How our food is critically dependent on fossil fuel

The article Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil, written in 2005, is a very thorough summary of my own ideas about how the American food supply is critically dependent on the cheap, uninterrupted flow of fossil fuels into this country.

Cut fossil fuel supplies and watch spot food shortages occur. Keep supplies up while prices go up and watch food prices increase beyond the reach of the poor. Do both? The system will seize and lots of people will starve.

I believe that renewable fuel sources like ethanol and biodiesel are important alternatives that can potentially provide additional resilience for our food supply. Unfortunately, significant acreage of arable land is being diverted to produce these biofuels. Since these biofuels, and especially ethanol from corn, provide only small energy gains while eliminating land used for food, our food supply is now even more vulnerable to disruption.

Edible Forest Garden: Borage

One of my interests right now is in securing a sustainable food source for my family and local community. I think that Edible Forest Gardens are the way to go. More about that later...

Borage looks like a potential multi-use plant with greens, seed, oil, medicine, nectary, and predator insect shelter uses. It appears to be invasive, however, it's rated to Zone 7. For Zone 6, if it requires a cold frame or thick mulch to protect it from the winter, then I should be able to limit it's spread. Since the leaves are rich with potassium and calcium, should be able to cut the plant back when it does get vigorous and use it in a compost tea!

Here are some medicinal facts regarding borage:

• Dietary fatty acid supplementation alters stress reactivity and performance in man.
• Dietary gamma-linolenic acid in the form of borage oil causes less body fat accumulation accompanying an increase in uncoupling protein 1 mRNA level in brown adipose tissue
• Borage oil reduction of rheumatoid arthritis activity may be mediated by increased cAMP that suppresses tumor necrosis factor-alpha
• Randomized, double-blind trial of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation with fish oil and borage oil in preterm infants

Thanks tiabin!