Other environmental impacts of the industrial food system include
soil erosion, wasteful use of water, run-off from excessive
fertilizer use, manure pollution in confined animal feeding
operations (CAFOs). Most of these costs are "externalized" into the
environment, not included in the price. Thus food is cheap in America
because many costs are externalized. The annual subsidy of 39 billion
dollars to the oil industry is not included in the price of food. And
the cost of war to secure access to oil is also externalized to be
paid by our children.

There are several reasons why we need to be aware of the problems in
the industrial food system. First, it is designed to make money and
produces food only for that reason. In his new book, The End of Food,
Paul Roberts devotes a whole chapter to how cost-cutting measures
have made food unsafe to eat. Second, the easy availability of food
has changed us from producers to consumers, and many of us have lost
the ability to raise our food. Third, the large corporations that
control this food industry have, along with other energy and retail
corporations, taken over the country. The United States is more of a
plutocracy than a democracy. Fourth, this industrial food system,
which most Americans take for granted as normal, is a unique,
abnormal bonanza made possible by cheap oil. It is not likely to
happen again, there is no substitute for the concentrated power in
oil. The industrial food system is not sustainable.

We are now moving into the discussion of the second transformation of
our food system. The first transformation was made possible by cheap
oil and facilitated by policies to promote the industrialization of
our food system. The second transformation will occur as we move
toward the end of cheap oil. Notice I am not saying the end of oil.

After the rate of oil production peaks and levels off, it will
gradually decline. But all over the world, and especially in India
and China, demand for oil is increasing. The human population is
growing. As demand exceeds supply, prices will rise, and it is the
price of oil that will drive us to a different food system. I am
suggesting that we should actively affirm this as an agrarian
revival, and not just wait in a passive way for it to happen. If we
affirm it we can plan for it -- and for the recovery of democracy.

In calling for an agrarian revival I am following writers like
Wendell Berry who defined the agrarian as the opposite of, or
alternative to, the industrial. The word agrarian refers to a
cultural possibility, a possibility that has deep roots as a
recessive gene in our cultural organism. Thomas Jefferson promoted
this possibility but it was gradually over-shadowed by a culture
based on manufacturing. The end of cheap oil will re-open this debate.

What would a post-petroleum agrarian culture be like? First, it would
be focused on food. Food prices in the United States already rose by
5% in 2007, the greatest increase since 1990. In other countries
rising prices for energy are magnified in rising food process.
Climate change may be causing a decline of yields in some areas. And
as more corn is used to make ethanol in this country less corn is
exported for food, and, as more farmers switch to corn other grains
prices rise as they are in short supply. The irony is that as we try
to prop up the automobile, the hallmark of industrial transportation,
we are burning our food supply.

Rising food prices are already stimulating more people to raise their
own or seek local farmer's markets which are popping up in every
town. There are now nearly 5,000 farmer's markets in this country, up
from around 300 in 1970. during the energy crisis of the 1970s there
was a back-to-the- land movement that demographers subsequently
recognized as a "migration reversal." A larger percentage of people
moved from urban to rural areas than from rural to urban areas. We
can assume this will happen again when it is clear that oil and food
prices will continue to rise. Thus another aspect of an agrarian
culture is a population that is more dispersed into rural areas with
more small towns to serve it. More small towns will be accessible by
rail. The cultural values that we cherish in cities can be accessible
in smaller cities.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I want to be clear that those
Americans who have enough money, and there are a lot of them, will
continue to drive cars and buy food even as the price rises. We are
not yet running out of oil, but the vast majority of us will not be
able to afford to buy it, or the food that is made with inputs from
oil.

Still another aspect of an agrarian culture will be organic methods
of food production, working in harmony with nature. This actually
began in the 1970s with the first energy crisis, and as the quality
of industrial food was called into question, the demand for organic
foods has been growing in recent years by 20% per year. I became an
organic farmer in 1973 as a back-to-the- land part-time farmer, and by
1991 my involvement in the organic movement led me to organize
Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance as a state-wide group
promoting local organic food and farming. I did it then as an
environmentalist, since organic farming does not use chemical
fertilizers and pesticides. Thus it uses 30% less fossil fuel energy.
More recently it was found that organic fertilizers actually
sequester carbon in the soil and this reduces carbon emissions.

Organic farming methods will definitely be normative in the future
even as the energy-intensive Monsantos of this world oppose them and
offer their genetic engineering as a solution.

Another aspect of an agrarian food system is the long-overdue shift
back from specialized agriculture to a diversified farm structure.
When I was growing up farms were still generally small family farms
which included livestock as a source of fertilizer. The availability
of anhydrous ammonia made livestock unnecessary, and so we now have
specialization: large grain farms that are often distant from the
CAFOs that produce cheap meat. Thus manure disposal is a problem.

What I am trying to illustrate here is that transition to an energy-
conserving and more ecological food system is possible on a technical
level, but may be difficult as a political possibility. I mentioned
earlier that we are governed by a plutocracy which has virtually
replaced our democracy. Money rules. We have seen how industrial
civilization facilitated the transfer of wealth into fewer and fewer
hands. Already in 2000 the top 1% of Americans had as much disposable
income as the bottom 100 million, or 35%. We lost our democracy when
we were trained to be good consumers of what the industrial food
system produced. And as long as we had energy slaves to provide our
food, we did not worry about it. Now we face a new situation as the
spike in energy prices creates new threats and opens new political
possibilities.

