"Here in the United States about 40% of our population farmed for a living around the turn of the 20th century. By 1950 that number had dropped to 12%. Today fewer than 2% do the work of growing food in America as we too have industrialized and urbanized our population. The other 98% of us work at a job which provides us money that allows us to buy food from a small number of domestic producers and from others who grow it abroad. We have given up our own food sovereignty as a people and instead rely almost entirely on an economic system to provide us with meals.
Should we be pleased that the USSR shifted from a rural population towards a more urban population and were then unable to feed themselves leaving their leaders no choice but to consent to revolution in the face of a starving population and no way to pay for food? Maybe. But that is an oversimplification of the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Countries don’t collapse for any single reason but because of a host of pressures. However the agricultural situation surrounding the Soviet collapse suggests that America should be asking herself some questions. If the economic system in the United States, an economic system based on growth, runs up against a depletion of resources that physically slows or stops our ability to grow economically, will we face a similar collapse? Could our nation, like the Soviet Union, come to regret our willingness to hand over our food sovereignty? Will fewer jobs mean less food? If the American economy of growth falters, how will the 98% of non-farmers be able to buy bread? Are we in for a revolution when a certain percentage of the American people are unable to buy food?
I’m not talking about a revolution based on some sort of ideological difference like that between capitalism and communism. I’m talking about a revolution due to an increasing resource scarcity that chokes the life out of industrial agriculture. In an era of unprecedented growth and materialist prosperity, many people have come to believe that the grocery store aisles will always stay stocked, but there is only so much of the natural world we can convert into human resources. Mother Nature has her limits and infinite growth in our finite system is impossible even if short term growth seems to suggest that it is inevitable. Will our failure to recognize this fact visit our dinner tables/"
The Oil Drum continues to find great writers who are adding to the debate about a post Cheap Oil era. This article is written by Aaron Newton - above is only a snip.
I recall what it was like in the former Soviet Union. I was in Ukraine from 1997 - 2000. The Industrial food system had collapsed. Every weekend millions left town to work their garden - called a Dacha Plot. Maybe 1/4 of an acre in size it fed an entire family - without it, millions would have starved.
