Category Archives: Food Security

Community, Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources

The Hawai’i Energy Challenge 2008

Many service stations, from Aniston, Alabama to Asheville, North Carolina, ran out of gasoline due to Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. In Asheville, one gas station owner had to call police after at least three fistfights broke out. In Nashville, drivers waited for hours to get fuel, only to see gas pumps covered in bags. In Atlanta, motorists ran out of gas while waiting in line and had to push their cars to the pumps. An Alabama paper said the regional mood was “as jumpy as a frog farm.” These stories have been overshadowed by the recent Wall Street meltdown.

Matthew Simmons, chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International, a prominent oil-industry insider and one of the world’s leading experts on the topic of peak oil, points out that a similar meltdown could happen – without warning – to our national food supply system.

He points out that if there were an oil supply disruption due to an oil tanker blocking the Strait of Malacca, for example, there would likely be panic buying and people topping off their vehicles. This would drain all the transportation fuel in the pipelines – and that would freeze up our food distribution system. He estimates that it would take five to seven days for all available food to be bought up. (My note: Try two days.) After that, food deliveries would stop, because refineries would need a fair amount of time to bring their supplies back up. Here is a video of Matt Simmons talking at the Peak Oil conference last month.

Could that happen? And what would happen here in Hawai‘i, where 80 percent of our food is imported?

For many reasons, this just being the most recent, we need to get serious about food security, which includes moving away from our current dependence on oil. I’ve said before that this is not rocket science. If the (Hawai‘i) farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.

“The economic security and stability of the State of Hawaii continue to remain extremely vulnerable to threats due to Hawaii’s overdependence on imported oil.…” – State of Hawaii Energy Resources Coordinator Annual Report (January, 2008)

The Hawai‘i Leeward Planning Conference is putting on a Hawai‘i Energy Challenge 2008:

The Hawai’i Energy Challenge 2008 will assemble keen minds to realistically assess the rising cost of imported oil, its import for key sectors of Hawai’i’s economy and impact on island lifestyles as well as a range of forward-thinking, dynamic opportunities to develop sustainable energy and liquid fuels.

November 20 – 21, 2008
The Fairmont Orchid
Kohala Coast, Hawai‘i Island
Featured speaker: Matt Simmons

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Farmers Are In Trouble

3 Comments

John Schilf, Foodland’s produce and meat buyer, visited the Kino‘ole Farmers Market on Saturday. He chatted with each vendor and told us all that Foodland is very interested in supporting local food producers. That gave farmers a big boost.

Of course, the economics need to work for both sides. The rumor going around the farmers market is that two large farmers on the Big Island, and a bunch of small farmers, are thinking of calling it quits. The reasons have to do with rising costs of fertilizer, supplies and transportation, coupled with slowing retail sales. Distributors are calling them up at the last minute saying, “Don’t ship tomorrow.” The farmer has sunk costs, and after a few of these calls they are asking, “Why am I doing this?”

On Friday, I received a press release from the Potash Corporation of America. Workers there just went on strike.

At Hamakua Springs, we are facing the exact same problems as the small farmers. I mentioned to John that we are working on getting a hydroelectric generator online soon, which will cut our $15,000/month electric bill to less than half that. We plan on cooling and consolidating Hamakua Coast farmers’ products and shipping together, so we can lower each others’ freight costs.

A writer from the magazine Conde Nast Traveler came to visit us today. I told her that I was the only person from Hawai‘i to attend the Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October, where I learned that the world oil supply has nearly hit its peak and will soon start to decline.

Because agriculture is so dependent on petroleum, we need to adjust to these new conditions and make ourselves self-sustaining. We need to ensure that our food supply is secure. This is why all farmers, big and small, on all islands, in high and low elevations and on the dry and wet sides of the island need to come together to help one another thrive.

The Hamakua Coast can be the breadbasket of this state. We have adequate sunshine, good soil and more than enough water (our rainfall exceeds 140 inches per year). But farmers are in trouble right now, and the state needs to step up to help farmers.

The state must let Hawai‘i’s people know that the world has changed and that we must learn to sustain ourselves. This is not a luxury. This is about survival.

Food Security, Mauna Kea

What Is Our Plan?

What is our plan for the future?

Recently there have been headlines about building a giant new telescope on Mauna Kea. It’s called the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), and I have written before about some of the unprecedented benefits we may see if the telescope is built here.

I look upon this telescope within the context of food security.

Does that angle surprise you? I’m a farmer, and this is a subject I know about.

I also know that we built our whole society on cheap oil, and assumed it would last forever. It will not, and we need to come to grips with this reality. The history of oil is only 150 years old. It is only a small blip in the history of human kind.

