Jennifer Killpack-KnutsenHow will we eat in the post peak oil era?
I went to an Energy Film Festival today sponsored by our local Sierra Club chapter. One film, The Power of Community — How Cuba Survived Peak Oil documented what Cuba had to do when the oil supply from the Soviet Union stopped in the 90s. It was really inspiring to see what solutions they came up with to feed everyone, among other things.
There was a huge shift from large farms to small farms and urban gardens, and something like 60% (I hope I’m remembering the correct number) of the food now grown in Cuba is from urban farms. People from all professions in Cuba grow food on lots within the city, and there are roof, container, and patio gardens everywhere.
I’ve always found the idea of growing my own food, even in the city, to be romantic idea. I’ve also been wondering what city dwellers will do for food once gas becomes rare and too expensive. I’ve begun to support local agriculture more, buying about 85% of produce from the farmer’s market in Salt Lake City during the growing season in the hope that my support will mean that less local farmers will go out of business. It seems to me that being able to produce at least some of my own food would be a good skill to have.
A brochure I picked up at the festival at the Post Carbon Salt Lake table has a list of what we can do to prepare for “energy descent” and one of the things on that list is “Support local agriculture; participate in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program or grow your own garden”
Problem is, I’m intimidated as hell about growing things. I’ve never been good at keeping house plants alive, and I have no idea what I’d need to do to grow food producing plants. Every year I make a goal to work on the yard (we have tiny front yard only) and every year I put it off until it’s too late. So I had the idea to try classes and volunteering this year and see if that helps ease my gardening anxiety.
In Salt Lake City we have an organization called Wasatch Community Gardens. Besides maintaining community urban gardens , they offer volunteer opportunities in the gardens and classes — most of them just asking for a $5 donation. Titles of upcoming workshops for 2007 include: Soul of the Soil, Conservation Irrigation, Organic Gardening Basics, Container Vegetable Gardening, Composting, Rain Catchment, Urban Chickens, Bug ID and pest management, Planting for Fall and Winter, and Compost Cake. I may sign up for a few of these classes, and possibly even volunteer during one of their volunteer sessions. Those without yards can apply for a plot at one of the community gardens.
Another fun way to get gardening experience would be to volunteer in the One World Cafe’s garden. When eating at the Cafe recently, I noticed a flier asking for volunteers and offering a meal voucher in exchange for garden labor. For those who aren’t aware, One World Cafe is a very unique idea that has made national news — Everybody Eats. It works like this:
“One World Cafe asks guests to pay what they feel the meal warranted. This requires guests use their fairest judgement. Although the kitchen is a non-profit establishment, it still must meet regular business expenses. Guests are asked to consider this when visiting {snip}The cafe has no set menu. This lets the cooks use their creativity to prepare a variety of seasonal soups, salads, entrees, and desserts. The food stuffs are all-organic and the cuisine ranges from vegetarian to meat. The cafe provides water, coffee and teas but no soft drinks or alcohol.
One World Cafe serves guests from a serving line. Because the food is prepared in the open, it encourages conversation about the food, the concept and the feel of the cafe, which is unlike anything you may have experienced. {snip} If a guest finds they don’t have enough money to pay for their meal, they can volunteer to wash dishes, clean or work in the garden.”
In addition to preparing for energy descent, we can fight climate change and reduce the amount of CO2 spewed into the environment if we think and act more locally about our food.
The film I saw today makes the point that the best way to survive is to work together as a community. I can imagine us all producing food on our little city lots and trading produce with our neighbors. Last summer at the Northwest Multipurpose center they had a weekly “People’s Market” with neighbors bringing home grown produce and homemade items to sell for minimal booth prices. It would be wonderful to see this type of market flourish and build our community networks before there’s a crisis. We’re all in this together.
February 18th, 2007 at 7:10 am
I have thought about this perplexing problem, I for one intend to follow in my Da’s footsteps, and become a CANNIBAL!!
and really, with 400 + years of coal within the radius of 300 miles of where you live, there will be NO post carbon era, in your lifetime.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:39 am
I use “post peak oil era” and not “post carbon era” in the title of the post — The only mention I make to anything “post carbon” is the title of the group who’s table I visited, Post Carbon Salt Lake.
