farming in ireland when oil goes over 100 dollars a barrel

leg wax

how many people on here think they will be able to make a living off the land when oil starts to rocket up in price,and stays up due to depleating reserves.how long do you see oil lasting under 100 dollars. do you think milk will be viable ,with quotas gone,everything that the dairy needs to survive needs oil to make it, tranport it and process it. do you think ireland can compete with other contries that goverments dont tax oil as high as ours, how many dairy farmers will their be left by 2020 in this country.

5live

Read a few books on this over last few years. We are probably at or past peak oil supply. All the easy oil gone or running low. Have to go further out to sea or to arctic circle for more. They are investigating gasses stored in shales i think for use as natural gas. Wave power has massive potential for power as it fluctuates less than wind. So industry and homes should be relatively ok. main problem as i see it is individual transport to work and for spreading fert and for harvest. liquid fuels still needed for these. Or a lot of batteries! More efficient engines and new technologies will be a big help. reminds me of leaving cert irish poem. Cad a deanamhamid feasta gan adhmaid, to deireadh no coillte ar lar. Or as we would say, what will we do without wood, the end of the forest is near. Well, we are still here and doing ok:)

snowman707

5live wrote: »

Cad a deanamhamid feasta gan adhmaid, )

That's exactly what my son asked me when keith wood retired from Munster


I think we will just have to become more efficient, use other sources of energy for what we can, and only use oil where needed, Enough oil to last for hundreds of years has been wasted used unwisely over the last few decades, simply because it was the cheapest and easiest option.

Suckler

Ethanol is one possibility. Brazil use it extensively. It can be extracted from sugar cane or sugar beet. I read it in some farming mag / journal, cant recall. This will lead to other issues such as contaminants from over fertilising etc. Thats another discussion. Ethanol will only be a fuel, Lubricant oil is another requirment.

5live

And god only knows what the translation of that pseudo irish is but in the 400 odd years since it was written technology has moved on. But leg wax has a point about our industrys dependence on the old fossil fuels. (Apologies for going all gormly on this) In an era of little fertiliser and huge transport costs can we survive. Many suffered last year and that was just one year. Quiet a few farmers around me are still in debt from last year but most seem more concerned about what new regulations are coming down the line and will we have the time to finish paying for the old ones first. Its not just agriculture with its head in the sand. The whole of the 'economy' will pop when oil stays over 100 or 150 a barrel for a few years

djmc

It might not be that bad for farmers
Growing oil seed rape for bio diesel would be more profitable that would make food crops scarce driveing up food prices.
when oil prices go up so will the price of energy crops

haybob

We (the Country) have our chance now, solar panels on the top of every slatted house in the country a small wind turbine on every farm no hope the green would think of that.

It will be different I’d imagine especially if large amounts of land are taken up grown fuel producing crops the price of food will increase as they would be less land dedicated to cattle I’d also suggest a return to cereal crops, we could have compulsory tillage again we will as a nation become more self sufficient.

I’d also speculate on various imports being rationed to conserve fuel and we would have to produce our own again the best example being sugar beet.

So where will the Irish Farmer be in 2020, first of all they will be alive, will it be cost effective for Europe to import South American beef, will South American beef be there in 2020 or will it be replaced with bio diesel crops, if one if one accepts the concept of peak oil and dwindling resources (I do) the two viable alternative to the extraction of natural resources seem to be production of out own or harvesting different ones all requiring land.

I’d say the only certainty here is that as fuel prices increase so will food prices.

demented ramblings over

Neddyusa

haybob wrote: »

I’d say the only certainty here is that as fuel prices increase so will food prices.


They will surely and this will be much better news for Irish livestock farmers than for our international competitors.
Our input costs (for grass) will not rise by as much as input costs in continental countries where beef and dairying especially are much more dependant on oil thirsty grain and maize growing.
Things might or might not be so good for the tillage farmers - depending on how high grain price goes relative to the oil price...

johnstown

I think oil might well be peaking. However, mankind always finds a way around these things, i.e. alternative sources.

Extracting gas from shale as mentioned above is seemingly becoming a very big thing in America and the technology is starting to spread around the world. I think I read that they reckon it alone could supply 100 year of energy needs to the world. It is also reckoned the Canadian tar sands could hold more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia ever did (although more expensive to extract).

Bottom line, farming will produce a return, and on average the return will be slightly below average, try and stay ahead of the average. People are always going to have to eat and drink. So if its going to cost an Irish farmer X to produce, its going to cost foreign farmers something similar.

Birdnuts

Biofuels that displace food crops are a con and will lead to higher food prices for the poor plus more destruction of natural habitats like Rainforest and Savannah's around the world:(

reilig

As farmers, our aim is to get higher food prices. So a lot of farmers will support the growing of biofuels. I suppose one could argue that if farmers got better financial support from CAP then we would have no need to grow biofuels for financial gain - but that's a whole different argument. At the end of the day, if farmers can make more money by growing biofuels than food, then they willl do it. After all, we are trying to run a business. Maybe more farmers should be encouraged to grow crops like oil seed rape where the oil can be extracted and the cake used as an animal feed.

Birdnuts wrote: »

Biofuels that displace food crops are a con and will lead to higher food prices for the poor plus more destruction of natural habitats like Rainforest and Savannah's around the world:(

5live

There is a lot of technology out there now to help reduce out carbon footprint. Smart metering could be huge and allow turbines and solar technology to be metered on farm. The problem is going to be fertiliser costs like 2 years ago. A small surge in prices and NPK costs rocket for the next years crop. Will we be unable to buy fert like 2 years ago or pay for it like last year?

Birdnuts

reilig wrote: »

As farmers, our aim is to get higher food prices. So a lot of farmers will support the growing of biofuels. I suppose one could argue that if farmers got better financial support from CAP then we would have no need to grow biofuels for financial gain - but that's a whole different argument. At the end of the day, if farmers can make more money by growing biofuels than food, then they willl do it. After all, we are trying to run a business. Maybe more farmers should be encouraged to grow crops like oil seed rape where the oil can be extracted and the cake used as an animal feed.

I was referring more to the already dire situation in third world countries across Asia and Africa

Indubitable

djmc wrote: »

It might not be that bad for farmers
Growing oil seed rape for bio diesel would be more profitable that would make food crops scarce driveing up food prices.

That sounds very bad for farmers in beef production. The price of meal would be insane.

bogman_bass

it would be fantastic for Irish beef farmers since in times of high meal prices, grass production becomrs more and more profitable

djmc

bogman_bass wrote: »

it would be fantastic for Irish beef farmers since in times of high meal prices, grass production becomrs more and more profitable

Agreed plus countrys on grain based beef production will have to get higher
beef price or they will switch to biofuels and beef will get scarce leading to better beef price.
Supply and demand people will always need to eat
Bio diesel is the only thing tractors can run on in the near future as I beleve
electric and hydrogen tractors will be a long way away yet.

JohnBoy

The concept of peak oil is both a reality and a myth.

I would define peak oil as the point where new oil discovery drops below rate of consumption.

once that occurs then we're supposedly all screwed.

however, once oil gets more expensive lots of things happen.

1) previously unviable oils become viable, like the canadian tar sands, or deep sea drilling
2) we become more efficient, there's nothing like price to drive improvements.
3) we stop using it for so many things, ie natural materials become more popular than plastics again, (also good for sheep farmers)
4) we develop and advance alternatives


I firmly believe that the oil price spike of a few years back had very little to do with supply and demand and an awful lot to do with commodities trading.


in summary, we'll adapt, we always do.