http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/the-good-news-is-soon-well-all-be-eating-turnips-and-swedes-again-1254510.html
The good news is soon we'll all be eating turnips and swedes again
Tools
By Paolo Tullio
Saturday December 29 2007
Firstly, the 20th century was awash with cheap oil. We burned up that oil at an astonishing rate, using it, amongst other things, to power agriculture and food production. We used it to transport goods worldwide cheaply, making surpluses in far off countries available to consumers elsewhere. Cheap oil meant cheap goods.
Secondly, we became more efficient in the production of foodstuffs. Vast monocultures sprang up during the 20th century, like the mid-western plains of America, whose wheat production fed the world. We used oil to run the huge machines, we used oil to make the fertilisers for those crops and we used oil to produce the chemicals that became necessary to keep those monocultures healthy.
We began to raise poultry and cattle intensively, feeding them on the cheap grain, and used the logistics of mass distribution to move that protein easily around the world. That's why you can find Brazilian beef here in Ireland.
And lastly, it's been the stated policy of European governments since the end of the last world war to provide cheap food. Keeping food cheap meant we had money for other things. If we didn't need to spend all of our money on feeding ourselves then we had some left over for buying plasma TV screens, iPod nanos, computers, digital cameras and all the other must-haves of today. The explosion of consumer durables has been an off-shoot of cheap food.
This extravagant wastefulness of oil has brought us to something approaching a crunch point. Since the American invasion of Iraq, oil prices have soared, hovering around the $100 a barrel level instead of the previous $30 benchmark. Everything that relied on cheap oil has now begun to feel the pinch. The competition for resources has also had its effect on world prices. The main source of competition has been China, whose need for oil to power its burgeoning economy has been a major factor in pushing up the prices.
China's increasing wealth has meant that their diet has also changed. Whereas once the vast majority of China's population subsisted on rice, the diet is moving quickly towards a protein diet. The Chinese now want to eat the way we do -- they want burgers and chicken nuggets, not just a bowl of rice.
But meat proteins come at a cost because to produce meat you need animal feedstuffs, and those feedstuffs are grain-based. So now there are new demands on grain production, not just for feeding a growing human population, but to feed animals destined for the table in the newly emerging economies like India and China.
Grain production is under other pressures as well. Climate change has caused a reduction in crop sizes in various parts of the globe lately and that shortfall has been aggravated by a move by many governments towards biofuels. It has been estimated that as much as 40pc of the US maize crop in 2007 went to the biofuel industry. That's a trend that's bound to continue as governments try to find ways of being less dependent on oil.
When grain becomes scarcer it get gets costlier. This year Italian consumers had a pasta strike, a kind of basta pasta, when their staple food rose in price relentlessly as the world-wide cost of grain soared. When grain costs more, then so will bread, pasta, poultry, beef and a huge variety of foods that need grain or flour in their production. With the world population rising, falling supplies of grain will cause massive social stresses.
As the effects of these global trends start to impinge on us here in Ireland, expect to see some changes. Whatever else we want to spend our money on, buying food isn't going to be an option -- we'll still need to buy it. We'll have to cut back on something else. Luxury goods will be the first to feel the pinch, so too might foreign travel and restaurants.
If these global trends continue, then we may find that our food distribution systems will revert to where they were 60 years ago. As distribution and transport costs rise, we'll move back to locally produced foods. Kiwi fruit from New Zealand and asparagus from Peru will become harder to find because the cost of moving perishable goods over oceans will become prohibitive. Self-sufficiency will be the new mantra in both food and energy.
So what changes do I see in my crystal ball? I predict that land currently in set-aside will come back into production and that dairy farms will once again be profitable because their cattle aren't being fed on grain but graze on our abundant grass. Beef cattle will once more graze in fields, instead of being raised on slats indoors. Sheep production will remain unaffected for the same reason. I predict we'll see more geese in the poulterer's shops since geese don't eat grain, but grass.
Consequently the cost of grass-producing land will rise. Local markets, continental style, will become more common, where consumers and local food growers can come together without involving a huge distribution chain. We may have to adapt ourselves to a less global diet, just as we were getting used to one.
Irish potatoes could stage a major comeback as other sources of imported carbohydrates become pricier, and locally produced turnips, swedes and parsnips may supplant imported delicacies like yams and aubergines.
Wind energy and tidal energy will become increasingly our power source as oil becomes scarcer and costlier. Biofuels will play their part too, so expect to see fields of yellow-flowering **** around the country producing oil for fuel.
In truth, this doesn't look like bad news to me. Anything that puts us back in contact with the land around us and that gives us good locally-produced food can't be all bad.
