I came across this inspiring article this morning. It's always nice to read that others around the world are also preparing for a future without cheap energy. The actions talked about in this article are just the sort of thing our peak oil group here in Nelson are doing. These groups may be small in numbers now, but they are growing. Pretty soon we may not feel like the outsiders anymore...
Oh and BTW the New Zealand branch of the ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) is going to have its inaugural meeting this coming week.
http://www.hopedance.org/new/issues/53/article2.html
Diet for a Peak-Oil America: Weaning the food
system from fossil fuels one community at a time
by Katie Elizabeth Renz
How much oatmeal would it take to feed ten backpackers a week’s worth of breakfasts?
A pretty mundane question. But for Jason Bradford, recollections of planning for "X number of meals" from his days leading research expeditions in the rainforest proved the inspiration for his Food Security Worksheet, a potentially groundbreaking document looking at peak oil and the food system.
'Peak oil' refers to the point at which half of the theoretically-available oil has been extracted, predicted by some analysts to occur around Thanksgiving 2005.
Bradford's worksheet considers the annual food needs of the greater Willits population, about 13,000 people living along the redwood-ribbon Highway 101. From there, he figures the number of acres required to feed those people–sustainably–based on current local farming examples. His food plan is part of a burgeoning trend around the globe, especially strong in northern Californian communities, to prepare for growing, processing, packaging, distributing, storing, and cooking food in an upcoming era without cheap fossil fuels.
With each calorie of food consumed, the average American also 'eats' slightly more than ten calories of fossil fuel energy, says David Pimentel, a professor of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences at Cornell University who has studied the link between agriculture and energy consumption since the energy crisis of 1973.
From fossil-fuel-based fertilizers to transporting food an average 1,500 miles from soil to plate, the modern food system accounts for 17 percent of domestic energy use, Pimentel says. According to his figures, "just a hair over one gallon" of gasoline goes into producing, baking, and distributing one loaf of bread.
If we want to eat, and do it well, argue the 'post-carbon' or 're-localization' groups, the familiar scenario of driving to the supermarket—where industrial refrigerators hum under florescent lights and one can buy anything, any season, be it an organic Chilean mango or a sirloin steak—will have to shift in favor of local, labor-intensive agriculture and grocery stores within walking distance.
Bradford says, "Everything’s going to have to change." Late last year, he founded WELL, the Willits Economics Localization project, to jumpstart this wholesale transition around energy, shelter, transportation, health and, of course, food.
Creating the Food Security Worksheet was easy, he says, since he decided to start from a personal, how-much-oatmeal-will-we-need perspective. Once he got an idea of how calories translate into food items, he saw that he had the basic information necessary to understand how much arable land a region requires to be calorically self-sufficient.
"All it takes is someone who can do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and maybe some simple algebra, and they can run through those numbers for their community," Bradford says, insisting that the hardest aspect of this work-in-progress study was figuring out where to find the information.
His right-hand source was John Jeavons' book, How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, the bible of the author's expertise, GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farming. Not only does it list the caloric counts for a diversity of crops, but the book also contains exercises to determine how to design and grow a diet appropriate to one's region.
"I'm not going to be having coconut milk in my Thai stir fry because I'm in Willits now, and I'm designing for a Willits diet," Bradford remembers realizing. "Then you start thinking, 'What can I grow here, and in what proportion should I put it in my garden to meet my diet needs?'"
He also found U.S. census data invaluable in calculating how many people would be reliant upon a given foodshed; the Mendocino County Agricultural Commission Office was helpful in finding data about historic crop yields, the best indicators of pre-Green Revolution production levels.
His next step on the continually progressing Worksheet is talking to local farmers to learn who grows what, attempting to answer the ultimate question: Could it be enough?
Bradford says the most dramatic change within the food system is that more people will have to be involved in producing food.
"John Jeavons has this great expression; it’s somewhat tongue and cheek. He goes, 'Listen, I’m not saying everyone has to be a farmer. Only those who want to eat'," he laughs.
It might be difficult to turn a nation of stockbrokers and couch potatoes into potato farmers and soil tillers, but Jeavons says cultivable land wouldn't be a limitation. "Sim van der Ryn [California Director of Appropriate Technology under former Governor Jerry Brown] has said–back in the late '70s or early '80s–that if GROW BIOINTENSIVE yields could be maintained, then it would have been possible to grow all the food for the U.S.–given the diets of the time–on just the lawns, golf courses, and cemeteries of the country."
Though Jeavons concedes that growing food atop graves may not be the best approach (great fertilizer, though), he says, "The idea is that we have the potential for a lot more local food production than we perhaps think."
