Future Famine?

The major limiting factor of the human population, always has and always will be, the available food supply. Agricultural methods today make use of petroleum in pesticides and machinery to grow crops as well as being used in the vehicles that transport the food. With the current problem of being at the stage of peak oil and the world population rapidly growing, a catastrophe could be waiting to happen if nothing is done.

As available oil drops, our dependence on it remains the same while and the demand for it increases. For this reason we need to start coming up with a plan to make our food system less oil dependent. This means using less chemical pesticides and fertilizers and more natural ones, reduce the amount of food transportation that occurs while making the transportation that does occur more efficient, and possibly even going as far as to use draft animals like horse to plow fields etc. instead of using farming machinery. This also would require smaller communities and communities that are more self sufficient to reduce the amount of food transportation. This could be an issue in places where the land is not very arable such as Las Vegas however.

Finally if the government were to get rid of the subsidies on certain crops like corn, the money could be put into something more beneficial and bring this plan to fruition. It will by no means be an easy task to carry out a plan like this. To completely change not only our way of life but the entire world's would be extremely difficult and would need everybodies cooperation, but as difficult as it is, it gives the human race a better chance at survival than what we are doing now.

http://archive.richardheinberg.com/archive/159.html