Recent events in Egypt highlight the delicate balance between oil, food prices and political stability

An article in The Oil Drum links oil, food prices and political stability in Egypt. With Egypt’s income from oil exports rapidly falling, its plans to reduce food subsidies, along with rising prices, were a trigger for unrest. Mike Pepler, our UK awards manager, explains the key points:

• Egypt has been an oil exporter, but exports have now dropped to zero due to both rising domestic consumption and falling production.
• Although Egypt does still export gas, it has made no new export contracts since 2008. The money available for subsidising food is in decline.
• The Egyptian population has quadrupled over the last 60 years, and they now import 40% of their food.
• Meanwhile, food prices are rising globally in part due to supply issues (global wheat harvests fell last year due to fires and floods in various parts of the world for instance) and, as I recently explained, due to the fact that our fossil fuel use is integrally linked with our food production system.
• Recent rises in oil prices are tied in closely with increases in the price of food.

(pic: graph courtesy of the Oil Drum shows the close relationship food prices and oil prices)

See also:
We need to remember our food system is linked to our energy use
How events in Egypt affect oil prices

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To feed eight billion people in 2030, we need to remember our food system is linked to our energy use

Three reports have appeared in the last fortnight highlighting the urgent need to address the food, energy and water demands of a population that's expected to reach eight billion by 2030. The report, One Planet, Too Many People?, from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, looks at the pressures of population growth on our food, energy and water systems. The report, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, from the World Watch Institute, explores sustainable solutions to our food system. The Foresight Project's Global Food and Farming Futures report examines how we can meet the food needs of our planet in the next 20-40 years.

Mike Pepler, our UK Awards Manager, emphasises the theme that's emerging from each of these studies: the challenge of how to feed the world in 20 years' time must be done in combination with meeting rapidly rising energy demands. We must address our need for a productive food system at the same time as reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

A good example of the energy input that goes into agriculture is fertilisers. Our intensive use of fertilisers produces a double whammy of greenhouse gases. Mike says:


"Nitrogen is a key element needed for plants to grow, but it has to be incorporated in chemicals that plants can use. There are natural processes that achieve this, but the nitrogen added through man-made fertilisers has doubled the amount available for plants to grow. CO2 is released as a result of the Haber-Bosch process which is used to produce ammonia to make fertiliser. Then the fertiliser, once spread on the field, also emits nitrous oxide - this is the third most significant greenhouse gas, after CO2 and methane."


"About 3-5% of the world's natural gas supply is used to produce nitrogen-based fertiliser - that is about 1-2% of all energy use globally. Although the advent of petro-based chemical fertilisers in agriculture is one of the pillars of the 'Green Revolution' that boosted food production in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has come at the cost of increased greenhouse gas emissions".

"The climate change caused by greenhouse gases, including those emitted by fertilisers, is now threatening food production, and will become more of a problem as time goes on. We must recognise the link between sustainable energy systems and our agricultural system. More research is needed on this topic."

See also: Three steps that each of us can take to help.

(Pic: Farmer in Vietnam uses slurry from biogas production as a natural fertilizer for their crops)

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Sir John Beddington warns of world food crisis. Here's three steps you can take to help

This morning the Government's chief scientific adviser Sir John Beddington discussed the threat of a world food crisis. A billion people today are hungry. The population is rising rapidly. A new report says that farmers, politicians, economists and scientists need to think how to make food production more efficient and deal with the problems of water and energy.

Our UK awards manager, Mike Pepler, says there are three steps that each of us could take to help.

Don’t waste food. Food that is thrown away has not just wasted the food, but everything that went into producing it, including water, fertiliser, pesticides, diesel (for farm machinery and transporting it), electricity (for refrigeration), packaging and also the energy you use at home to refrigerate and cook it.

Eat less meat. Producing meat requires much greater input of fossil fuels than producing other food, and has a corresponding higher emission of greenhouse gases. It also takes up more land area, as animals are often fed crops that could have been eaten by people, so the more meat we eat, the less food is available in total.

Grow your own. Growing a bit of food at home can be quite easy, and you have the option to do it organically by avoiding any use of chemicals. You’ll also have no food miles, as it only has to travel a few steps to your kitchen.

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Is it time for transition?

What connects farming, famine, food, fossils fuels and fertilisers? The answer is somewhat surprising: oil. This was one of the conclusions of the Soil Association annual conference: Transition - Food and Farming in 21st century Britain. Fossil fuel depletion, climate change, diminishing soil and water resources and population growth present an unprecedented threat to global food security.

Those threats are based on our dependence on fossil-fuels for both our energy needs and for the mass production (and transportation) of food. This places us in a very precarious position. Precarious because oil has peaked and we are beginning to run out. Precarious because mass, non-organic, agriculture is so dependent on synthetic, oil-based fertilisers. Precarious because the burning of fossil-fuels is leading to irrevocable climate change. Precarious because our dependency on imported food and energy leaves us a vulnerable, net importer and precarious because we are destroying the very thing that nurtures us: the soil beneath our feet.

But rather than produce despondency (a common enough human reaction) these problems have led to some remarkable grass-roots solutions. From the rapidly growing Transitions Towns movement to Catherine Sneed’s remarkable and moving ‘healing through horticulture’ programme in US prisons to Dr Vandana Shiva’s ‘Soil not Oil’ movement. You can listen for yourself here: www.soilassociation.org/conference

Ashden Awards was there too, to share the experience of our pioneering winners, as a major contributor to a workshop on farming and energy. The workshop outlined the lessons we can learn from international biogas systems for UK farmers and demonstrated the benefits of biomass in sustainable farming energy solutions as well as the role farmers (and landowners) can play in powering the national grid through wind. There was overwhelming interest.

Whilst the global issues can seem at times insurmountable, this conference demonstrated that it is the often small, frequently bottom up, mostly local and always sustainable solutions that may provide the shoots of hope for us all.

Simon Brammer
UK Programme Manager for Ashden Awards

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