Yesterday's farm..what if it comes back?

rhiwfield

Read a book recently "yesterday's farm" by Valerie Porter and I was fascinated by the difference between pre industrial farming and the energy intensive farming of today. What struck me was the physical labour needed to work the land by hand (or with oxen or horses) and how almost anything organic was used as a soil improver, including night-soil (and sugar bakers scum and fellmongers poake, whatever they are!)

Locally there are sacks and sacks of green waste put out fortnightly for council collection. An enterprising local farmer working 2000 acres gets paid by the council to compost this and also food waste, which means he doesnt have to buy in oil based fertiliser. LINK1 LINK2.

IF (and I'm not trying to start a peak oil debate :eek:) one assumes that oil supply will steadily fall I'm just wondering how we will cope feeding 60+ million people. What would you do faced with escalating energy costs combined with food shortages and, if part of the answer is to GYO, what would you use to keep your soil fertile? And would you use them now while you have the choice?

amcluesent

>I'm just wondering how we will cope feeding<

Of course we won't. We're eating oil, in that all your synthetic fertilisers require oil to start with.

The long-term sustainable world population without synthetic fertiliser is 2 billion, it's now more than 6 billion. Malthus may yet have his day.

rhiwfield

Amcluesent, I was looking at individual's reactions as part of a UK population of 60m. I think the geopolitical issues are perhaps best left to a separate discussion thread. I'd bet most people would have a darn good try at feeding their family and wondered to what lengths they would go to increase their personal food supply with fewer energy resources available.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i can see this being a good debating thread rhiwfield....

i should imagine this is where backyard composting comes in, and keeping chickens, rabbits etc would help in keeping your 'patch' fed, so to speak..

how long is the world's oil going to last ? anyone know ?

i know banana skins are good for feeding tomatoes..... i allways put a skin just below the surface of the compost around my toms....

ceridwen

Okay - I'll "behave myself" here;):D - and just say what I do personally:

- errrmm....yep ...with the bit of personal experimenting with foodgrowing I've been doing so far.....I do use urine as plant food.

Double bonus - saves water on flushing the loo and free "food" for my plants.

Just feel a bit "dicey" about mentioning it to anyone outside the "circle" though...:D

I am also thinking of experimenting with nettles and comfrey (ie letting them "rot" a bit in water and using that as plant food). Also - no waste of resources and free for me:D

Personally - I only have a tiny little garden - so there isnt room for a compost heap and sacks of rotting down leaves (for use as leaf mulch) - hence I have to take what solutions I can find that will fit in with that tiny little garden I have.

It IS my choice to use these solutions anyway - regardless of the fact that we all need to think what else to do because of Peak Oil - as I believe its a much better/healthier idea to use "organic" homemade products anyway...quite apart from the fact that necessity is encouraging me to do so.

ceridwen

rhiwfield wrote: »

Amcluesent, I was looking at individual's reactions as part of a UK population of 60m. I think the geopolitical issues are perhaps best left to a separate discussion thread. I'd bet most people would have a darn good try at feeding their family and wondered to what lengths they would go to increase their personal food supply with fewer energy resources available.

As to "what lengths would I go to?" personally......foraging/carefully using up leftovers/scavenging/growing own food as far as possible - but then these are all things I do anyway.

Why I do these things? Because I still have some hope....if I didnt have any hope for improvement (ie I'm hoping for a declining population) then - I doubt I would bother personally - as what would be the point if I thought people generally would never "see sense". Since I still have hope that they will - then I do bother - right.....off to cook my foraged provender up for dinner tonight:D and have it with a few leftovers I'm using up:D

rhiwfield

CTC, I'm with you on the chickens if they can get their own food by freeranging, but if you need to buy their food? You might convert it better if you ate it directly- not being funny here, I can see vegetarianism becoming the norm thru necessity. On bananas I agree you need to use every scrap of leftovers, but will that be enough given that we will probably be using more nutrients than we put back.

How long will oil last? No one knows, but it is likely to become scarcer and as amcluescent said, we're using huge amounts of synthetic fertilisers to feed the world's population

Ceridwen, urine is a superb source of plant food (LINK) and we not only flush most of it away, we also use drinking water to do it! It would be interesting to calculate UK urine production (in nutrients) as a percentage of oil based fertilisers used.

ceridwen

Just had a quick look at your link. I'm not sure what the position would be about using urine if one was using contraceptives/other drugs. As the food is basically for my own use - and I know I dont use any of these things - then no problem:D

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i thought it was only men's wee:D that was any good, as it is high in amonia, thats why its good for you guys to have a little tinkle on the old compost heap....lol...

rhiwfield..... i think this thread might go a bit too deep for me, as for the chickens forging for hteir own food, i honestly dont know if this would be enough, i supose it depends on how much land you got, and the type of ground,plants etc....which it would be totally out of the question for the general backyard chicken to be fed this way, my earlier post was purely on the fertaliser side of things...which i thought you were talking about.

I am sure i seen on telly a few months ago, britain hasnt got enough land to be totally self sufficient in food. for the current population. where in WWII i think they just about scraped it together, but that was with growing food on any bit of open land.. parks etc...

Davesnave

Interesting article - thanks. It's not clear how many residents it takes to keep that one farm self sufficient in fertilizer, but the obvious question it raises is 'What about all the others?'

Some amazing info there too. I never realised horrible stuff like plasterboard could be used for anything, except land-fill, and having tried to remove well established miscanthus, I wonder what happens when the farm decides it needs to rotate the crop.:eek:
Here, no one has used any chemical fertilizer for at least a decade, and we can grow enough comfrey and green manure to add to the home composting we already do. Trouble is, it's mainly where I don't want it ATM! I suppose we could also do the compost toilet thing too, if needs be.

Right now, we are still mulling-over whether to return to growing ornamental plants, with some reliance on chemical fertilizer, or if we should forget that and just do smallholding. Our all-organic competitors just couldn't match us in the past in that area, but we wouldn't do it in the same highly chemical-dependent way, now that we have the space.

We're certainly going to move away from reliance on oil by growing more trees for fuel and incorporating solar and/or heat pump in some form when we do the house. I don't think the pay back looks brilliant yet, but all that could change, and it probably will!

rhiwfield

I think the conclusion I'm coming to is that nothing organic should be regarded as a waste product. At some stage it will be suitable for fertilising soil. I cant see the biggest current escapees from the nutrient cycle (Human No 1s and No 2s) being ignored in an oil poor future, if not composted at home they'll prob be treated at a bioworks and sold back to us as Whizzo and Whammo!

Davesnave, as for the plasterboard you may have noticed the sting in the tail, apparently as it decomposed it gave off hydrogen sulphide and stank out the market town of Cowbridge! Seems like the future will be rather smelly