The End of Food

Paul Roberts, author of the latest book to be titled "The End of Food," was at the Washington Ethical Society for an interview last night. I was not. Twice I ventured into rush-hour traffic for a trip that might take 15 minutes at any other time of day and twice I turned around and went home, stymied by roads clogged with vehicles headed in the same direction. Finally I gave up: It seemed preposterous that I should be spewing carbon to hear a talk about how our industrial food system is foundering over the high price of oil.

Fortunately, Roberts also appeared on the local public radio station earlier in the afternoon. Author of a previous book titled "The End of Oil," his riff on food could not have been better timed, as an entire nation agonizes over the loss of its tomatoes because of a salmonella bug that proves impossible to trace.

Deadly tomatoes and spinach, millions of pounds of tainted beef recalled, mad cow disease--such is the price of a food system that has lost all sense of human scale and accountability. And as we wave goodbye to cheap oil, food prices spiral out of control, threatening the lives of a billion people or more.

The so-called "Green Revolution"--based on artificial fertilizers and diesel powered machines--was supposed to feed the world. It brought us an abundance of cheap food but now, barely two generations later, we are tallying the costs: soil destroyed, air and water fouled, family farms decimated, rural communities obliterated, Third World farmers facing starvation. The food itself, we learn, is not good for us. It's making us fat and unhealthy. In some cases it is lethal. Corporations have made out like bandits feeding us transfats, bovine growth hormones and high fructose corn syrup. As recently as a year ago you could have bought stock in Monsanto and doubled your money. But for the average eater, cheap food has come with a terrible price. And in the end, the world still does not have enough.

This does seem to be the ultimate paradox: As a society, we have forgotten how to feed ourselves without destroying the planet. In a competition for people's bellies, the profit motive rules over the collective good. Ten thousand years of learning agriculture have left us not much wiser, staring over the edge of a precipice.

For a longer take on Robert's book, I suggest a recent New Yorker essay. The issues are so big, they've left a pall of silence over the political landscape. Our "leaders" seem helpless and without a clue. The public, meanwhile, is sleep-walking into dark and dangerous territory, while the popular media are just now coming to grips with issues that were foretold decades ago. They scramble to write stories about people like us, people turning their yards into vegetable gardens.

There's never been a better time to park your car in the garage and putter with your tomatoes.

Life Without Oil

Is the world running out of oil?

Everyone knows that oil is a finite resource. But more and more people are embracing the concept of "peak oil," a theory positing that we may have or will soon have reached a point when half of all the planet's supply of oil has been used. That's a startling thought to contemplate, considering it took Planet Earth hundreds of millions of years to create the oil, and it took mankind only 150 years or so to use up half of it.

Even scarier, though, is that the "easy" oil has mostly been used up, never to be replaced. From here on out, extracting fossil fuels will just get harder and harder. Recently a barrel of oil topped $80 for the first time. Author James Kunstler believes we are on the cusp of a "long emergency," when the huge infrastructure and suburban lifestyle we've built around easy oil will begin to crumble.

The implications for food are huge. More oil is spent on food than in any other sector, from the natural gas used to make artificial fertilizers, to the diesel consumed planting and harvesting crops and trucking food to market. The United States in just the last generation has gone from an exporter of oil to the world's biggest importer. We are a nation of oil guzzlers. You might even say that the food on our plate is just fossil fuel transformed into something more edible.

So what would happen if we ran out?

For the answer to that question, you need look no further than the neighbor we most love to hate, Cuba. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s, Cuba lost its primary patron and benefactor. Almost overnight, supplies of fuel and food disappeared. Up to that point, Cuba had been even more dependent than the U.S. on artificial fertilizers for its agriculture. What ensued was a time Cubans now refer to euphamistically as "the special period," a time of hunger and privation.

In the ensuing years, the average Cuban lost 20 pounds. Malnutrition swept the country. Without oil, Cubans had to give up their cars and learn to ride bicycles. Getting to and from work often meant waiting hours for rare buses. Long power blackouts became common. Most importantly, the entire country had to band together and learn how to feed itself, meaning growing its own food without oil.

Last night I was in Greenbelt, MD, to view The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, a documentary about Cuba's struggle to become self-sufficient. Greenbelt, a town secreted just outside Washington's famous Beltway, is one of the original eco-villages, designed to preserve a corridor of greenery amidst the suburban sprawl. From the New Deal Cafe, where the film was being show, what you see mostly is parking lots filled with huge America vehicles. Still, the co-op cafe (which recently voted not to declare bankruptcy) was filled to overflowing with middle-aged hippy types eating bowls of vegetarian chili and eager to find out how Cubans persevered through their own oil collapse.

What Cuba represents is a kind of experiment that the rest of the world can look to, perhaps even a view into the future of a world where the oil wells have run dry. Cubans rediscovered natural farming methods, bringing fertility to the soil with compost, recycling everything and composting with worms. Ox-drawn plows made a big comeback. Just about every green space in the country has been converted into food production. Cubans, whose national dish was pork, have learned to love vegetables. Urban gardens are everywhere, even on the rooftops. Neighborhood produce markets are a common sight and farmers have gained new respect and viable livelihoods.

The U.S. was no help at all in Cuba's transformation. We only tightened our embargo during those years. But could this be a vision of our own future? Can you imagine our happy motoring society reduced to tearing up its perfect lawns and replacing them with vegetable gardens? That's exactly what some activists are advocating. Some communities are already oranizing, preparing for the day when growing food will become a matter of survival. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation goes about its business seemingly without a care...