Green politics could have a vital role to play in the recovery of our
democracy, but we can expect opposition from big money. Oil companies
are making record profits as prices rise; Exxon-Mobile made a profit
of 40 billion in 2007. With this fresh infusion of capital the oil
companies are likely to move into food and water. And in the more
distant future, when labor costs less than oil, we can expect a neo-
feudal arrangement where poor people work on the corporate plantation
to produce food as a commodity for others to buy. What a sad ending
this would be for the Jeffersonian dream of a nation of independent
farmers! But it is reasonable to assume that the recent power of
labor unions, although currently diminished, will generate resistance
to neo-feudalism. It is in this kind of context that an agrarian
culture with a decentralized or local food production system can help
us. Wendell Berry has emphasized that an agrarian economy is first of
all a subsistence economy, and this is what many people will choose --
and are choosing as they spade up their backyards to raise
vegetables. It will be a society with a great deal more informal
economic activity. Local community currencies will complement the
federal money system.

I see evidence that rising costs of oil will contribute to a partial
economic collapse in this country. Writers who have studied societal
collapse, such as Joseph Tainter and Dmitry Orlov, have emphasized
that collapse in a complex society means a shift to a less complex
society. I see this as a shift from an industrial to an agrarian
society. The good thing about this is that it would very likely get
us off the treadmill of economic growth and into a steady-state
society.

In the meantime, large food companies will demand more federal
subsidies in order to provide us with food as energy costs rise.
Efforts will be made to prop up the industrial mode of production
until everyone sees it as obviously counter-productive. So one of the
first political tasks is to urge the reconsideration of federal
subsidies to corporations. The de-industrializatio n of the food
system must eventually be a political program. In Cuba, after the
Soviet regime cut off oil supplies, there were serious food
shortages. But as they gradually de-industrialized their food system
they produced enough food without oil.

The major political task will be to make land available for a new
generation of agrarian growers. It is a daunting task at a time when
ownership of land has been concentrated in fewer hands including both
large family farms and agribusiness corporations. One of the thinkers
who has given serious consideration to a program of "re-ruralization"
is David Orr. He emphasizes that people should be able to move to the
land as "homecomers" rather than as refugees from the city. This
requires a well-planned program with an educational component. Orr
rejects conventional political agencies such as a Presidential
Commission or the land grant universities for this task because they
have become the servants of big money. He suggests that planning for
re-ruralization should begin with the many regional non-profit
organizations that are already working on a transition to a post-
petroleum society. Orr argues that this is a long-term project; he
suggests ten years of planning. It happened faster in Cuba, but
perhaps because Cuba was a more regimented state with a longer
growing season. Many religious institutions could be a part of this
process. I would like to hope that the green politics and party would
participate in this task. And, along with a new homesteading movement
in the countryside, we will need greener cities with more intensive
urban food production.

Arable land will be an increasingly precious resource, especially as
yields are reduced after the end of cheap fossil fuel inputs. One way
to make land available is to require that prime farmland be used for
food production. If large land-owners cannot use their holdings as
energy prices rise they could be required to sell either to the
government, which would redistribute it in smaller tracts, or to
smaller growers directly.

There are other ways of envisioning an agrarian culture. Paul Gilk, a
long-time Green activist and writer from Wisconsin, has just had a
book published entitled Politics is Eutopian. The word "eutopian" is
his way of characterizing an agrarian society. Drawing on the
critique of industrial civilization by Lewis Mumford as a utopian
project, Paul Gilk contrasts utopia, which is noplace, with eutopia,
a good place. A utopian society is noplace in that it is not grounded
in a natural context but exists as a man-made imposition of abstract
and conceptual mental patterns on the natural environment. A utopian
society imposes an artificial order with many rules and regulations.
It is focused on the control of nature and humans. The norm for
eutopia is the village that is rooted in the natural environment, a
real place where people raise food with organic methods and live in
harmony with nature. While such a life demands more physical
exertion, it is likely that better food and more exercise would make
us healthier.

One of Paul Gilks special concerns is the status of women as we move
into an agrarian way of life. In past agrarian societies work was
often gendered with women bearing the brunt of drudgery. If feminism
can remain strong in a post-petroleum society sexist discrimination
may be mitigated. More efficient and appropriate technology might
also be helpful.

My special concern, as a former professor of religion and
environmental studies, is that people's values in a neo-agrarian
culture should be informed by an earth-centered spirituality. This
may take many different forms, but an example might be neo-paganism
with an emphasis on the celebration of seasonal rituals. The
word "pagan" means a country-dweller. A greater emphasis on a
cyclical structure of time, rather than linear time with its focus on
progress, may be conducive to contentment. I wrote about this in my
book, Adapting to the End of Oil: Toward an Earth-Centered
Spirituality. We have copies available.

In summary, as a Green with a concern for "future focus," I have
argued that our society will be moving from an energy-intensive
industrial mode of food production to energy-conserving agrarian and
local food system. This will be a cultural transition, forced on us
by rising prices for energy. We should affirm and support this change
even if the price of oil goes down again in order to slow the process
of climate change. The costs of energy that drive this change are
both monetary and ecological. Agrarian revival may be a radical
economic change, but we must reduce the burning of fossil fuels or we
face a more radical and more destructive ecological change.

Sources Cited:

Paul Gilk, Green Politics is Eutopian
Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse
David Orr, Earth in Mind
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels
Paul Roberts, The End of Food
Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies
Norman Wirzba,(ed) The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of
Wendel Berry