This past October I attended the Peak Oil conference – the only person from Hawai‘i to do so – in Houston. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil is a non-partisan organization whose objective is to bring accurate information to people about the subject of Peak Oil (the point where oil has reached its point of highest production, after which production will decrease at an increasing rate).

As oil production decreases, demand from developing countries will increase at an increasing rate, and that means higher prices for all things associated with oil. It also means that oil will go to the highest bidder worldwide. Others who depend on oil might starve.

It’s important to realize, too, that oil supply and world population stats are tied together. Oil has allowed us to grow more food, and more food equals more people.

So what will happen when there is less oil? Less oil equals less food, and less food means fewer people. This is inevitable.

What will we do, sitting out here in the middle of the Pacific? Will we try to feed all our people? Or will we send some of the people away to look for new lands?

For those of us who are over 60 years old, it’s really not about us. We have lived our lives already. We can stash cans of spam and corned beef for a few years.

It’s about the youngsters now, and future generations. Let’s help them.

We are at a tipping point, and the Thirty-Meter Telescope gives us a real option. It is a much better option than tourism.

What is our plan for the future?

Food Security, Peak Oil

We Are So Fortunate Here on the Big Island

2 Comments

The effects of Peak Oil are real, and they are now! In today’s Boston Herald, Laura Crimaldi wrote this article: People will die this winter because they can’t stay warm.

From her article:

The gas and electric bill crunch is largely caused by the dismal economy, experts say, but oil presents a nightmare all its own.

“This is the first time that I have felt in years that people will die this winter because they can’t stay warm,” said Joe Kennedy, founder of the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. “This is by far the most grim and scary set of storm clouds on the horizon that I have seen in 30 years in trying to address the needs of the poor and elderly, in terms of their heating needs that are coming this winter.”

The skyrocketing cost of oil could saddle consumers with winter heating bills as high as $7,000, according to leading advocates. At the end of trading Friday, oil closed at $139.65 a barrel as a shocking new report from economists at CIBC World Markets predicted that gasoline would hit $7 a gallon by 2010.

We, living on the Big Island, are so fortunate. Sometimes we forget just how fortunate we are.

We were really poor growing up at Waiakea Uka Camp 6. I don’t recall ever having an extra blanket in the house. When I was in elementary school and it got really, really cold (like mid- to high-50 degrees) I remember going into the dresser drawer and throwing all the clothes on top of my blanket. No big deal.

I attended the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October. We all knew the consequence of rising oil prices on the coldest part of the country, as well as that airlines would be going out of business.

I was dressed in my usual outfit – short pants – and a pullover. I did not have the heart to tell the people I met there that I would be wearing shorts throughout the entire winter, and that we would be able to grow food all year long. I could not tell them that we in Hawai‘i have a geothermal resource we are reluctant to use.

The others were going back to their homes, elsewhere in the United States, facing a very serious and even bleak future, while I was going back to the Big Island where we live in an embarrassment of natural resource richness, but I just could not bring myself to tell them.

Those people in Massachusetts who will be freezing this and every winter from here forward would love to have jobs so they and their families can afford their heating bills.

Here in Hawai‘i, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to make wise decisions and help our future generations. If we bring the new telescope here, we have an excellent opportunity to negotiate educational opportunities for our keiki and create jobs for our families. But we must not compromise and we must make sure everything is pono first!

We can do this if we follow the Hawaiian style of having respect for each other.

Hotels are downsizing in Kona and the streets are less crowded. With the TMT, the streets would still be less crowded but our people would have jobs as we transition to a new economy.

Food prices for food brought here from afar will continue to rise in cost.

Are we in danger of starving to death? The answer is a resounding NO!

If the worse happened and ships visit us only intermittently, which is not likely, we on the Big Island can grow what we need to feed ourselves. Piece of cake. We have knowledgeable people at the universities and other government agencies as well as people knowledgeable in the traditional ways. And the Big Island is sparsely populated with lots of room to grow things.

We also have abundant water resources here on the Big Island. An inch of rain falling on one acre is equivalent to 27,000 gallons of water. The average rainfall at Pepe‘ekeo, where we farm, is 140 inches per year. So in an average year of 140 inches of rainfall, 3,780,000 gallons of water falls on each acre. Which means that two billion two hundred sixty eight million gallons of rain fall on our 600 acres in an average year. Most of that runs to rivers and out to the ocean.

We actually need to think of what we can do to help O‘ahu cope.

Here at Hamakua Springs Country Farms we are leasing parts of our lands to other farmers. Our objective is to get sufficient variety and volume to make interisland barge shipments economical and timely.

