BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Oil be Damned Part Six
The Future of Agriculture
By Sarah Bearchell
Published by Icon Books, 2025, rrp £10.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
This book is pretty good on the crises that are coming, yet a bit overly optimistic in some of its recommendations. Primarily, my issue with them is over the expectation that mechanisation is any kind of real or sustainable answer, and that gene hacking can save us. Both treat science as a magic trick that will save us come what may, not a process that may or may not help us ‘just in time’, and indeed may preclude a ‘fix’ that accidently scuppers us still more. A case in point here is ‘geo-engineering’, which, on a small scale can perhaps help but that is just tinkering around the edges: but on a large-scale is certifiably stupidly dangerous.
If you wonder why I am putting this review into my occasional series ‘Oil Be Damned’, this quote from Yasuhiro Niji, on the website Medium, is pertinent: “The food crisis will begin not as ‘there is no food’ but as ‘food cannot be delivered’.” This is already occurring and far faster than any conventional food crisis scenario assumes, accelerated by idiocies such as Trump’s attacks on Iran which is a major disruptor of international trade.
Yasuhiro Niji again: “When the Iran war broke out, the world’s attention focused on gasoline prices. But that is only the surface. Oil’s true value is neither electricity nor gasoline. It is the raw material for virtually every-thing we use. Plastics, synthetic fibres, synthetic rubber, paints, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, chemical fertilizers — nearly all the materials that constitute modern civilisation are derived from naphtha, the foundational feedstock of petrochemistry. Food packaging, clothing fibres, building insulation, automobile parts, medical equipment – all are petrochemical products. There is a common argument: “When oil runs out, we’ll just generate electricity from renewables.” But solar panels themselves are made of plastics, silicon and synthetic resins. Wind turbine blades are made of glass fibre-reinforced plastic. The very equipment that produces renewable energy cannot be manufactured without oil.”
THE NEED FOR NAPHTHA
Of most direct relevance to Bearchell’s book, chemical fertilizers too are entirely dependent upon fossil fuels due to the need for naphtha in the processing. Productivity was massively increased when we first introduced artificial fertilizers, but the gains have dropped year upon year since the 1950s, till recently many areas hit the same productivity as pre-’green revolution’ agriculture, especially in the wheat belt. Take these fertilizers away, and crops will rely upon the extremely nutrient and microorganism depleted soil left over, and yields will drop still further. Add the effects of altering climate on our food supply biomes and you can see that we are in for a salutary and painful reminder of why our global human population exploded so excessively since the second world war, and how over-reliance on short-term agricultural methods will inevitably lead to a population crash. This again will be exacerbated by climate change.
The discovery and utilisation of oil fields in Pennsylvania in the 1850s saw the first step in allowing a larger human population. Discoveries such as penicillin did yet more, as did the invention of plastics, but it was the Haber-Bosch process for nitrogen fertilizers that really set us on a course for a population explosion. Take fossil fuels out of this equation, add rocketing average climate warming (and potential winter cooling for us), and you have a recipe for collapse. Recently a story ran in the papers claiming that the government had suppressed a DEFRA report on our ecologically challenging future, as it was so negative. I have yet to see the full report, but the headline findings were published last autumn as ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security: A national security assessment’ – it makes a grim read.
REGENERATIVE FARMING
So, what future is there for agriculture that can mitigate these issues? If you take away Bearchell’s utopian musings on GM and automation, reading only her excellent chapters on climate, and on what she calls ‘the great balancing act’, leaves a grim picture.
In her final chapters she addresses ‘the big question – meat’, and here is a facet of the issue that we can address more effectually. It is in no way controversial, any longer, to admit to ourselves that livestock takes up huge acreage of land we need for far more fruitful plant crops (and, indeed, for biodiversity). If you look at Dr Mae-Wan Ho’s Dream Farm 2, still archived out there on the interweb, you’ll see a model sustainable farm. It includes necessary livestock, and does not require us to all go vegan, but limits livestock availability ‘on your plate’ to realistic and sustainable levels.
Also useful is her chapter on reducing waste. She references ‘regenerative farming’, but I would like to have seen a whole chapter on this, and less teleologically dubious technophilia. Massively decreasing land wasted on resource-intensive livestock, regenerative farming, rewilded countryside, and waste reduction cannot ‘solve’ our problems and are slow-burn methods, but they are necessary and can certainly reduce the impact of the coming crunch: although ‘mitigation’ inevitably still leaves a lot of people behind, it is in reality the least worst option. If we act, and preferably act, erm, a decade or four ago. Nevertheless, “We can’t be only fighting because there’s hope. If there’s only despair, the reasons to fight are even greater.” (Arundhati Roy).
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