Poopyheads ?  

Kiashu has weighed in on the great relocalisation / reversabaility debate with his own views on the likelihood of a localised future. As I noted in "Fat Man", I think this is still an "optimistic" view of the likelihood of a return to smaller scale farming - I suspect we'll see more GMO, more (electrified) mechanisation of farming and more biofuel / bioenergy production onsite, processing waste streams into energy used for farming. Unless there is a large scale culture shift towards demanding a diet that comprises more locally produced organic food (which I wouldn't rate as highly likely). Kyle also has a look at global grain production and warns us all to beware of graphs.

A lot of peak oil and climate change discussion is about food; see for example my own article on The Shape of Food to Come. This focus is quite natural. At the moment, something like 2% of the West's energy goes to its farms, and another 10% to transporting the food around, and yet another 5% or so to storing the food. So it's natural to say, "well, if the oil runs short, what then? Do we all starve?"

Some greenish types argue that no, we won't starve, because food production will be "relocalised". Suburban football fields will grow potatoes, backyard gardens will grow tomatoes, and so on. Cuba and WWII "Victory Gardens" are often mentioned in this regard. The others often respond with calculations and graphs intending to show that the required number of calories can't be got without machines, and so it goes.

An example of how it goes around is Stuart Staniford's rather long, rambling and unfocused article The Fallacy of Reversability. He begins by making up a new word, "reversalists" - by which he means "poopyheads!" - and using it to put down people who think food production might become more localised; he imagines they all want to live like the Amish. He then goes on to say that industrialised agriculture is so mind-bogglingly efficient and profitable that it can never possibly end.

Sharon Astyk responds with the even longer, more rambling and less focused Is Relocalization Doomed?. (I don't expect you to plough through the rather heavy and stony furrows of either article, I link them only for completeness.) She argues that in fact many countries have relocalised agriculture; some permanently (like Cuba), and some for a decade or so (like the Eastern bloc countries and Argentina). All of those had in common that they ran short of fossil fuels. Since it's happened in the past, it's likely to happen in the future. ...

Both are missing the important fact that modern agriculture is not entirely broadscale farming with heavy fossil fuel inputs and little labour, far from cities, but is also market gardens with relatively few fossil fuel inputs and lots of labour, close to cities.

As fossil fuel prices rise and/or availability declines, the price of food from industrialised agriculture will go up; market gardens will have a commercial advantage over them. So that people will be eating just as much food overall, but more fruit, vegetables and legumes, and less grains, meat, dairy and sugar. Relatively smaller farms closer to cities will have an economic advantage over large farms far from cities. If meat becomes too expensive, high-protein legumes are likely to become more popular and be grown more often in those market gardens.

This does not mean that these smaller farms will be fossil fuel free, still less that they'll all be organic polycultures. But they will probably be smaller, with less fossil fuel inputs, and closer to cities. And people will grow more of their own food. If tomatoes are $30/kg, having a pot or two on your balcony may seem worth the effort.

This trend may be altered by public subsidies for either kind of farm. If for example the government guarantees low prices for fossil fuel inputs for large farms, obviously their advantage will continue. ...

And so my take on the issue is simply that given the decline of fossil fuels, the decline of industrialised agriculture and the localisation of agriculture is inevitable, though not as quick as you might think, as is a change to a diet with less grains, meat and sugar, and more fruit, vegetables and legumes; but it's not inevitable that these smaller and more local farms will be organic polycultures like the barefoot hippies dream.

P.S. Geoff [at Flood Street Farmlet] has an interesting post on how relocalisation may work. He looks at relocalisation from the demand-side rather than the supply-side. It's what I was groping at when I talked about high fuel prices making the less-industrial market gardens have an advantage over the distant more industrialised farms, but I didn't express it as clearly as he did.