Sustainable Urban Living: Green Solar Energy for Food and Biofuels Production - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 414

Farmers exhibit fossil fuel exuberance because they pay only about 20% of the true cost of
their fossil inputs thanks to government shelters and subsidies.* Farmers are sheltered from
paying for externalities (social and environmental costs) caused by agricultural pollution
of air, soils, and groundwater, the loss of nonreplaceable fossil water and agricultural
chemicals, the cost of military protection of oil assets, and the health costs associated with
agricultural pollution. Farmers pay nothing for their contribution to climate change and
they do not reimburse fishermen for the billions in lost revenue due to the off shore dead
zones caused by agricultural runoff.
The U.S. government subsidizes fossil agriculture on the order of $12 per gal of diesel
fuel. 10 Farmers may pay $3 per gal but the price reflects only the direct cost of the fossil fuel
supply chain to the farm. Farmers benefit from huge tax subsidies to the oil industry such
as the oil depletion allowance. Terry Tamminen calculated in Lives per Gallon , that the true
cost of fuel was $15 per gal. 11 These subsidies are built into all agricultural inputs including
water, power, equipment, and agricultural chemicals.
Subsidies and cost calculations reflect neither future costs nor resource loss. As fossil
resource supplies such as water and agricultural chemicals diminish, they will increase
in cost. Farmers pumping water from fossil aquifers lower the aquifer's water level which
means it will cost more for all farmers 10 years from now because they will have to use more
energy and larger pipes to pump the water. The children of today's farmers will face the end
of resource reserves and have to give up farming. Their family farm will lose most its value.
If those young people were allowed to put a price on the loss of fossil resources, it would be
far higher than the current subsidized price of fossil fuels, water, and agricultural chemicals.
After cars, agriculture consumes the most energy in the United States, about 20%. The
West and Southwest are the heaviest users. 12 Agriculture is responsible for about 37% of
America's air pollution and the majority of soil and water pollution. 13 Reasonable arguments
may be made for subsidizing the domestic food supply but not for corn ethanol. 14 Famers
will produce the target 9 billion gal of ethanol in 2009. Production will consume 40 million
prime cropland acres, 2 trillion gal of freshwater, 5 billion gal of fossil diesel fuel, and
millions pounds of agricultural chemicals. The 100 million tons of corn used for ethanol
production will consume nonrenewable resources, pollute air, soils, and groundwater and
create health problems for people and animals while replacing less than 3% of U.S. oil
imports. 15 Removing food from the market drives up food prices in the United States and
globally while also pushing up food prices for meat producers.
Those who debate peak oil miss a far more perilous concern, net zero oil exports. The
problem for fossil fuel consumers occurs because the cash infusion from oil exports in
Venezuela, for example, stimulates domestic consumption of government subsidized
$0.19 a gallon gasoline. As reserves fall, oil prices rise, bringing in more cash and further
increasing domestic consumption to the detriment of exports.
Geologists Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher have modeled the net export problem
and show that once oil production in an exporting country peaks and begins to decline,
exports drop sharply. † Due to increased domestic demand, only about 10% of post-peak
oil production is exported. Their most likely case scenario predicts that the top five oil
producers will approach net zero exports around 2031. Net zero oil exports means there
is no oil to buy. Another petroleum engineer, Jean Laherrère, assumed greater Saudi oil
reserves and projected net zero exports by 2050. 16 Unfortunately, a decade before net zero
* http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/region1614.php?fips=00000 (accessed August 10, 2011).
† Brown, J. and Foucher, S. Peak oil versus peak exports, Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas Conference ,
2010. http://aspousa.org/2010/10/peak-oil-versus-peak-exports/ (accessed September 12, 2012).