February 18th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Jen, I’m reading “The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook”, by Albert Bates. While he’s not the least surprized at our fondness for Oil, he reminds everybody that there’s rich precidence for life w / o it. Though I’m only part way into it, his semi-demi optimism suggests to me that before it’s done, he’ll applaud and take heart in the fusion of the past and what we’ll be able to fish out in the brainstorming and social connectivity we’ll be developing as we go over the ledge.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Since reading “Candide” for the tenth time, I’ve been toying with the idea of digging up one flower bed and starting a small garden. It’s mostly symbolic but it also will serve as an experiment, which sounds sort of like what you’re doing. I’ve done it in the midwest where the soil isn’t as rocky and sandy as it is here. I’ll probably start with melons, unless someone here has another recommendation. Good luck!
February 18th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Good on ya Ken. It could be referred to as a ‘victory garden’… How small is small? There are great books at the library that can get you started on intensive planting, the whole how-to.
I just converted my 40′ X 15′ garden to a mini-orchard and landscape in anticipation of selling. I already miss it and the prospect of sun-warmed tomatoes snitched off the vine only with the touch of my lips and teeth. You will be pleased.
February 18th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Back in the late 1990’s Ohio State University, School of Agriculture did a study on American farming and found that if Americans farmers wanted to increase profits, lessen their dependence on oil, increase yeild and hold production costs down, and nurture the land better there is a model: the Amish. That is what happened in Cuba after the made up country known as the Soviet Union fell apart.
I come from a long line of Hoosiers farmers and I could never see the necessity each year for bigger and more expansive machinery when the yields did not correlate with equipment size and cost.
Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana
February 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Jenni; Coal can be turned into “gasoline” through the process of coal gasification. The Germans proved this as the Wehrmacht ran on it. Big Burning Army. That, and alcohol made from fermented wood and cellulose, then distilled.
There will be no age of oil either in your lifetime. There are reserves that are quite massive found recently in Sigurd, Utah. There is also almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia in the tar sands of Alberta.
There are plans to build a nuclear plant nearby to provide energy to “cook” the sands. Right now they are using the massive quantities of natural gas that is present in the sands, and in nearby deposits. The richest uranium deposits on Earth, lie in Saskatchewan, 400-600 miles to the east of the tar sands. We will have what we need. Keep the barby running. I want an Alberta range fed steak for dinner. Mad cow and all.
The victory garden is great idea, maybe that way we can stop importing illegal slave labor from mexico, and slow down industrialized farming.
February 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Glenn, Danny and all, as the subsidized industrial farming pushes further south, more and more of the small-time local farmers are driven from thier own traditional farmlands. Thier recourse from then on is to travel northward and seek entrance to ‘America’. This industrialization is wrong, wrong, wrong, and will yeild only greater and greater problems.
February 19th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Build the wall. Right now I am where the super rich are and their multi million dollar homes are being built by illegals. Of course the rich are not involved, it is the contractors that are hiring the illegal labor. 25,000 dollar fine now for each one found on site. I have been having soooo much fun reporting them. They all are so arrogant, they actually show their illegal documents! Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun…
I also tire of housekeeping people that cannot pronounce the name of the hotel where they clean up the rich peoples shit. I am learning spanish to expedite all their removals.
February 19th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
We’ll all die of pollution and radiation poisoning long before we’ll starve, eh Glenn?
February 19th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Jenni; If you remove your feelings from the disaster and observe it from the perspective of chemistry and thermodynamics, humans are enzymatic, and catalytic.
Everything we do now, and ever have done, involves transferring of energy. As we stopped hunting and gathering we became farmers, and wiped entire biomes in order to feed ourselves. In the process the erosion and depletion was the result, we fight to restore, using more energy. Then there is the curious habit of hole digging, in order to release energies that otherwise would remain, defying entropy undisturbed, without us. Then the digging up of metals to build hard sharp implements to dig up more stuff, or kill other people whose stuff we want.
If there is intelligent life observing us, they must be laughing or are fascinated in the same way we are, when we watch ants, or bees.
The apparent inescapability of our nature stares at every morning, as we stuff items into our mouths, and rush around like squirrels storing nuts, in places he may not remember. It may well be, that this “destruction” is what we have been evolved for.
If you can recognize this, then you realize, what you need or are willing to do, then do it, yet, because you see, to geologic time of eons…IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!!