ABSTRACT
Over the next few decades, nations will be experiencing fluctuations and increasing scarcity of fossil fuel supplies, and this will affect food prices. Alternative farming and food systems are required. Industrialized countries in particular have been over-consuming fossil fuels by two-thirds, and their agricultural sectors have contributed this with their heavy dependence on cheap fossil energy for mechanization and as a basis for agrochemical inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers. The corresponding industrial food systems in which these farming systems are embedded are similarly dependent on cheap fossil fuels for the ever-increasing processing and movement of foodstuffs. The low fuel prices, combined with the industry's avoidance of paying clean-up costs of environmental pollution, have enabled the maintenance of low food prices (Vandermeer et al, 1993; Odum, 1994; Tansey and Worsley, 1995; Desai and Riddlestone, 2002; Harrison, 2004). Alternative, organic agriculture shows to perform better on a per hectare scale with respect to both direct energy consumption (fuel and oil) and indirect consumption (synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) (Scialabba and Hattam, 2002; Ziesemer, 2008). Many of the products of organic farming are processed and marketed through the industrial food system, but their prices are higher owing to their factoring-in of their impacts on the environment (Pretty et al, 2000). Although research has long been under way into energy alternatives, the agriculture and food sectors make little advance in developing alternative systems as long as fuel prices remain low.
