From the Ground Up: Creating a Year-Round Sustainable Food System

When we think about our basic needs, creating a secure year-round food supply rises to the top. While our Federal Government supplied billions of dollars to support the crumbling financial system and auto industry, we see a much more critical need to direct funds to help Americans grow food close to where they live. We see American food security as a critical need that requires our best thinkers and attention. to bring back farming close to where we live and to make food production economically viable. 

As you may know, most of your food currently travels thousands of miles to reach your local market. With increasing oil prices coupled with unpredictable and more intense weather patterns draught and crop failure may become more common. It may not be that far in the future when one goes to the grocery store to see more expensive food items and empty spaces on the shelves.

Over the next two weeks we will be preparing a grant to submit to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This new USDA Planning Grant is designed to fund special events to bring together diverse groups of experts to help solve a regional or national problem. We are focusing on assembling a group of individuals with expertise in solar greenhouse design and manufacturing, renewable energy production, compost manufacturing, seed production, urban agriculture, agricultural economy, and land planning and zoning.  Our goal is to convene a focused gathering in 2010 to develop a plan for national implementation to create an economically viable and biologically secure year-round urban food growing and distribution system.

As many of you know, we are experienced meeting planners, having put together over a dozen regional and national meetings for the cohousing industry since 1992. We have already contacted a number of national experts in the areas mentioned above who have agreed to participate if we are awarded the grant to focus on solutions for year round urban farming.

Since this USDA planning grant is based on matching funds, the USDA will match dollar for dollar actual funds raised or presenters contributing their time as an in-kind donation. Matching funds need to be in place at the time of the grant submittal by January 14, 2010. We welcome your input on individuals, companies and organizations you think would wish to participate in this meeting either as a presenter or as a donor. If you have ideas, please contact us as soon as possible. We will continue to post updated material about the USDA Planning Grant on our website.

5 Tips for Prepairing for Peak Oil

Preparing for peak oil is just common sense.

By Sami Grover Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Sami Grover

Back when gas was expensive, and food prices were rising alarmingly, it seemed like everyone was talking about Peak Oil. But fast-forward to today and folks have conveniently forgotten how reliant our entire way of life is on the sticky black stuff (and how quickly it can all unravel if supplies start to dwindle). But recent murmurings from anonymous whistle blowers at the International Energy Agency suggest that global oil reserves may be lower than reported. Much lower.

Whether peak oil means, as many people argue, the end of civilization as we know it, or simply a painful and challenging reordering of the status quo, remains a matter of debate. But either way, it makes sense to prepare yourself. Even if peak oil remains decades away, many of the things you should do to prepare for peak oil and other calamities are also simply prudent common sense, not to mention a great way of cutting your carbon emissions. So here's a list of 5 ideas to get you started preparing for peak oil—apocalypse or not.

5 Steps to Start Preparing for Peak Oil

1. Start a Garden: From learning about permaculture to planting fruit and nut trees to starting a no-dig garden, learning to grow your own food, and making sure the infrastructure is in place to do so, can be a great way to insularte yourself from future shocks—be they environmental or economic. If you are seriously worried about coming instability, it makes sense to concentrate on fruit trees and perennials first—,once you've dug an asparagus bed or planted a pear tree, you'll be enjoying harvests for years to come.
2. Green Your Home: From insulating your roof to installing low energy light bulbs, everything you do to green your home will also put you in better stead if and when energy prices rise dramatically. And if you're a believer in more profound shocks from peak oil, why not look at generating some of your own power by installing solar panels?
3. Live Within Your Means: Learning to limit your spending is not always thought of as a green activity, but it is definitely wise if you want to become more resilient to economic or social disturbance. And buying less stuff means producing less pollution too, so it's a win-win for the planet and your finances, whether peak oil is around the corner or not.You may also want to look at cutting debt, or paying off that mortgage—recent events show just how fragile our economic system can be. You could even try living mortgage-free!
4. De-oil Your Transport: Along with food and housing, transportation is one of the most energy intensive activities in the average person's life, and unlike energy used in our homes, transportation energy is almost completely reliant on oil. So look at ways you can cut back on oil use— and try to think beyond the obvious. From biking to work to carpooling to taking mass transit, cutting your transportation footprint often saves you money too. And if you want to get really serious, you can work from home. Even driving more carefully will save you money on gas.
5. Campaign for Action: Cutting your personal oil consumption is commendable, but peak oil is a societal problem. So do what you can to educate your friends, to mobilize your community, and to call for action on a political level. Whether you are calling for stricter fuel economy standards or starting a community garden, collective action makes us all more resilient to coming challenges. Take a look at our guide on How to Green Your Community for more ideas.

Fueling the Modern Economy

Colin Cambell, a 40+ year petroleum geologist and the founder of the international Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), sums up the unique set of circumstances that leave us in a difficult situation when it come to the future of our energy systems.  He says,

When people think of fossils, they think of dinosaurs, which were huge over-specialized animals that failed to adapt to changed natural circumstances, proving less efficient than the simple limpet that has lived virtually unchanged since the Cambrian, 500 million years ago, happily clinging to its rocks. Fossil fuels have almost dinosaur attributes, having been formed but rarely in the geological past, which means they are subject to depletion. The production in any country, endowed with the resource, starts and ends, passing a peak in between when about half the resources has been taken. Oil is perhaps an extreme example, given that it has played such a critical part in fueling the modern economy.

