Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Unfortunately, Peak Oil is only one of the factors at work here.

A friend of mine is a long term farmer in the Albany (WA) area. He is in a good rainfall area and has reliable cropping on his farm.
He is concerned about the number of productive farms, in good rainfall areas, which are being sold, or leased (for 30 years), to large companies either for wood production or for Carbon Offsets. These farms no longer produce food for the market.

The agricultural areas north of Great Eastern highway are now marginal in most years and grazing does not produce much more than $1.00 per kilo (dressed weight) of the animals raised, due to the big 2 supermarkets depressing the meat prices paid to the graziers. Wool is not a big earner either for these farmers. They are not being approached for tree production due to the unreliable rainfall in those areas.

What will happen to our food supply when the climate change affects our ability to produce the food and the arable land area reduces due to farmers selling or leasing their productive ground to grow trees?
Climate change also affects other food exporting countries, causing global shortages.

The price of wheat is now $380 - $425/T and rising. The price of foods which use wheat will follow by increasing their price also. This includes bread, pasta, and most fast foods.


Tight times are coming.

Add the increases in the price of oil and a major tightening of the availability of money (increased interest rates) and there will be a large number of families going hungry.
It probably wont be a big problem this year but next year could see a severe problem.

If the US economy turns down severely, then things will be very grim.

But the US has different markets to protect than us, namely financial.
and we are 80% selfsufficent with fossel fuels.
You can't eat money and like I said before money only keeps you warm while burning it!
Don't know what I am tring to say...sorry for rant

As to the 'is there plenty of oil left' debate? Who really knows!!!

What we do know that existing wells are drying up and the ones that do have oil left in them, it is getting more and more expensive to get it out.

There is a limit to how far the drills and pipes can do down. You have to pump in gases to extract the oil, a very costly and dangerous process.

People reckon that it isn't possible to have used up all the worlds oil. But you think about how many millions of cars exist... or the big users like trucks, planes and ships. Look at the military usage. The abrams tank for example is the equivalent to 20 cars or something, using jet fuel. A warships fuel tank is 16000 Gallons not to mention aircraft carriers which carry 20000L of Jet fuel.

I think we are scraping the bowl here people.

Yep and every year we use more oil than we have ever used before.

mustn't forget all the petrochemicals used in the production of plastics, food...

remembering that some are recycled!

and every decade the total oil use is more that has ever been used TO that decade

i know you WA'er have got two hours up on me, but i'm going to bed!

Based on a 7% growth of which china has been running at 12-15 % for the last 10 years

night steve

g'night all

G'nite to all from the Eastern States of Australia.

has anyone tried growing wheat in their GBs ?

I dont think my GB is big enuf to get that sort of money!

LOL i guess that is a point, but i was more interested if anyone had done a trial