Customer Reviews

Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture

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As a farmer, albeit part time, I am concerned about rising fuel prices, and other costs of production, nearly all energy related. In this book author Dale Allen Pfeiffer reviews possible consequences of the coming worldwide peaking of the production of conventional oil. These consequences may be dire and not limited to transportation, also affecting agriculture as we know it. Industrial agriculture with it's vast corporate interests tends to be very fuel inefficient, which includes all sorts of things such as tilling, fertilizer, perticides, harvesting, processing, transportation to markets, and more. When peak oil hits food may become much more expensive.

Do we have time to correct this, as a move to a sustainable food production system would allow? Pfeiffer writes to this question to some length, the jury is still out on it. He does write that most oil experts expect about a two percent decline per year of oil after peak oil hits, that would allow a transition, however rough, to a more energy efficient food production infrastructure. Pfeiffer gives the example of North Korea, where many have starved after their oil supply was mostly cut off after the Soviet Union collapsed, very poor planning there, then gives the example of Cuba, which also lost most of it's supply of Soviet oil, and how they successfully overcame that and converted to a sustainable agriculture system. North Korea and Cuba remain exceptions, Pfeiffer writes, as they abruptly lost most of their oil stream. The rest of the world will face a more gradual decline (my guess, sometime between now and 2025 peak oil will hit). Anyway, Pfeiffer writes that production and consumption need to be closer to each other, with local communities and individuals participating in food production. This is obviously a large and difficult problem to solve. There is also discussion in the book about corporations with their special interests which could be a problem to overcome. In the last chapter Pfeiffer describes twelve 'fun' activities if you want to become an activist. Farmers' markets, for example, are a good way to sell local produce to local people, eliminating the middleman, and overall more energy efficient than buying food shipped thousands of miles, Pfeiffer writes. But in reality the marketplace will determine the real winners and losers here, with convenience and quality also considerations, none of this is stressed in the book. Overall, though, Pfeiffer gives readers a great introduction to a subject that will probably get much more attention in the future.

"Eating Fossil Fuels," by David Allen Pfeiffer, is a fascinating review of the upcoming crisis in production of food for our population. He starts with a quick discussion of land degradation and water degradation, and then goes into the data behind the use of fossil fuels in modern agriculture. With the approaching decline in global oil production, our ability to produce food will be severely compromised.

For anyone who reads much about "peak oil" or modern agricultural policy, this will come as no surprise. Pfeiffer's book shines, though, in his discussions of the examples of South Korea and Cuba. It is fascinating to consider the different paths taken by each of these countries during their politically-imposed sudden drop in oil availability.

Pfeiffer goes finishes with a discussion of sustainable agriculture and some ideas for what a concerned activist might do.

On the whole, I learned much from the short, well-written book about an important topic.

Concerned about food and how a world economy fueled by oil will continue to feed over 6 ½ billion people when the oil squeeze comes? I suggest you read this book. Pfeiffer, a geologist and science journalist who has been intimately involved with peak oil issues for more than ten years, provides profound insight with his analysis of two parallel nations suffering from similar predicaments, but with radically different outcomes. He uses the powerful example of how Cuba and North Korea each dealt with nearly instantaneous loss of their supplies of oil after the Soviet Union dissolved. In the case of North Korea, their economy was shattered and millions of people died of starvation and disease. In the case of Cuba, people lost weight and made do with less, but a shift to sustainable agriculture and natural healing averted catastrophe. Cuba provides us with a glimpse of a possible future that avoids violent collapse and provides a good quality of life in spite of having to get by using less energy and buying less stuff.

This is one of the best books I've read in the last several years on the theme of peak oil. It's an easy read, a fast read, and meticulously researched. What this jaded reader found most informative and startling were the descriptions of the recent agricultural breakdown of North Korea and Cuba after they lost access to Soviet and Chinese oil. North K's situation was horrific and remains so (3-6 million dead from famine, and just today I read about more severe flooding there, taking out all their infrastructure, this flooding exacerbated by their lack of oil since they have to cut down their forests for fuel, a desperate tactic grimly outlined in Eating Fossil Fuel). In contrast, Cuba's is a story of hope, ingenuity, community, and is pretty uplifting in how they feed themselves, though many Americans would find their diet of nigh zero meat and dairy protein upsetting. At least they live, no thanks to the embargo. Whlie North Korea dies, miserably. Which way will we go? Everyone should read this book and take it to heart, NOW.
Also highly recommended for those who like to learn from history: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and for fictionThe Greenlanders
By Lesley Thomas, author of Flight of the Goose

"Eating Fossil Fuels" is a quick and interesting read. Pfeiffer makes some excellent points and some of the statistics he included are indeed very troubling. I particularly appreciated the discussion of steps individuals can take to become less petroleum-dependent in their food consumption.

