I usually pass up attending agricultural conferences in order to attend to the endless tasks on the farm. While I feel guilty for not reseeding the arugula this past weekend, I chose to attend the 4^th Homegrown Food Retreat. I must admit, one of the main reasons I took in the conference was to enjoy the salad provided by Adobe House Farm (25 pounds worth!) Though I didn’t receive the standing ovation I had envisioned for the salad, one speaker in particular made up for the lost time on the farm. Janine Fitzgerald (sociology professor and life-long farmer) was inspiring, informative, funny, and energetic. She spoke of peak oil production and its relation to agriculture. Most energy analysts agree that we are currently at peak oil and even the most optimistic estimations are that peak production will occur by 2020. Whether or not we are at peak oil now does not seem important when considering the fact that our current form of agriculture (and way of life) depends on a finite resource. Deny it all we want, at some point we will run out of oil in the near future (estimations are between 150-300 years). Some predictions involve the end of globalization and widespread anarchy. My husband and I laugh that if oil shortages occur during our lifetime we may need to figure out a way to defend the farm!

I choose to believe in an optimistic post peak oil society and that we will get there with good science, foresight, and preparation. Ideally, increasing scarcity and rising prices will promote renewable energy long before we run out of oil. This begs the question: how will we be feeding ourselves in the future considering about 10% of the energy in the United States is used by the food industry? My vision includes many more farmers doing things we do at Adobe House Farm, like heating greenhouses with solar panels, composting instead of applying synthetic fertilizers, and using our bodies instead of tractors (who needs the gym?).The biggest guzzler of fossil fuels in modern agriculture is the Haber-Bosch process that produces synthetic fertilizers. A little known fact is that about half the protein within humans is made of nitrogen that was fixed by this process (the other half was fixed the old fashioned way by bacteria). It is said that synthetic fertilizers feed our planets growing population and prevent mass starvation. Synthetic fertilizers are also responsible for eutrophication or “dead zones” in our waterways and contamination of our drinking water. As Ben Harper sings, “I believe in a better way.” I believe we are smart. I also believe that though science is the reason we are in this situation, it is also the only thing that will get us out of it.

Janine Fitzgerald closed her speech with Wendell Berry’s poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” I felt like my life had come full circle; it was the poem that I chose to read at my high school graduation. Check the poem out if you’ve never read it. Wendell Berry also said, “only when you have an understanding of limits is elegance possible and elegance is limitlessly interesting.” That is a future I want to believe in.