Category Archives: Farming & Ranching

If you relocate to an area where crops can be grown with rainfall rather than irrigation, you may be able to buy food, but it would be good to plant fruit and nut trees, and grow whatever else you can in your yard, community garden, or renting half an acre from a nearby farm if it can be done.

Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence

Posted on April 7, 2026 by

This is my book review of David Perlmutter’s (2013) Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers. At the New York Times, this book was the #1 best seller in the Dining list and #9 … Continue reading →

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Aside

Preface. After seeing the film “The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil” in 2006, I thought about how those lessons might apply to California, which grows about a third of U.S. food.  Much of what follows in the … Continue reading →

Posted on May 28, 2025 by

Book review of “Agrarian Dreams”

Posted on September 9, 2022 by

Preface. This is a book review of Guthman’s “Agrarian Dreams.  The Paradox of Organic Farming in California”.  Since world oil production likely peaked in 2018, and renewables can’t replace fossil fuels (read my books), there’s no choice but to go … Continue reading →

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States do not evolve from Bands to Tribes to Chiefdoms to States

Posted on May 15, 2022 by

Preface.  The bulk of this book is dedicated to showing why the idea of the evolution from tribes to states is false. If the authors are correct, then the flexibility of societies to invent ways of living with more freedom … Continue reading →

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How past societies avoided the Agricultural trap

Posted on May 9, 2022 by

Preface.  There’s a great deal of evidence that past tribes did grow food but deliberately chose not to make that the entirety of the way they lived, preferring a more seasonal styles of life with hunting and gathering, and governance … Continue reading →

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Can we eat enough fried food for biodiesel to keep trucks running?

Posted on April 15, 2022 by

Fatberg from London sewer If the U.S. can’t make enough biodiesel from plants, then the question becomes: Can we step up our fast-food game? Can we eat more French fries?  Biodiesel is already made from used cooking oil (11.5% of … Continue reading →

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Is there a long emergency plan for peak oil?

Posted on February 8, 2022 by

  Source: A year on the midieval farm https://www.medievalists.net/2014/06/year-medieval-farm/ Ever since I learned about peak oil in 2000 after reading my grandfather Pettijohn’s memoir (Pettijohn 1984), I’ve wondered what The Plan To Cope with Oil Decline and eventual disappearance was. … Continue reading →

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Create a free food forest

Posted on December 17, 2021 by

Preface. Atlanta has planted 7 acres of land with edible and medicinal plants. Why can’t your city do the same? More than 70 other cities have. All towns have emergency plans. And after a natural disaster or oil shortage, when … Continue reading →

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Reducing pesticides with crop diversity

Posted on October 29, 2021 by

Preface. Pesticides are the main cause of the insect apocalypse, which reverberates up the food chain, leading to loss of biodiversity and extinction. And pesticides are made out of oil, which probably peaked globally in 2018, and pesticides only last … Continue reading →

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The cost of farming

Posted on September 14, 2021 by

Preface. One of the best ways to survive the coming energy crisis and reduce biodiversity loss, soil erosion and toxic chemicals is to start an organic farm. Today, that’s hard to pull off unless you have a 9 to 5 … Continue reading →

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