farming

I was out with some other moms today and the topic of soy came up. They were telling me about how it can cause sterility in boys and has other adverse effects. I decided I should do some research on my own and found two very interesting websites. I am going to post them both as they both have very different opinions. One talks about how soy is horrible and the other site refutes the first. I was most concerned about how soy would affect my 4 month old boy, but most of what they talk about is based on soy formula (I am breastfeeding exclusively). I do eat some soy since I have cut out all dairy products from my diet (again because of the breastfeeding, it hurt his tummy!) I eat tofu, edamame, and soy ice cream. I don't drink soy milk though I drink almond milk. Basically what I have decided is that soy is not bad as long as you eat it organically as is the case with most other foods! Also I don't think that you should eat too much of it, again the same as most other foods!

Anti-soy article
Article refuting the first article

The staff at the Energy Bulletin put together a great article today examining the peak production rate of phosphorus. By applying the same methods used by Dr. M. King Hubbert (the man who accurately described Peak Oil in the 1950s) to phosphorus production, the authors discovered that not only had the U.S. reached its peak production in 1988, but the world had peaked in 1989!

Why is phosphorus important, you might wonder? From the Energy Bulletin article:

The current major use of phosphate is in fertilizers. Growing crops remove it and other nutrients from the soil... Most of the world's farms do not have or do not receive adequate amounts of phosphate. Feeding the world's increasing population will accelerate the rate of depletion of phosphate reserves.

and

Phosphorus may be the real bottleneck of agriculture.

Population growth was only possible because we found phosphorus deposits and cheap energy to extract, transform and transport it to farms. When we plot data of world population versus world phosphate production, we find a significant correlation.

The problem of phosphorus depletion is just one more example of the imminent crunch in resource reserves we face. I wrote about a similar concern in my Peak Salt article nearly a year ago. The difference there is that we don’t actually face a salt shortage until we face an oil shortage -- an example of a subtle but critical interaction between resources. What we in the Peak Oil community are discovering is a complex system of feedbacks and tipping points, just as the world is discovering in the issue of global warming.

Why the similarity? Because the resource extraction/consumption system is of the same type as the global climate system: chaotic. Despite the name, chaotic systems have a certain elegance and structure; however, they present severe problems when we attempt to model them.

In the next post, I will discuss the true nature of the chaotic Global Resource Crunch we’re already experiencing.

Peak Oil and global warming are enormous problems, but are still only part of a network of impending disasters -- all of which appear ready to juxtapose at the exact same instant. Between the riveting news debates over Donald Trump’s hair and the wardrobe malfunctions of Britney Spears, there recently appeared one of the most frightening (and shockingly underreported) news stories in recent memory: populations of the North American Honeybee -- the workhorse pollinator of American agriculture -- are plummeting rapidly.

As sources like CNN noted casually, pollinator species (including honeybees) have been in persistent decline for decades due to factors such as an invasive parasitic mite. But the mite is now ruled out as the cause for the current collapse -- the main suspects include commercial pesticides, genetically modified crops, or an unknown pathogen. Given the past evidence of pesticides’ effects on bees, my money lies on careless commercial operations indiscriminately spraying killer chemicals.

I have a knack for asking simple questions that have complex answers. With thoughts of sustainability and self-sufficiency on my mind for many months now, I’ve asked myself quite a few of these questions. One question related to these topics is ‘How much food is required to feed a small community, and how much land will that take?’ This is a seemingly simple question, but an important one if your intent is to build a small, completely self-sufficient community. What makes the answer to this question complex, at least for me, someone with absolutely no experience growing food, are the number of variables involved. I started Calorie Calculating to answer this question, and chose PeakOilDesign as the home of this blog because it seems a nice fit with the efforts being made here.

Please be clear on the point that I have no experience in growing food. The vast majority of content contributed by me will be book-learned. My posts at times will be me simply thinking out loud, and at other times sharing my newfound discoveries in the world of agriculture.

What I hope to accomplish in addition to answering this question is to create a formula that anyone can use to determine the volume of grown food needed to meet their caloric needs, whether that be a single homestead or small community, and how much land will be required. The purpose of the formula will be to give newcomers like myself a starting point. Its focus will be on what’s desirable, not optimal, and will not pretend to be a replacement for experience. The formula will take on two forms, one written and the other computerized.

I only recently started to answer this question using Google, the library and bookstores. What I quickly realized is that I will need to approach this topic methodically. An initial formula will be created that only takes a small number of variables into account. After that’s created a few more variables will be added and the formula modified accordingly. This will continue until the formula takes all variables into account.

My next post will be listing as many variables as I can think of. See you then.