We need to open up a dependable transportation line for food going to Oahu. We are already shipping container loads of produce this way. We are now refining the process, so it will be dependable during tough times.

So we are not going to starve, or freeze, or overheat. And, if we choose, we can have clean, low carbon footprint jobs and energy production.

What more do we need?

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources

Foreign Oil, Domestic Hope

1 Comment

M. Steven Grant, a friend who is the president of Junior Achievement on O‘ahu, sent me a bloomberg.com article yesterday. I found this very interesting:

Global food prices have spiked 60 percent since the beginning of 2007, sparking riots in more than 30 countries that depend on imported food, including Cameroon and Egypt. The surge in prices threatens to push the number of malnourished people in the world from 860 million to almost 1 billion, according to the World Food Programme in Rome.

Leaders of developing nations including the Philippines, Gambia and El Salvador now say the only way to nourish their people is to grow more food themselves rather than rely on cheap imports. The backlash may sink global trade talks, reduce the almost $1 trillion in annual food trade and lead to the return of high agricultural tariffs and subsidies around the world.

“Trade as the route to food security, that idea is on the ropes,” said Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “If the guy who is selling it doesn’t want to sell it overseas, then the guy at the other end is terribly exposed.”

The main point of this article is that free trade, as it applies to food, does not work for many poor nations.  Some who have depended heavily on free trade are now finding that their people cannot afford to buy food. They are coming to the conclusion that they need to take care of themselves and grow their own food.

Is it imaginable that one day we may not be able to afford oil? If the oil supply becomes short enough, won’t oil-producing countries cut off exports and take care of their own people first?

Wouldn’t we, if we were in their shoes?

Back in January, China had a big freeze. They stopped exporting coal in order to take care of their own people. Isn’t it safe to assume that oil-producing countries would do the same if they needed to?

It is starting to become very clear that we cannot depend on foreign sources of oil for security.

We are fortunate that there is so much going on today that aims to make us energy self-sufficient. Many of these innovations will be demonstrated at our E Malama ‘Aina Festival. Yesterday, Roland Torres of Kama‘aina Backroads, who is working/partnering with us on the festival, sent me this note:

Aloha Richard,
I’m running into Pahoa to meet the guy behind this.  I’m FASCINATED. http://greenpower-hawaii.com

Evidently, these generators come from India and are old technology from the days of Rudolf Diesel. The person selling them says that the small generator can power three houses and the large can do six. He says that in India, people use palm oil to run these generators and that one acre of nuts can power six houses.

Recently I heard of a person using a coil of 2-inch black plastic pipe and plumbing it in for hot water. Sounds really simple and effective.

On the 26th, Roland and I will go to Hakalau to see how hydrogen is made from electricity that is generated from water from a stream. Guy Toyama and the folks from H-2 Technologies actually have a scooter there that runs on hydrogen.

There are several wind options, as well. One spins like a top and it too is meant for small-scale power generation.

There are people doing things that are very hopeful and exciting. Not, no can. Can!!

We CAN free ourselves from foreign oil.

Food Security, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

Selling Electricity

I’m starting to become a policy wonk, which was not in my plan!

Monday I testified at the legislature on behalf of resolution HR 254/HCR 504, which urges the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to rule that all Schedule Q contracts should receive the full “avoided cost” pricing.

It was important to me to testify about this because the PUC is changing its interpretation of how to pay for electricity that is sold to the electric company under “Schedule Q.”

Schedule Q applies to small power producers that generate less than 100 KW. One hundred kilowatts is enough power to continuously run approximately 15 refrigerated containers, each 40 feet long.

Schedule Q always paid “avoided costs” of oil—in other words, the oil costs that would have been used to generate the electricity.  For instance, if HELCO charges 32 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH) for electricity, and 23 cents of that cost was for oil costs, then HELCO would pay small power producers 23 cents per KWH for any electricity they bought.

Now the PUC says that the rate the utility pays should not be tied to “avoided costs” of oil. We worry that this will mean lower returns. If that’s the case, people will not want to undertake alternate energy projects.

Because the “avoided costs” in my example of 23 cents/KWH is much less that the 32 cents/KWH that HELCO charges customers, Schedule Q actually encourages innovation as people seek ways to maximize the use of the electricity generated. I know we ask ourselves everyday: “How else can we use the excess electricity from our hydroelectric project?”

I feel it’s important that Schedule Q continue to be interpreted as-is, because then we are keeping the money for electricity in our own economy. It does not end up making electricity cost more. And why pay foreigners for oil, when you can keep the money here with our own people? And if farmers happen to take advantage of this rate, maybe more people will farm, and then we will have the added benefit of becoming more food secure here in Hawai‘i.”