At least 25 residents of Laytonville, population 1,300, are well aware of this abundance of agricultural possibilities. And, like their neighbors 20 miles south in Willits, they are starting to reorganize the food system–a bit differently, however.
"Nobody [in Laytonville] is interested in assessing," says Linnea Due, a magazine editor who hosted the first meeting of the food committee in her strawbale home. "Everybody wants to act. I think there’s a real advantage to both approaches," she said, adding that an inventory of local food resources similar to the Willits worksheet will likely come later.
Due remembers that the premier gathering was incredibly fruitful. "We formed seven subgroups, came up with four workshop ideas and three field trips," she says. "I mean, that’s amazing."
She lists some of the subcommittees: saving seeds, livestock and grain raising, growing food year round. One canning workshop has already happened, and a field trip was recently taken to Jeavons’ mini-farm. Both attracted about 30 participants. A fruit-tree grafting workshop is planned for February, and a community kitchen–an up-to-code, fully-stocked space in which members could prepare food products in mass quantities and for possible sale–is in the works.
The Laytonville group also organized a potluck. But it was hardly your ordinary, honey-what's-in-the-fridge collection of random dishes. Instead, they opted for a quintessentially bioregional feast in which all ingredients had to be grown within 100 miles. Due was excited to try the various root-vegetable concoctions, garden-grown salads, feta cheese from local goats, and even an acorn pate. "The thing that people were totally blown away by was these baynuts," she says. "They were roasted, and they tasted exactly like chocolate truffles."
The peak-oil-inspired potluck was so successful that they've decided to make it a quarterly celebration, a chance to get acquainted with the seasonal variation inherent in non-fossil-fuel-based agricultural production.
Such re-localization efforts demonstrate that, with enough awareness, communities can come up with creative solutions before some fear-laden, apocalyptic scenario becomes inevitable. But will we awake from what Bradford calls the 'peak-oil siesta' in time to still have full bellies and satisfied tastebuds?
Pam Leitch of Oregon's Portland Permaculture Institute has put on peak oil meetings to audiences of 50 to 100 people for the past four months.
"I think the most common reaction amongst the general public is that there will be a technological solution. That somebody, somewhere, will fix it, which is a form of denial," she says. "More and more people will become aware as gas prices, and then food prices, start making them...a lot more receptive to attempting to find solutions," Leitch maintains, predicting that food prices will begin to reflect the recent tripling in fertilizer costs and higher diesel prices by as early as next spring.
As for any action on the federal level, most peak-oil patriots are hardly optimistic, choosing to focus on the intensely local rather than hold out for national policy to address the issue.
"It almost seems it's going to have to be a bottom-up thing rather than a top-down thing," says Janet Larsen, a research associate with the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute. Municipal governments may be an accessible entry point into beyond-neighborhood-level politics, and local politicians are increasingly taking action. The Mayor of Sebastopol, Larry Robinson [see his interview in this issue], hopes to have commissions formed by the new year to explore how the city can best prepare for peak oil, including ensuring a steady food supply [see the interview with him in this issue]. Portland has had a Food Policy Council since 2002, joining with nonprofits to eventually create a network of urban farms. And in Oakland, California, Mayor Jerry Brown is debating an initiative mandating that 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the city be grown within a 50-mile radius of its center by 2015.
Up in Willits, where both City Council members and several businesses support WELL's goals, Bradford is focusing on making local food production visible. He asked the local elementary school if they could convert part of the playground into a school farm to provide produce for cafeteria lunches and an opportunity for kids to be involved in the food cycle. (Officials gave an enthusiastic "yes.") Most of the people working on making Willits the first rural community with a hospital garden to help feed employees and patients are also part of WELL.
"It's amazing how rapidly cultures shift when the natural conditions make it necessary," Bradford says, glimpsing the future in 8-year-old kids with schoolyard gardens who know how to grow—and like to eat—highly-nutritious crops like kale and amaranth that are virtually unknown to most Americans.
"I'm hoping people see all the benefits," he continues. "People freak out about these issues. The key is, 'No, we're responsible adults; we can think and plan rationally'."
Bradford believes it's about achieving critical mass and that progressive enclaves like Willits and Laytonville exemplify how any community can prepare to eat well sans fossil fuels.
"We don't have to get everybody on board," he says. "But we need to reach some sort of point where enough people see, 'Wow, you’re doing that!? Why aren't we doing it here too?'."
Katie Elizabeth is jolted from peak-oil nightmares and sustainable dreams by phantom pebbles at her window...Her brows furrow: Will organic pineapple juice be locally produced by the time everyone comes to their senses? She can be reached at k8ylizzie@hotmail.com
9:37:51 AM 
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