[SustainableTompkins] Fw: What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?

[Joel and Sarah Gagnon]

>Katie wrote:


>The question for me is: How does the global scenario play out for us
>here? What can be done locally to prevent our food and water sheds from
>turning into ethanol?  Will biofuel plants, such as the one proposed for
>Seneca Lake in Romulus
><http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/proposed-ethanol-plant-at-seneca-depot-needs-an-eis>, 
>
>slide into our area without the citizenry connecting the dots between
>the pressures for fuel and the importance of preserving our farmland for
>future food production?  Since it looks like we will need a lot more
>farmland to go into producing food, can we afford to grow fuel?
While using the land to grow biofuels might increase the cost of food -- if 
the land being used would otherwise have been used to grow food -- it will 
actually help preserve farmland for either use. One of the biggest threats 
to agricultural land in this area, as elsewhere, is its conversion to other 
uses. The return on ag use is so low that selling out for house lots looks 
pretty attractive. Anything that makes use of the land more profitable will 
help preserve the land resource for ag.

The answer to your question -- what can be done to discourage ethanol 
production -- lies in changing the profit equation. The federal 52 cent per 
gallon ethanol subsidy is responsible for much of the investment in ethanol 
from corn. It is ultimately unsustainable, and it never did make much 
sense, but it has brought profitability back into farming. I think that 
profitability would have come eventually anyway, but the subsidy certainly 
hastened the day, and none too soon for agriculture here in New York State.

A little historical perspective might be helpful as well. Before gasoline 
and the cars that run on it, a substantial revenue stream of upstate farms 
was growing biofuel for transportation. The biofuel was hay and the 
transportaion was by horses.

Joel