Electric Bills Stun

Just a couple days ago, the Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald’s front page headline read: “Electric bills stun isle residents; Fuel surcharge adds $76 to typical home’s cost.”

Electricity rates are rising, and food costs and everything else related to oil is also getting more expensive. A couple weeks ago I spoke about food and fuel to the Hilo Bay Rotary Club, and one person there told me that he owns a service station snack shop operation. His electric costs, projected to be $70,000 just a few months ago, are now projected to cost $100,000 annually. He told me that his profit margins are shrinking because he can only raise his sandwich prices so much.

If there is an opportunity for him, and others, to sell electricity under Schedule Q, it will benefit all of us. If not, we will just keep importing more foreign oil to generate the electricity he could have produced.

Recently I looked at a modeling exercise done by Dr. Makena Coffman at the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization. It was titled “Oil Price Shocks and Hawai‘i’s Economy.”

I told her of the Alternate Energy Ag Farm Loan Bill that we are pushing through the legislature. She said she was glad to hear there are “renewable energy for agriculture” bills going forward, because, she said:

“Initiatives like that are exactly what we need to mitigate a drawn-out recession. Oil price shocks historically have short-term effects that dissipate over time, largely because it induces some innovation and behavioral change. Getting local Ag through all this really depends on its ability to decouple the sector from oil as an input.”

Schedule Q plays a crucial part in enabling behavioral change.

Biofuels

More and more I hear that biofuels will play a big part in our energy future. First we need to realize that biofuel production is farming.

Here is a quick and dirty estimation of what a farmer can earn farming biofuel:

Say a barrel of oil costs $100 and each barrel contains 42 gallons; that means each gallon of oil is worth $2.38. Each gallon weighs approximately 8 lbs., so each pound of liquid oil costs 30 cents. If it takes three pounds of palm nuts, jatropha, kukui nuts, macadamia nuts or whatever to make one 1 lb. of oil, then the most the farmers could expect as a return is 10 cents per pound.

No farmer would farm biofuels, or anything else, for 10 cents/lb., or even 20 cents/lb. And the Big Island’s terrain and weather do not lend themselves to big agriculture.

I really don’t think biofuel could even take care of transportation, let alone generate electricity. So we really need to think about relying more on electricity for most of our energy needs.

Here is an analysis that says that when oil hits $162 per barrel we will go into a recession much like the recession of the 70s. http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2007/1003.html.

The exact price that will trigger this to happen is not important. What is important is that when we go into recession because of high oil prices, it will be very difficult to come out again – because demand will be outstripping supply by larger and larger amounts. And oil prices will continuously rise. How we fare will largely depend on how successful we have been in decoupling ourselves from foreign oil.

Schedule Q is one way to incentivize people to decouple from foreign oil.

As I have said before: “The kahuna not going save us.”

Current Affairs, Food Security, Government, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

In Support of Farmers

I testified in person last week at the Hawai‘i State Legislature in favor of Senate Bill 2467 and House Bill 2261. This bill, which I helped draft, helps address important issues of food security, high oil prices and economic development.

Hawai‘i has two very serious issues right now. The first is food security—we are very vulnerable out here in the middle of the ocean and must ensure we can produce enough food for our residents.

The second is our need to get off oil, which we depend upon both for transportation and for generating electricity. Prior to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference in Houston four months ago, little was reported in the press about the consequences of what are tightening oil supplies. (I was the only Hawai‘i resident to attend that conference; the next one is in Sacramento in September). Since the conference, we are increasingly hearing in the media about oil demand exceeding supply.

The answer to this problem is to generate as much electricity as possible from natural sources here in Hawai‘i, and use as much electricity as possible (vs. oil) for transportation.

Here is my testimony in support of SB2467 and HB2261:

Aloha Chairpersons and fellow representatives:

I am in favor of HB 2261—the Hawai‘i Farm Renewable Sustainable Energy Loan Program. This is a bill that accomplishes three things:

1) It addresses our food security issue by encouraging farmers to farm. If farmers make money, they will farm. This bill will help farmers save money by using alternate energy sources as oil costs rise. If the utilities will buy power from farmers in the future, farmers will make money. Further, farmers can qualify for one hundred percent state income tax credits for alternate energy projects.

2) It helps to wean us from dependence on foreign oil. When farmers produce power, that will help us get off foreign oil.

3) It addresses an economic issue of balance of payments. A dollar saved from having to buy foreign oil is a dollar that can revolve in our local economy.

This bill is necessary because energy projects cost money and in many cases, the savings is in the future. In order for farmers starting energy projects to obtain a positive cash flow sooner rather than later, they must have a lower loan payback for doing energy products as compared to present electricity/power costs. A low down payment and long payback period helps to accomplish this.