Unfortunately, he lets his ultra-lefty political leanings bias his writing. He writes glowingly of Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for example. He is also a doom-sayer about supposed "overpopulation" and advocates in this book a reduction by 2/3 of the world's population. He is circumspect about how exactly this population decline should be accomplished but his oblique references to "declines in birthrates and life expectancies" raise the specter of forced abortions, sterilizations, and euthanasia.

Pfeiffer is skeptical about high-tech solutions and overly romanticizes low-tech subsistence farming. There's a reason why my ancestors gave up that life and moved to the city to take office jobs! It's one thing to grow a vegetable garden and maybe keep a few chickens in one's backyard. It's quite another to go back to back to the days of farming a few acres with the help of a mule (something the author seriously suggests doing). Only a tiny fraction of the population is going to be willing to make that kind of extreme lifestyle change, so technology to reduce fossil fuel dependence is the best hope we've got.

I really wish that Pfeiffer had kept his politics out of his writing as I think he makes some excellent points. His book risks "preaching to the choir" when a less partisan one would better get across his message to a wider audience. Sustainability and environmental stewardship are not just liberal concerns but too many activists like Pfeiffer treat them as such.

One good thing about this book is that the author does not need 300 pages to explain the Oil/Agriculture relation. What I liked most of this book is the explanation on the evolution of agriculture to these days, making clear that Oil is an important contributor to production performance, due to the use of fertilizers, pesticides and of course the energy derived from it in Industrial Agriculture. I agree with the author that we are beginning a transition to a new way of living, not pleasant, due to the fact that oil depletion will make difficult to attain a sustainable agriculture, even a sustainable civilization with the population numbers we have. The effects are visible, inflation and food crisis.
Most people think that technology will remedy the situation, but if you read more about energy you will realize the future's precarious situation. Governments in the world need to put an eye on it and start doing energy projects, particularly Nuclear. India must control its population growth also. I have my opinion on Cuba but considering all this is a very informative book.

I wish I had read this book last year, I would already have prepared a vegetable garden to plant this spring. I know about Peak Oil, etc. but this book really got my attention. It provides a clear explanation of how dependent our food supply is on fossil fuels. Higher and higher food prices are in store for us, soon. And that's before we start to see food shortages. The agricultural land in the U.S. can only support about 200 million people, and we have almost 300 million. Plus this agriculture is heavily dependent on oil (to run the irrigation pumps, harvest, process and transport the products), and natural gas (to make fertilizer..who knew?). In a politically unstable world of rising fuel prices, not to mention a future without those fuels, do we really want to rely on imported food to feed our nation? Or go to war over food? This book outlines the problems and has an action plan and extensive list of resources to help solve the problems. Yes! There are things you can do to avert this crisis, whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country.
Spade up those (organic) Victory Gardens, folks, and learn how to provide and preserve at least some of your own food. Support your local food producers. This year. You'll be glad you did.

Even though I believe that this book is on an important subject, I thought that the material was overly brief and only stated what others have said without proof. Seemed really short on background facts and technical reasoning.

I bought this book by Mr. Dale Allen Pfeiffer even after reading his horrible book "The End of the Oil Age." I don't care who this author hates, blames or votes for. I did buy Eating Fossil fuels and I must say that I am glad I did. It's a good work! It's professional. It's well written and in this book the author is not foaming at the mouth political. All liberal democrats leaning to the left just love Cuba and it's redistributing of wealth and the Cuban miracle. The Cubans decided to get up and grow vegetables rather than starving to death. Really, you guys give them too much credit for doing what's necessary to eat. Overall, I liked Mr. Pfeiffer's book. It's well done. Regards, Keith Renick, Peachtree City, Ga.

This book covers the coming problems in agriculture due to a shortage of oil and thus fertilizers and pesticides. But it covers more about what to do and how to cope with the return to locally grown foods. Highly recommended.