Week 3 #2

The first article talks about the first major of oil as a valuable resource. It then goes to talk about oil production in a bell curves. Where it will rise level off and then go back down. This means at some point in time we will use more energy than we have left in the oil. So the energy of oil will then peak. People claimed that oil had peaked in the United States during the 1970's. But then meetings during the 1990's discussed and were confident that oil would peak during 2010. While to this day this seems pretty accurate, new oil fields and reserves were never accounted for. This could mean more time for us to find new alternatives, but if not now, eventually we will have a peak.

The next article is about agriculture in the United States. The article begins to say about how much our soil and water are all beginning to lose their quality over the years. Growth is only possible due to genetic splicing of plants, which allow less nutrients to be needed for full growth. While this does make it cheaper and we are able to produce more food it still may not be enough. Many fossil fuels are used in someways to produce food. With fossil fuels declining, the price of food will slowly rise. With many families not able to afford food for everyone in their family, when the prices rise, even more will be in the same situation. We must make major changes in our agricultural system; we must start using more renewable resources and we must make our agriculture more efficient. If these steps are not taken and we continue with our ways we will be in hole that may be too deep to climb out of.

Answer the questions

1.) Fossil fuels power basically all of the major farm equipment used in agriculture. The loss of fossil fuels would result in the loss of our machinery in farming. While we could use manual labor, we would not be as fast nor as efficient. If we lose fossil fuels our agricultural system would most likely collapse.

2.) North Korea's agricultural system was one based on oil as well. When oil shortages were had in North Korea their agriculture system was hurt bad leaving food shortages all over the country. We have the same system in the United States and we should begin to prepare in case oil does run out. This way we will not have food shortages. We need to start working this out now.

Questions

1.) I dont understand why people make a big deal about the poor soil? While poor soil is not good we are using ways to make it efficient and create more food with less nutrients.

2.) Did oil production peak this year like estimated? Or do you think we still have more time.