Alternate energy projects qualify for one hundred percent state income tax benefits though Act 122. While it is true that investors in these projects can qualify for favorable tax treatment, investors require a return on their investment. If investors finance farmers’ alternate energy projects, the project’s value goes to the investors, not the farmers. If that’s the case, farmers will not waste their time starting alternate energy projects in the first place. That is the main reason this bill is so effective.

Aloha,
Richard Ha
President,
Hamakua Springs Country Farms

The reason this bill is so significant is because it positions farmers to sell electricity to the grid. Instead of sending all our money to foreign countries, why not have our own people generating electricity? It keeps our money circulating in our own economy. And it also aids in our efforts to make ourselves food secure—because if farmers can make money, by selling electricity along with their food products, farmers will farm.

I believe this bill will pass “as is,” along with an amendment that expands its scope and does not detract from the original intent. Because it will be incorporated into an existing Department of Agriculture loan program, there will no need to go through the Attorney General’s office for scrutiny. And since there is no request for funding at the present time, it also will not need to go through the House Finance committee or the Senate Ways and Means committee.

On another, related, topic, we are also working with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop alternate energy projects here on the Big Island.

Things are starting to move! I’ll write about those efforts in another post.

What I can tell you now is that it is all very encouraging.

Biofuel, Food Security, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Fundamental Assumptions

Sally Odland, a former geologist and project manager, has worked in mineral exploration, oil & gas exploration, environmental remediation, and exhibit design. She wrote this article below (in italics) for The Day, a newspaper in New London, Connecticut, and here I have interjected some comments as they relate to Hawai‘i.

“Who’d have thought we’d already be nostalgic for $80 oil? Only five years ago, a barrel of crude oil was trading comfortably at $25-$30, where it had for 15 years. Today the same barrel fetches $90-something, and it’s anyone’s bet whether oil will break $100 before Christmas. That’s a 300% price increase in five years, 50% in the last year alone. Credible energy analysts predict $200 to $300 oil in the next few years. No wonder the Feds removed energy costs from the core inflation index!” 

In the last few weeks Matson announced a rate hike for its seagoing cargo arriving from the West Coast; Aloha Airlines announced a rate hike of 5 cents per pound for its air cargo; Young Brothers barge company announced a rate hike for interisland freight, and HELCO, our electric utility, announced a rate hike as well. Yesterday, while participating at the Kino‘ole Street farmers market, I was told, unofficially, that UHS will be increasing its fertilizer prices significantly. We know from past experience that the cost of plastic and other supplies  rises with oil prices, but lags as inventories clear out. This means that Hawai‘i farmers’ production costs will be rising. Imported food costs will also start rising as high oil prices work their way through the system.

Our alternate energy Farm Loan Bill will help to stabilize some of the Hawai‘i farmer’s costs and help them become competitive.

“Our fundamental assumptions about the continuing availability of cheap oil to fuel the American lifestyle are being tested. Last year the topic of peak oil—the idea that the world is approaching a maximum limit to oil production—was virtually taboo in polite company and business journals.

This November, however, the Wall Street Journal ran a Page One piece: “Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production.” If that’s not the definition of peak oil, I’m not sure what is.”

Sunday’s New York Times says that some of the world’s largest oil exporters will no longer export in five to ten years because their own growing economies will use more oil products domestically.

Last week in a landmark speech, Fatih Birol, Head Economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA), was asked the following question, in response to oil-producing countries’ assertions that they would be able to produce an extra 25 million barrels per day. (Note: Until this point, the IEA was notoriously optimistic.)

The question: “Where will the projected extra 25 mb/d oil production come from?”

His response: “If the supply turns out to be less than this, we are in serious trouble. If these projects do not come online, the wheels will fall off our energy system.”

Yes, those were his exact words.

I am the only one from Hawai‘i who attended the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference held in Houston in October. (ASPO is a non-partisan organization with 25 national chapters worldwide). At that time, the mainstream media had largely ignored the world oil supply shortage. Since then, in just the last few weeks, the topic is starting to make headlines in many papers and has become mainstream. All who were at the conference knew how serious the situation was. Now, maybe we can start to deal with the problem.

“For practical purposes, the exact date of “peak” (or more likely “plateau”) oil—whether 2005, 2012 or 2030 as the optimists predict—is immaterial; we have already rolled over to a sellers’ market.

Oil production has been essentially flat—about 85 million barrels a day—for the past two years, despite soaring prices. Strong demand growth in India and China was accommodated only because poorer African and Asian countries were priced out of the market. There is a growing realization that it’s not going to be cheap or easy to grow either capacity or production much beyond the present rates.” 

