It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production. - According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel(3). The amazing productivity of modern farm labor has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. -- Unless farmers can change the way it’s grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world’s people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got. --- As a report commissioned by the US Department of Energy shows, an emergency programme to replace current energy supplies or equipment to anticipate peak oil would need about 20 years to take effect(20). It seems unlikely that we have it. The world economy is probably knackered, whatever we might do now. But at least we could save farming. -- It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production. - According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel(3). The amazing productivity of modern farm labor has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. -- Unless farmers can change the way it’s grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world’s people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got. --- As a report commissioned by the US Department of Energy shows, an emergency programme to replace current energy supplies or equipment to anticipate peak oil would need about 20 years to take effect(20). It seems unlikely that we have it. The world economy is probably knackered, whatever we might do now. But at least we could save farming. -- There are two possible options: either the mass replacement of farm machinery or the development of new farming systems, which don’t need much labor or energy. - There are no obvious barriers to the mass production of electric tractors and combine harvesters: the weight of the batteries and an electric vehicle’s low-end torque are both advantages for tractors. - A switch to forest gardening and other forms of permaculture is trickier, especially for producing grain; but such is the scale of the creeping emergency that we can’t afford to rule anything out. --- The challenge of feeding 7 or 8 billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. - It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen.