Safe Haven | Preservation of Capital |

The attached graph shows that World Grain production has not increased sufficiently to support per capita consumption, which peaked in 1985. According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, speaking at the Rimini Conference (see Item 269), an increase in average temperature of one degree causes a ten percent fall in crop yields. Furthermore the aquifers of many of the worlds grain growing areas are being depleted. They are mainly fossil aquifers not being replenished fast enough to match extraction. Petroleum is commonly used to fuel the pumps needed for irrigation. Furthermore, the new genetically engineered crop types have high yields but reduced root systems, such that they have a voracious appetite for both water and synthetic nutrients made from petroleum. It has also recently been announced that it is near impossible to reduce the use of one of the banned pesticide chemicals held to be responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.
Accordingly, it begins to appear that the peak and decline of oil may be matched by a peak and decline of food production. In this connection it is worth recalling that from the time of Christ until around 1750, peasant farmers employing sustainable agricultural methods only just succeeded in supporting a population in the 300 to 500 million range. The entry of coal-based energy was accompanied by a rise in the population to about one billion by 1850 when the first oil wells were drilled. A six-fold increase in population followed rising in parallel with the growing oil production. This brief explosion of energy and people was out of all context with what had preceded it. Logic proclaims that the population will also have to decline in parallel with depleting oil and gas. The peak and decline of per capita grain production may herald this new direction. The manner of decline does not bear thinking about but the scope for slaughter by modern weaponry has been confirmed in the two recent wars.
A new book by Lester Brown entitled Plan B Rescuing a Planet under Threat and a Civilization in Trouble, exposes the grave risks
(Reference furnished by Jean Laherrère)