We know that the world population has increased in parallel to oil production. This is because oil allowed cheap food to be produced. More food equals more people. Now that the oil supply is starting to become short, food will also become short. And people who cannot afford it may not get the food they need.

Here in Hawai‘i we import more than 80 percent of the food we eat. We need to start now in order to produce enough food for all of our people here in Hawai‘i.

“It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict higher energy prices, greater volatility and periodic supply shortfalls on the 1- to 5-year horizon. Spare oil production capacity is sorely lacking, making the system vulnerable to supply and price shock. This specter is reason enough for families, businesses and local governments to start planning—now!—to dramatically reduce their exposure. We need conservation, but we also need emergency preparedness plans for dealing with the very real potential of disruptions to fuel and heating oil delivery.” 

I am starting to meet more and more people who are doing things now to protect themselves against an uncertain future. One person at the farmers market told me he bought his parents five acres so they could become self-sufficient in terms of food production. He was a manager of a fertilizer company!

Hawaiians have always felt that self-sufficiency was no big deal. For them, it is a given that shipping will sooner or later be interrupted. They can remember when their grandparents were self-sufficient. People back then had a few animals, a taro patch and some ulu trees and they traded. To Hawaiians, it is not difficult—it is a lifestyle.

Someone recently asked me if I knew how expensive sheets are. I admitted that I have no idea. He told me that they purchased a few recently because sheets are made from petroleum products and prices will only go higher. My mom complains about how high canned goods and rice prices are. I know this is just the start. Prices will go much higher. It will be a challenging transition period. I worry that the farmers who are least able to pass on price increases may become discouraged and quit farming.

In order to prepare ourselves for a future of uncertainty, Hamakua Springs Country Farms is planning to make biodiesel on a small scale.  In case there are supply disruptions, we don’t want to wait in gas lines.

“In the longer term—the next 20 to 30 years—we will have no choice but to transition to a reduced petroleum economy. There are compelling reasons why it makes sense to start doing that NOW, rather than waiting until we are 100% certain we’ve passed the point of maximum oil output:

Long lead times for large capital investments. It takes at least 15-30 years to bring revolutionary ideas from research and development to widespread usage. It takes similar time to plan, permit and build major infrastructure—like mass transit or new energy plants, LNG terminals, etc.”

(Garbage to energy?)

“Competition for scarce resources will drive up the future price of raw materials: The building blocks of progress—fossil fuel energy, metals, land—are more abundant and cheaper now than they will be in the future.

Resource nationalism means that certain strategic materials may not be available for import—at any price—in the not-too-distant future. We should reconsider the future value of energy, raw materials, farmland and water.”

We should consider what might happen if oil shipments to Hawai‘i are disrupted. It makes one wonder if we should not be producing our electricity from geothermal, wind, solar, hydro, the ocean, etc., all of which are available naturally here in Hawai‘i, and concentrate on using liquid fuels for transportation.

Why should we be relying on liquid fuels for electricity? Liquid fuels are not natural resources. If we do this, we cannot give Hawai‘i’s small businesses the competitive advantage derived from our natural resources. For example, if we relied on geothermal for most of our electricity, wouldn’t we have a competitive advantage over certain products imported from the mainland that rely heavily on oil for manufacturing? To the extent we could export those items we could still have a complex vibrant society as the dollars would circulate in Hawai‘i rather than being sent away.

On our farm, we are shifting direction. We will use hydro and solar to power electric motors, and replace as many internal combustion engines as possible. For example, we will use electric forklifts instead of diesel. We will use biodiesel primarily for our delivery trucks. It is important that the food we produce is transported dependably and on time.

Unconventional oil won’t bail us out: Canadian tar sands and U.S. oil shale resources may “rival Saudi Arabia,” but they can’t scale up production to match. Oil shales will be lucky to produce 100,000 barrels/day—a 7-minute supply at current U.S. consumption rates—by 2020. Doubling tar sands production to 4 million barrels/day by 2020 (if possible) won’t even offset depletion of existing oil production.

Other parts of the country use oil, natural gas, nuclear power and hydro for their electricity generation. In Hawai‘i, we use mostly imported oil. HECO is running TV ads saying that they are starting to use renewable energy. But renewable energy by itself does nothing for our energy costs. We are hoping the utility can figure out how to translate our free Hawaiian energy sources into cheaper electricity.

The impacts of Peak Oil will be hardest felt at the local and state level. The solution lies in revitalizing local manufacturing, farming and business around the emerging reality of constrained fossil fuel supplies. Peak Oil gives us the opportunity to strengthen and rebuild our local economies and to restore forgotten American—and Hawaiian—values such as ingenuity, resourcefulness and community.