This is up there with some of the most earthshaking perdigm shifts that have happened throughout human history. Imaging the impact of the "Theory" that the earth was round and it was us that circled the Sun and not the other way around. At this point in history we face the prospect that all of easy to get to and relatively inexpensive oil has been extracted. This fact, if proven to ultimately have been true, will have an effect on almost everything we have become dependent on to maintain our current societal arrangment. These are the challenges which come along once in a while, where civilizations either rise to the occasion or whither on the time line of human history.

I am betting on a rise.

The Story of Oil

Native Americans for centuries have used oil as a medicine and for waterproofing of canoes as well other objects.

The first discovery of oil by Europeans from North America probably came in 1627 by a Franciscan missionary traveling near Cuba, New York. In 1821, William Hart drilled for and discovered gas at Fredonia, New York, near the shores of Lake Erie, making him the first to do so. A primitive pipeline was constructed from hollowed-out logs, and soon the entire main street was illuminated by natural gas.

On January 10, 1901, on a small hill in southeastern Texas, after drilling down to a depth of 1,020 feet, mud started bubbling back up the hole. Seconds later, the drill pipe shot out of the ground with great force. Then a noise like a cannon shot came from the hole, and mud came shooting out of the ground like a rocket. Within a few seconds, natural gas, then oil followed.

The first oil "gusher" - greenish-black in color, rose double the size of the drilling derrick, rising to a height of more than 150 feet. This was more oil than had ever been seen anywhere in the entire world. flowing at an initial rate of nearly 100,000 barrels per day. This amount, while small today, was at the time more oil than all of the other producing wells in the United States COMBINED!

Since that time, geologists have mapped over 95% of the earth's surface and have estimated that the "total" amount of oil that was in the ground is approximately 2,000,000,000,000 - two trillion barrels. That sound like a lot of oil, and it is. It is also unbelievable to consider, that in the last 100 years humanity has consumed about half of this oil - about 1 trillion barrels of oil.

So much of the debate today is weather we are going to run out of oil or if we have reached a peak in production and what effects that may have on our lifestyles. Let me be perfectly clear, humanity will NEVER run out of oil. There is lots more of it. The challenge facing us is that we have located and pumped out almost all of the easy to find oil.

We are at the end of the age of inexpensive oil.

The oil which remains is both very hard to reach and is of a much lower quality than what we have been pumping for the past 100 years. If people are willing to pay $7.00 a gallon for their gas it will be available but a lot of folks will not be able to afford to drive at that price. Oil priced at $200 or more per barrel will increase the cost of everything that uses oil in its production or transportation... and that covers almost everything these days.

We live in interesting times and from my perspective, it is only going to get much more interesting.

Decentralize Food as Well as Power

Now that the "official" unemployment figures are at least 10.2 percent, it seems like a great time to focus on what kind of recovery we can collectivly create. As I have posted a number of times on this blog, the chances of returning to a debt and consumpution fueled ecomony are pretty small.

San Francisco Fed President Dr. Yellen asked today how strong the upturn will be. With high unemployment and idle productive capacity, we will need a very strong rebound to put unemployed people back to work and get underutilized factories, offices, and stores humming again. Traditional demand will most probably grow at too slow a pace to support vigorous expansion in the traditional markets. So what are we to do instead?

I suggest we take a step back and see what areas we desperately need to grow and begin pouring stimulus funds in those directions instead of our habit of propping up industries which may be past their usefulness and do not support the creation of a lower-carbon and more sustainable society. The efforts by the Federal and many State governments to encourage a green economy could be a great start. Supporting renewable energy technologies and an infrastructure to support it is already receiving much attention and is gain traction. Another segment worth immediate attention is food production.

The move to decentralize our power generation system should be followed by the creation of thousands of smaller more localized farms. These can create tens of thousands of productive jobs, will help to increase local food security and improve the freshness of our food by bringing it closer to where it is consumed. A Colorado company is pioneering a concept they call Agriburbia which combines residential and commercial development with local food production. Growing vegetables and raising small farm animals close to home may turn out to be one of the most important steps we can make to begin to rehire people who have lost their jobs while building local resilience.

An Example of A Virtual Eco-Village

This 1-minute video was made by Rebecca Mangum to highlight the features of Etopia Island a 32-acre virtual ecovillage in Second Life. You may visit the community at any time by going to this link and downloading the Second Life viewer.

A Christmas Like Grandma's...

Americans have the opportunity this Holiday Season to decide if the glass is half empty or half full. For the past several decades we have become use to this time of year as a time when we open up our pocketbooks and remove our credit cards, race around towns with throngs of other strangers, all scooping up item after item. The motivation stemming from that deeply ingrained guilt of times when you had nothing to give to those who might decide to give you something.

What would it be like this Gift Giving Season, if we were to give each other some time together, sharing stories, playing games, reviewing the challenges and success of the year. Deeper gifts for each other at this slowing time of year. Even many of the trees have released their protective leaves.

The current economic slowdown, which I deeply believe will be more the norm moving ahead, actually gives us time to be with each other, instead of buying stuff and taking all the time and energy to create or move around that stuff in the first place. This kind of behavioral shift, while continuing to cripple the economic engine of our consumer society, has the potential to remind us another slower and possibly more fulfilling way to live.  It was only 60-70 years ago, when our grandparents were young children, where the quality of life was quite high but much less consumptive then we have become accustomed to .

I am of the "glass-is-half-full" camp, so I see the possibilities of a happier and healthier future as we relearn how to enjoy ourselves without the need for endless mountains of stuff and free-flowing credit.