quick. Throw a bunch of foreign troops in there when enough US military and police figure out that they are firing on their cousins and uncles, and you have a real maelstrom.

The irony is, Americans have thought it cute to have our swaggering military intimidating the citizenry of other nations for decades.
We'll see how much fun it is when the Chinese come in by the hundreds of thousands.
What goes around comes around.

Well, it's cheap at the wellhead, which does not necessarily translate to low prices to you.:indif:

Here is one article I have seen..

Natural Gas Falls to Nearly Six-Month Low

"We have several hundred years supply of coal still in the ground too.

Add in some minor <10% solar & wind power, & we'll be good to go. Along with nuke of course. "

Respectfully, GSM - this statement was my humor for the evening. Don't get me wrong, I really don't want things to fall apart. However, the entire modern world exists now in its current form b/c of cheap oil. There is no viable substitute for this. Coal is nice, but a tremendous amount of oil is used to make use of the coal - extracting it, transporting it, etc. Really, it's the same with all of the other energy sources you mentioned - not a one of them can stand without cheap oil - there is an interdependence. You've got to have the benefits of cheap oil to run any of the above. There is neither a single alternative energy technology, nor a host of them that could, when put together, replace life as it exists now should cheap oil disappear.

The best I think we can hope for is a long, gradual slide (OK Ernie - trying to think of the "best case" scenerio here) that allows for the least convulsive adjustments possible.

PS - meant "GCM", not "GSM" - apoloiges.

Well, what I meant from my statement that it was not all going to end in 2, 3 or even 5 years.

I absolutely agree that we are entering a long slow slide, I don't agree that it will collapse from lack of oil. [It might from something else, but that is a matter for other topics]

Sure coal is not nearly as convenient as oil, but it can be converted to 'coal oil' kerosene, which is portable, but of course not as energy dense as diesel.

Anyway, I have said else where that superinsulating your house and conserving energy as much as you can now will better prepare you.

Think of it like dehydration, GCM.

Does the human body actually need to be completely out of water before problems start? No. Once you reach a certain level of dehydration then minor issues start cropping up, which escalate into larger and larger ones.

Like I said Ernie, it IS going to have an effect, which is what I meant by a long, slow slide, or even a long medium fast slide. By medium fast I think 15-25 years, or possibly 10-30 years.

We will adapt, and that will drag it on out.

Now if you want to talk about quick collapse, I think that an economic collapse is HIGHLY probable in 2-5 years. That is my biggest concern.

Reverting to horse drawn plows, pretty doubtful. If it does happen, I'll be sure to acknowledge my incorrect thinking. If that does come to pass, odds are I won't be around to care. [And ya'll might not either - aackk]

Yes, prices are going to go up, I'm trying to prepare, but I am still a long way from where i wnat to be.
Superinsulated house, solar panels, wood stove, fuel efficient cars, propane fueled vehicle.

Am debt free though, so it is a start.

I'd kill to get a natural gas car (or preferably a truck)... especially if the technology existed (for a home user) to compress the natural gas and top off your tanks at home. I have free gas, and would use even more than I do now, if I could get a vehicle to run off it.

Mnn2501... spot gas is $4.02, which is insufferably low. Hopefully, all public land drilling will soon cease. If ng was pegged to oil, it'd be around $8.

We keep finding new deposits of oil... however, they'll only be produced with higher prices. At some point, new discoveries will cease. I don't think we're going to run out of oil soon, and it certainly won't be overnight. When the big crunchy time arrives, the US won't be facing the demon alone... every industrialized country will be in the same boat.

We're only three days away from anarchy. Relatively prosperous Chile realized it wasn't immune from this rule. The world could be awash in oil, but if supply lines are disrupted, or a handful (and all we have are a handful in the US) of refineries go down, for whatever reason (explosion, destruction, etc...) they won't come back for years. And without fuel for trains and trucks, food deliveries cease, people riot, cities burn.

I've driven 18 hour days for a week, in my truck. I've driven 26 hours in a lump. Afterwards, I was tired. I've ridden horses and pulled pack mules for a week, in western wilderness areas... after a day of simply riding (and occasionally getting off to crosscut saw a log in two), I was exhausted... bone weary exhaustion.

What I'm trying to get around to saying is that manual labor without a tractor to do the 'heavy lifting' isn't going to get much grain grown. There are some hardy souls that grow all their own food, with nothing but human labor... but, they're not producing enough for dozens of others.

The 90% population drop I initially mentioned could happen with plenty of oil around.... if it doesn't get to who needs it, it's game over... unless you have a steady secure source of grub, stored and reproducing on the 'hoof'.

I'm pretty sure kerosene has slightly more btu's per gallon than diesel. Been a looooong day here and I might be wrong. Wiki has an interesting write up for coal.