- Paolo Tullio
The good news is soon we'll all be eating turnips and swedes again
Tools
By Paolo Tullio
Saturday December 29 2007
Firstly, the 20th century was awash with cheap oil. We burned up that oil at an astonishing rate, using it, amongst other things, to power agriculture and food production. We used it to transport goods worldwide cheaply, making surpluses in far off countries available to consumers elsewhere. Cheap oil meant cheap goods.
Secondly, we became more efficient in the production of foodstuffs. Vast monocultures sprang up during the 20th century, like the mid-western plains of America, whose wheat production fed the world. We used oil to run the huge machines, we used oil to make the fertilisers for those crops and we used oil to produce the chemicals that became necessary to keep those monocultures healthy.
We began to raise poultry and cattle intensively, feeding them on the cheap grain, and used the logistics of mass distribution to move that protein easily around the world. That's why you can find Brazilian beef here in Ireland.
And lastly, it's been the stated policy of European governments since the end of the last world war to provide cheap food. Keeping food cheap meant we had money for other things. If we didn't need to spend all of our money on feeding ourselves then we had some left over for buying plasma TV screens, iPod nanos, computers, digital cameras and all the other must-haves of today. The explosion of consumer durables has been an off-shoot of cheap food.
This extravagant wastefulness of oil has brought us to something approaching a crunch point. Since the American invasion of Iraq, oil prices have soared, hovering around the $100 a barrel level instead of the previous $30 benchmark. Everything that relied on cheap oil has now begun to feel the pinch. The competition for resources has also had its effect on world prices. The main source of competition has been China, whose need for oil to power its burgeoning economy has been a major factor in pushing up the prices.
China's increasing wealth has meant that their diet has also changed. Whereas once the vast majority of China's population subsisted on rice, the diet is moving quickly towards a protein diet. The Chinese now want to eat the way we do -- they want burgers and chicken nuggets, not just a bowl of rice.
But meat proteins come at a cost because to produce meat you need animal feedstuffs, and those feedstuffs are grain-based. So now there are new demands on grain production, not just for feeding a growing human population, but to feed animals destined for the table in the newly emerging economies like India and China.
Grain production is under other pressures as well. Climate change has caused a reduction in crop sizes in various parts of the globe lately and that shortfall has been aggravated by a move by many governments towards biofuels. It has been estimated that as much as 40pc of the US maize crop in 2007 went to the biofuel industry. That's a trend that's bound to continue as governments try to find ways of being less dependent on oil.
When grain becomes scarcer it get gets costlier. This year Italian consumers had a pasta strike, a kind of basta pasta, when their staple food rose in price relentlessly as the world-wide cost of grain soared. When grain costs more, then so will bread, pasta, poultry, beef and a huge variety of foods that need grain or flour in their production. With the world population rising, falling supplies of grain will cause massive social stresses.
As the effects of these global trends start to impinge on us here in Ireland, expect to see some changes. Whatever else we want to spend our money on, buying food isn't going to be an option -- we'll still need to buy it. We'll have to cut back on something else. Luxury goods will be the first to feel the pinch, so too might foreign travel and restaurants.
If these global trends continue, then we may find that our food distribution systems will revert to where they were 60 years ago. As distribution and transport costs rise, we'll move back to locally produced foods. Kiwi fruit from New Zealand and asparagus from Peru will become harder to find because the cost of moving perishable goods over oceans will become prohibitive. Self-sufficiency will be the new mantra in both food and energy.
So what changes do I see in my crystal ball? I predict that land currently in set-aside will come back into production and that dairy farms will once again be profitable because their cattle aren't being fed on grain but graze on our abundant grass. Beef cattle will once more graze in fields, instead of being raised on slats indoors. Sheep production will remain unaffected for the same reason. I predict we'll see more geese in the poulterer's shops since geese don't eat grain, but grass.
Consequently the cost of grass-producing land will rise. Local markets, continental style, will become more common, where consumers and local food growers can come together without involving a huge distribution chain. We may have to adapt ourselves to a less global diet, just as we were getting used to one.
Irish potatoes could stage a major comeback as other sources of imported carbohydrates become pricier, and locally produced turnips, swedes and parsnips may supplant imported delicacies like yams and aubergines.
Wind energy and tidal energy will become increasingly our power source as oil becomes scarcer and costlier. Biofuels will play their part too, so expect to see fields of yellow-flowering **** around the country producing oil for fuel.
In truth, this doesn't look like bad news to me. Anything that puts us back in contact with the land around us and that gives us good locally-produced food can't be all bad.
- Paolo Tullio
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