Organic Futures blog

Richard Heinberg is probably the world’s foremost authority on Peak Oil and its consequences for human life. He has also produced what I think is one of the most far-sighted quotes of the year:

“The model in the twenty-first century will be re-ruralisation and more human labour in agriculture. The twenty-first century farmer will have 5 acres, lots of friends, and an intensive knowledge of ecology. Now relocation is virtually inevitable due to rising sea levels.”

THIS is why Organic Futures exists - there will have to be a massive re-ruralisation in all industrialised countries.

Richard Heinberg’s website: www.richardheinberg.com/

Read a summary of a brilliant Richard’s talk at a recent Findhorn conference here.

Peak Oil is upon us. “What oil?!” you might say…first things first, read up about Peak Oil if you’re not aware of what it’s all about here.

It’s a phenomenon that will have an enormous effect on everyone living in an industrialised country. Very briefly, Peak Oil relates to the peak, or maximum production, of world oil production. As the image below illustrates, beyond this point oil won’t run out, but it gets much more scarce. Combined with rising demand from countries becoming industrialised and it doesn’t take a genius to see that we are facing a future with restricted availability of oil.

This has huge implications for us - there is literally no part of our lives that currently are not dependent to some degree on a constant supply of cheap oil. There is no doubt that we must decouple our lives from a dependency on oil, moving to low-carbon lifestyles and living in resilient communities.

The Transition initiatives approach takes Peak Oil and Climate Change as an opportunity for people at community level to change their lifestyles for the better whilst making an enormous difference to their ecological and carbon footprints. Read up about Transition and get involved with something happening near you - if there isn’t one then think about starting one!

It’s not been widely reported, but the price of a barrel of crude oil has shot through the $100 mark over the past week. What does this mean for us as a society and, in particular, food production?

We are all highly dependent on oil for every part of in life in an industrialised country. Organic agricultural and horticultural systems require oil for manufacture of inputs, to power machinery, in packaging, processing and of course transport. There are many hidden inputs of oil that have indirect effects of the costs of food production too.

A constant increase in the price of oil will have serious impacts on large scale food production and centralised distribution systems. In fact, it will probably be the best thing for local food because labour-intensive food production will be able to compete on price much more effectively with oil-intensive food production.

This will also help to create a demand for skilled labour, and that’s a great thing for Organic Futures. Keep an eye on this Crude Oil Price Forecast - notice that at the moment the one year forecast is for $135/barrel. This will start to effect big changes in food and farming by simple market forces.