Main article: Coal liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels such as gasoline or diesel by several different processes. In the direct liquefaction processes, the coal is either hydrogenated or carbonized. Hydrogenation processes are the Bergius process,[25] the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes and the NUS Corporation hydrogenation process.[26][27] In the process of low-temperature carbonization, coal is coked at temperatures between 680 °F (360 °C) and 1,380 °F (750 °C). These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter hydrocarbons than normal coal tar. The coal tar is then further processed into fuels. Alternatively, coal can be converted into a gas first, and then into a liquid, by using the Fischer-Tropsch process. An overview of coal liquefaction and its future potential is available.[28]


Check out the entire entry here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#ci...e-handbook2-25

Hey MNN2501, I do not have my head buried in the sand, I do know what will happen if tshtf. Do you know there are companies that are making (New) plows for horses and oxen. It won`t take long at all to train horses or oxen to work the fields. Agriculture will be more regional than it is now. Trains will be used more for trasportation. Horse and buggy short distance, it can be done. I will survive, I have the knowledge to adapt, Maybe people will have to go back to work for a change, and really work for their food. If my tractors stopped working next week I have eveything I need to farm like they use to. Horses, machinery, feed, harness,seed,(KNOWLEDGE) and the will to do it, and share my knowledge. So I sure hope this does not happen as the younger generation has no clue how to put in a days work like they use to, and they may starve, but then again they would probably just take it. Thanks Marc

In 1860 agriculture was considerably more local then it is today. You ate was produced locally, a lot of times it was what YOU produced. A lot of people today would starve to death with a bushel of wheat or corn at hand, let alone meat on the hoof.

The way things are going it may not matter about running out of oil, we will be returning to a sustenance living just to get buy. Our service industry economy can't survive if there aren't real jobs and industry to support it.

There's an up side to this potential loss of fossil fuels. If there is less corn grown, less HFCS in foods that don't need it. Probably less processed foods in general.

Nice info Ross. You may be right about kerosene vs diesel. I may have had gasoline on my mind & mixed the 2 up.

The coal could be used to power the liquification plant, so no need for oil to generate power. Did not realize coal could be converted into gasoline, bet it is expensive process to do.

I've ran my truck on kerosene, little less power and the stuff is a lot more expensive than diesel. Ran it on drain oil too, little less power too. On the subject of animal power, I've been around a lot of it since I live in Amish country. If there is anything have learned about animal power is that it would be the same amount of work growing food for animals or fuel for machinery. In northern climates especially there is a lot of work involved in having them. Places like Cuba have an advantage when it comes to animal power since the growing season is pretty much all year around. If it comes to the point for me that fuel becomes too expensive I'll be converting to wood gas before I'd get a draft animal. Horse and buggy would definitely not be at the top of my list for transportation. Being around buggies and riding in one I would say a bike would be a much faster and easier. I don't have to waste time putting up hay for a bike. The only draft animal I would consider would be a dual purpose one, ie an ox.

I like the bicycle idea as well, and you can even get small carts to pull behind them.

I'm thinking bike or an adult trike with a possible pull behind cart available, there are more possibilities than I use to know of.

It's a fairly common occurence around here, it happened to me again yesterday, to see a whole flock of Mennonite boys on bicycles with poultry and rabbit cages 3 and 4 deep tied to every surface/bar on their bikes going down the road to a trade day. Some are even using the recumbent bikes these days. When approaching from the rear all you can see are feathers!

And where are all the horses and oxen going to come from? do you think enough horses and oxen exist today to pull all these plows you think ar going to magically appear? (Iron has to be mined, shipped to foundries, steel made and shaped into plows, plows have to be shipped all over the country - all taking energy to do so)
Just how many generations of horses and oxen will it take to get enough to work all the fields? and how long will that take? and how will people eat in the meantime? Do you thinks its going to be as efficent as tractors? will you get the same number of bushels per acre?
where will all the petrolium based fertilizers come from? or what will substitute for them and how long will it take to ramp up that production?
How fertile do you think those fields are right now after decades of farming them using chemical fertilizers and pesticides? Do you know there is not a major crop that is not harvested by machine these days? How is losing that going to affect the harvest?
You may be able to grow enough to feed yourself (though I doubt many can) but what about the billions of city dwellers on the planet, what will happen to them while you are raising enough horses and oxen to pull those plows?

Ouch.

Good points, all.

As for raising enough horses and oxen to pull plows; first you have to protect them from all those starving billions long enough to reproduce! Feed lots are full of steers that allowed to mature and trained(hmm shortage of oxen trainers out there too) would become oxen. I understand traditional oxen were dairy breeds. I have a picture in my mind of the "20 mule teams" but instead they are people all pulling together to till a field. Things get bad enough, we could see it. World over lots of food gets planted and harvested by "people power", just not huge fields like American ag grows things.