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What, pray tell, do you expect me to use to efficiently till my fields, harvest my crops, and deliver them to the processors?
Do you think that I'm going to pull a plow with a bicycle? Or go back to oxen and manage to plow a couple acres per day? Hand cut wheat and go back to the days of a "4-acre" harvester (that was a top field hand who could cut that much every day for a couple of days; I know I couldn't last a few hundred square feet)? Thresh the wheat with a blanket and basket? Ship it to market behind a bicycle?
The more energy costs me to buy, the more it costs me to raise my crops and harvest them. If you want cheap food, then you'll have to get me (and all the other producers) reasonably priced energy sources. Otherwise, I've got to pass those costs along or go out of business. How many bushels of wheat do you think a Prius will handle? we normally ship out 60,000 lbs at a time with one driver to the elevator ... how much labor will it take to drive how many trips with that Prius? or maybe we can ship it with trailers behind bicycles? It's only 85 miles to the best marketplace for my wheat. All you tiptop shape bicycle riders can manage that with a trailer with the first 9 miles of county dirt roads, right?
For the folk who use herbicides, pesticides, and many fertilizers ... they are depending upon petroleum sources, too .... I already take a big hit in my per acre production by raising crops organically, but even the plastic covers on my greenhouses for vegetable production are petroleum based products. And I still have to spray my fields or spread organic fertilizers with diesel powered equpment, along with delivering tons of organic matter per acre to my fields.
One of the principal reasons food got so cheap in the world markets is because the basic foodstuffs got very efficient in the farmer to consumer chain. It's not that way anymore, no matter how much you'd wish it to be otherwise. FWIW, the farmer isn't the fellow making all the profit margin in the loaf of bread anymore, either. If you advocate going back to third world methods of production by hand and livestock, you'll not be able to feed the world these days ... let alone our big cities.
Yes, Farming will be devastated now that it's Agra-business not the one family farms of the recent past.
Starvation is one of the prizes of to much oil use......everywhere.
Geeze, Tightwad, don't you think you better spend some serious time preparing for the apocalypse? Right now you're wasting a lot of time posting a new thread on the subject every other day.
Tightwad- With all due respect, you offer some good advice on saving and stocking up, and being prepared. But these constant "the world is ending" type blogs are getting old. You will be able to go on the internet EVERY freaken day and find someone who has a blog about the collapse on the way. You will also find ONE yahoo who has a stupid high gas price. What does this prove? And some can indeed afford to continue to drive and eat even though gas may go to 5 dollars. Also most of the readers here can't bike to work. I have shifted to an economy car and combine trips. Biking to work for me would be extremely dangerous, and take about an hour in the dark to get to work.
Ditch SUVs? You mean ditch every car except hybrid subcompacts... BMW, Mercedes, etc all consume more gas than SUVs...
Design cities and towns with transit? Sounds good, and how are you going to get 5 miles from the train depot when you got 10 minutes? Walk?
Seriously... you sound like those "hype" machines that like to hype everything and not know that it is severely impractical in real life...
Sustained efforts at conservation? Developing alternatives? You do realize we consume, not conserve, you could try to conserve but it all ends up being consumed one way or another... develop alternatives??? Really, like solar power and hydroelectric? Hmm... so far, all we have done is give subsidies to these companies to develop NOTHING... they produce, they don't develop... let's be honest, every time the government gives money to these alternative energy programs, they NEVER develop anything, they just produce yesterday's technology and sell at a bigger profit with government subsidy... even Obama is doing the exact thing...
You know what the definition of madness is? Its doing the same wrong thing over and over again and expecting a different result... what you have said has been done over and over and over and FAILED and why are you expecting a different result?
None of the above have really been done with any real long term effort. The reason we've failed is because our efforts have been half hearted (at best) and very short term. As soon as the crisis from high gas prices goes away, we immediately go back to our usual energy intensive way of life. We don't make long term concerted efforts to change our behavior or the infrastructure and zoning laws that support the car centric way of life.
Nothing I described above can be done in a year or two. And therein lies the problem. The majority of Americans, like yourself, are hopelessly incapable of thinking long term
By the way, I live the life I describe. I live a block away from my job. I drive an economy car (no not a hybrid). I live in a typical low to moderate density city with crappy public transit. I realize the way I live is not feasible for all. But it is feasible for many more than will admit it. Suburban stye development where there is no transit, where stores, homes, & businesses are zoned far away from each other, and where cars are required for every trip is not viable from the standpoint of health, the environment, or the pocketbook.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 03-07-2011 at 04:05 AM..
I have shifted to an economy car and combine trips. Biking to work for me would be extremely dangerous, and take about an hour in the dark to get to work.
Therein lies the problem. Our transporation infrastructure only takes cars into account. There should be bike lanes on every major street in America. But that is far from reality.
The other problem is that the suburban sprawl development model makes biking, walking, and mass transit difficult to implement. Unfortunately, Americans accept low density sprawl not only as normal, but as inevitable and see it as the only viable living option. They don't think the words "quality" and "high density" belong in the same sentence. They're wrong about that. But good luck trying to convince people of that who are stuck in the suburban way of thinking.
The oil price problem is very fixable. Ditch the SUVs. Design cities & towns with transit, walking, & bikes in mind.
That's an issue for the States. They can levy taxes and permit fees on developers to kill suburban sprawl. They can levy additional taxes on those who own McMansions. They can give tax breaks for urbanization and modernization.
You can levy inverse taxes on urban living and commercial properties. Here's a warehouse/factory in the city that has sat vacant for 30 years, get the Census data, determine how many people would be working there and paying taxes, and the income derived from sales and the taxes for that and then assess them on the property owner. That would give the cities much needed revenues no matter how you look at it, because either the property owner will pay the taxes (or the city will seize the property) or the property owner will refurbish the property and lease/sell it to a company, in which case the city gets revenues, and if the property owner tries to take the easy way out, make the demolition permit fee 2x the value of the property.
That's a good way to get manufacturing to move back into the cities they left, and they left because they needed access to transit, which was mainly truck traffic on the belt-ways.
Here's where have a real leader as president would help. Instead of spending $Billions on temporary shovel jobs, Obama could have created an initiative to move 85% of freight to rail within 10 years. Had he done that, those people would still be working, and new jobs that could not be exported would be created everyday. Of course he would never do that because he's rim-jobbing the Teamsters Union bosses.
Moving manufacturing back into the cities will bring people back to the cities, where they will be less reliant an cars and it would make mass transit more efficient.
I'm reading a fascinating book right now that might be of interest to those of you participating in this thread, particularly those of you who think industrial farming is the only way to put dinner on the table.
The book is called A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton.
One of the statistics cited in the book that jumped out at me is that during 1943 at the height of WWII, 44% of all the vegetables consumed in the U.S. were produced in home gardens.
Last edited by formercalifornian; 03-07-2011 at 09:03 AM..
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