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

[Tony Del Plato]

Thinking about the profitability of farms, wouldn't the production of hemp
be both ecologically sustainable (eliminating cotton as a major fiber
resource and the ag inputs to grow it) as well as financially very
profitable?
tony

On Dec 9, 2007 8:17 AM, Joel and Sarah Gagnon <
Joel.and.Sarah.Gagnon at lightlink.com> wrote:

>
> >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
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-- 
May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that
we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back
on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!
Albert Einstein