By Steve Ludlum: Fantasy Islanders

“The current industrial regime is certainly non-remunerative as it is too effectively extractive. We get the excessive output we want now at the expense of the future. What the future arrives, all else being equal, there are massive throughput channels but output is a trickle – plus a lot of head scratching as to why.70% (roughly) of oil use is for personal transport, the rest is largely commercial transport (much of which is redundant or unnecessary) and chemical feedstocks including material required for pesticide production.

Big problem in food production is the asymmetric nature of the enterprise itself: it takes generations to learn how to farm a particular piece of land but two failed crops in a row will do in the farmer. Fast forward to 2015+ there is the climate curveball: how many more generations will it take to learn to farm? Is learning possible, can any farmer produce two crops in a row?

Fossil-fuel farming does work and it allows for a ‘one size fits all’ approach to all kinds of croplands. We can theoretically maintain the current regime for a few generations or so … to allow farmers to learn how to produce without petro-chemical inputs. Sadly, it is more likely that the military and motorists will fight over what remains of our fuel, crashing the current regime, leaving a lot to go hungry.”