Older people I talk to all say how good it was in the old days. Then, the sugar plantation towns all had company stores, theaters, bakeries, pool halls, boxing teams, etc. There were even medical clinics and transportation back and forth. The plantations must have done something right, as the older people have fond memories of those times.

Before that, the Hawaiians had a thriving sustainable society based on the aloha spirit—and it worked very well.

I think it is important to empower individuals. The farm loan alternative energy bill we are introducing into the legislature will empower individual farmers. Instead of relying only on industrial-sized power plants, there must be ways to incentivize individuals, and especially farmers, to generate electricity at strategic times to inject into the electric grid.

Large-scale bioenergy farming may be economical where there is flat ground and where the infrastructure is in place. But for many, taking the direct route by generating electricity and getting a check from the electric utility makes more sense than growing palm trees, fertilizing, harvesting, hauling, squeezing and shipping the juice to refineries and then getting a check. Incentivizing and empowering individuals helps to spread risk. Long supply chains and just-in-time inventories have made us vulnerable.

NASA incorporates multiple redundancies before they send astronauts into space. We, too, should spread our risks.  

Sally Odland currently administers a division of research geophysicists at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia
University. Sally holds advanced degrees in Geology and Business
Administration. Her MBA dissertation, “Strategic Choices for Managing the Transition from Peak Oil to a Reduced Petroleum Economy” is online here. She serves as a volunteer Board Member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA).

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Food Is More Important Than Oil

At the ASPO conference I just attended, it was projected that the peak of the world’s oil production (after which time, demand will exceed supply and prices will rise sharply) may occur in 2011 or so. As do some others, though, I think the peak may have already taken place. This article, entitled Our World Is Finite: The Implications of Resource Limitations, is bleak.

A graph in this article projects a permanent decline in the United States’ gross domestic product because of limitations on oil and natural gas. This assumes it would not, at that point, be “business as usual.”

At the conference, I met Gail Tverberg, who wrote that article. She is a very soft-spoken and thoughtful person. She made this complex subject easy to understand.

I mentioned to her the connection between oil and food and she included it in this morning’s post. She wrote to me yesterday saying that, in some ways, food is more important than oil. RIGHT! No more food, no more people.

We are incredibly fortunate to live in Hawai‘i, where the sun shines all year long. In the old days, the sun provided 100 percent of the energy we needed to grow our food. Cheap oil has camouflaged that. But as oil prices rise, sunshine is still free.

Farmers can use some help in developing alternate energy sources to help them with their work. The Hawai‘i Farm Bureau has included in its legislative package a new Department of Ag farm loan program that gives them this help.

Farmers cannot wait for public utilities to bring down energy costs. I trust individual farmers more to do what they need to do. Think small-scale bio diesel. There are other ways as well—things like windmills, hydroelectric, solar, etc.

The more one farmer can produce, the more vibrant our society will be post-oil decline. We do not want to go back to where everyone has to fish, or farm, to feed their family. It all has to do with how much help a farmer can get from alternate energy to help him with production.

Our challenge now is to see how we can get Hawai‘i farmers to grow more food for our people. As imported food prices rise, I believe that local farming will become more profitable. That, and the proliferation of farmers markets, will make farming profitable.

I am very aware of the Cuba and North Korea models. Both were dependent on oil supplies from the former Soviet Union. When it collapsed, they had to fend for themselves. As a result, North Korea has widespread famine and crop failures, while Cuba has survived quite well. I think that the basic difference is that Cuba has more energy from sunshine than North Korea. Still, I think that we can improve on the Cuba model.

I believe that we should send a hopeful message that although oil is becoming more scarce, and prices of our imported food are rising, there are things that we can do. Such as:

• Landscape with plants that make food. Garden where possible and plant fruit trees, etc. ‘Ulu trees come to mind, because they provide an abundant supply of a tasty starch food.

• I think houses should have waste water lines plumbed in, so people can reuse the water for gardens. Then farmers will produce for people who cannot grow food themselves.

• People need to start thinking about getting to know their neighbors, plan what they can trade, and get closer to their families. Kids can have chores taking care of the plants. This is not a bad thing. We kids in my family fed the chickens before we went to school.

No problem; we can do this.

The Sustainability 2050 project that the state of Hawai‘i is preparing right now will be very valuable. But it needs to include Five Year Plans, because things are moving fast. The sustainability council also needs a strong Ag person on the council.

And food should be the top priority. We need to do an assessment of the number and composition of calories necessary to maintain a population of 1.5 million. Andrew Hashimoto, Dean of the University of Hawai‘i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, mentioned something like 2 billion calories per year. We should compare this number of needed calories to what we are able to provide now—how many calories’ worth of food we grow in Hawai‘i now—from the point of view of human nutrition. This will give us a road map to follow.

