My friend Jeff Alvord sent me this link to a Michael Pollan talk called “Deep Agriculture” on the blog The Long Now. Jeff Alvord is a key employee working for Pam and Pierre Omidyar, who are major supporters of the “The Long Now,” a long-term, thinking blog.
It is absolutely true that agriculture is tied closely to oil. As Pollan says, we are eating cheap oil.
The opening of this article:
Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael Pollan’s talk promoted the premise — and hope — that farming can become an occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle. “American farmers are incredibly inventive, innovative, and accomplished. They can do whatever we ask them, we just need to give them a new set of requirements.”