How Do We Make Our Farms Sustainable?
Unless you use draft horses, organic farming is NO MORE SUSTAINABLE than conventional farming in its use of our oil reserves! As the cost of oil goes up during our lifetimes, so does the cost of farming conventionally AND organically. When we run out of oil, conventional farming with chemical fertilizer AND organic farming with diesel tractors will both be things of the past. The only type of food production whose cost will not go up when oil prices rise is aquaponic food production powered by renewable energy sources. This is more completely explained in the pages that follow this one; BioGas on the Farm, and Alternate Energy On The Farm.
Aquaponics energy usage is from 70% to 92% LESS than a conventional OR organic farm (both of which use fuel and/or petrochemical-intensive fertilizers). All energy used is electrical, so alternate energy systems such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric can be used to power this farm 100%. This alternate energy can be produced locally instead of needing to be shipped in from oil-refining countries, which may be great distances away from the end-user (this shipping over great distances requires still MORE petrochemical energy).
The aquaponics farm of the future won’t need oil! Sooner or later we will be forced to get over our addiction to using fossil fuels for farming; the mover here will be increasing fuel costs and associated energy costs of producing chemical fertilizers. There are no alternate-energy options to substitute for diesel tractors and equipment except draft horses, which are not feasible on the scale at which modern food production systems need to operate. Aquaponics systems can be run entirely using alternate energy, which makes them the only food production systems that don’t require direct oil and oil-derived inputs.
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