I am optimistic that we can successfully achieve these goals and show the rest of the nation the Aloha way.

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a

The New Ahupua‘a

1 Comment

I spoke at the Hawai‘i Island Food Summit this past weekend, which was attended by Hawaiian cultural people, policy makers, university researchers, farmers, ranchers, and others.

The two-day conference asked the question, “How Can Hawai‘i Feed Itself?”

I felt like a small kid in class with his hand raised: “Call me! Call me!”

I sat on one of the panels, and said that our sustainability philosophy has to do with taking a long-term view of things. We are always moving so we’ll be in the proper position for the environment we anticipate five, 10 and 20 years from now.

**

I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land—all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, but maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying, “Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

**

I spoke about where we want to be in five, 10 or 20 years. We know that energy-related costs will be high then. And that we need to provide food for Hawai‘i’s people.

We call our plan “The New Ahupua‘a.”

In old Hawai‘i, the ahupua‘a was a land division that stretched from the uplands to the sea, and it contained the resources necessary to support its human population—from fish and salt to fertile land for farming and, high up, wood for building, as well as much more.

Our “New Ahupua‘a” uses old knowledge along with modern technology to make the best use of our own land system and resources. We will move forward by looking backward.

• We plan to decouple ourselves from fossil fuel costs by developing a hydroelectric plant, which will allow us to grow various crops not normally grown at our location.

• We are moving toward a “village” concept of farming, and starting to include farmers from the area, who grow things we don’t, to farm with us. This way, the people who work on our farm come from the area around our farm. We will help them with food safety, pest control issues and distribution.

• We are developing a farmers market at our property on the highway, where the farmers who work with us can market their products.

• We will utilize as much of our own resources for fertilizer as possible, by developing a system of aquaponics, etc.

This “New Ahupua‘a” is our general framework for the future. It will allow us to produce more food than we can produce by ourselves. It is a safe strategy, in case the worst scenario happens; if it doesn’t, this plan will not hurt us.

It is a simple strategy. And we are committed to it.

**

My assessment of how we came to be here and where we need to be in the future is this: In the beginning, one hundred percent of the energy for food came from the sun. The mastodons ate leaves, the saber tooth tiger ate the mastodon and we ate the tiger and everything else.

The earth’s population was related to the amount of food we could gather or catch. And sometimes the food caught and ate us. So there were only so many of us roaming around.

Then some of us started to use horses and mules to help us grow food. As well as the sun, now animals provided some of the energy for cultivating food. We were able to grow more food, and so there were more of us.

About 150 years ago, we discovered oil. With oil we could utilize millions of horsepower to grow food—and we didn’t even need horses. Oil was plentiful and cheap; only about $3/barrel. We used oil to manufacture fertilizer, chemicals and for packaging and transportation.

Food became very, very plentiful and we started going to supermarkets to harvest and hunt for our food. Hunting for our food at the supermarkets was very good—the food did not eat us and now there are many, many, many of us.

But now we are approaching another change to the status quo—a situation being called “Peak Oil.” That’s when half of all the oil in existence is used up. Half the oil will still be left, but it will be increasingly hard to tap. At some point, the demand for oil—by billions and billions of people who cannot wait to get in their car and drive to McDonalds—will exceed the ability to pump that oil.

Food was cheap in the past because oil was cheap. Five years ago, oil was $30/barrel but now it’s over $80/barrel. Now that oil is becoming more and more expensive, food is also going to become much more expensive.

In the beginning the sun provided a hundred percent of the energy and it was free. Today oil is becoming very expensive, but sun energy is still free.  The wind, the waves, the water—they are all free here in Hawaii. It’s the oil that is expensive.

For Hamakua Springs, the situation is not complicated at all. We need to use an alternate form of energy to help us grow food!

With alternate energy, we should be able to continue growing food—and maybe local food can be grown cheaper than food that is shipped here from far away.

I told the Food Summit attendees that we farmers need to grow plenty of food so that others can do what they do and so we continue to have a vibrant society. If we don’t plan ahead to provide enough food, and as a consequence every family has to return to farming to feed themselves, it would be a much more limited society. People would not be able to pursue the arts, write books, explore space. We would have way fewer choices – maybe only, “What color malo should I wear today?”

**

Some of the speakers from the conference were videotaped and are up on the Kohala Center’s webcast, if you’d like to listen.

There is also an online slideshow of photos from the Food Summit.

There was a feeling going through the Food Summit’s crowd that we were a part of something very important and very special. What I found different about this conference is that people left feeling that this was just the beginning.

We are going to take action.