Local food might soon be a necessity
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, July 11, 2008
(http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jul/20080711Comm001.asp)

So far, those buying locally produced foods have done so as a matter of choice.

There are, to be sure, several reasons for this choice: less air and water pollution, supporting family farms and the rural economy, and health concerns. There are less objective issues such as taste. Those who support local foods claim that moving produce from hundreds or thousands of miles away reduces the taste as well as adding to the costs. This has some validity, as fresh fruits and vegetables must be picked while not fully ripe.

Up until now, although there are many good reasons for doing so, buying locally has been a choice. Each of Columbia’s supermarkets has a local food section, but foods in these sections are vastly surpassed by foods grown or processed in other states or even in other countries. To support local farmers, it often is necessary to go to our farmers markets and pay a bit more than bulk commercial foodstuffs at Wal-Mart or Gerbes.

But all of that quantity food produced in California or Brazil and processed in Omaha or Chicago might not be available much longer. All of that largess and the cheap prices have come about because of readily available and cheap gasoline. As we all know from our visits to the gas stations, cheap gasoline has gone the way of the dinosaurs - and all predictions are that prices will continue to go up.

Just consider the matter of the amount of fuel used in producing lettuce, soybeans, corn or strawberries. Tractors, combines and mechanized pickers are horrific guzzlers of fuel. Most farmers have gasoline tanks on their farm. Those tanks hold between 300 and 500 gallons. When gasoline was about 99 cents a gallon, the problem was not great. But as gas prices soar to $4 or more per gallon, filling up those on-farm fuel tanks becomes a huge problem. What once cost $300 (to fill up a 300-gallon tank) now costs almost $1,200.

When will the price of gasoline reach such a point that it is no longer possible to use a tractor or combine in the growing and harvesting of food? $6? $10? $15?

When will the price of gasoline reach such a point that moving bulk processed foods from the West Coast becomes cost-prohibitive?

At what point will the price of producing grains in bulk become so expensive that industrial agriculture (such as concentrated animal feeding operations) can no longer survive financially?

In the future, when gasoline prices become sky-high - and certainly $4 per gallon is in the upper atmosphere - buying locally might no longer be a choice. It could well be that foods produced in Central Missouri using horses, rather than vehicles with internal combustion engines, become the only thing available.

There are those who still use horses for agricultural production. Some, such as the Amish, do so for religious reasons. Others do so because they just like farming with horses. Still others cite all sorts of economic and ecological reasons for doing so.

Those economic and ecological reasons are telling: Horses reproduce - no need to buy something new; horse manure makes good fertilizer; and the only fuel required can be grown on the farm.

No doubt, all of the above is doom and gloom. But it is doom and gloom based on the predictions of those economists and geologists who examine oil reserves - and say that the current high gasoline prices are because demand vastly exceeds supply. They further say our planet has likely reached its peak in oil production and we are on a downward spiral in which supply will never meet demand.

Chances are we will not ever totally deplete fossil fuels. However, the price of gasoline might become so dear that life as we know it will come to an end. At that point, there will be fewer and fewer choices.