Living Better with Less Oil

Higher transportation costs are driving up the costs of food. Food prices will continue rising. Increasing fuel costs are making it costlier to carry food products to the super market. There is no end in sight.

Supermarket food will soon be unaffordable to low wage workers. They will have no choice except to bicycle to small farms where foods are much cheaper. They will bring back what ever is necessary to survive.

A shrinking economy due to high fuel costs will put millions of people out of work. After they deplete their unemployment benefits, they will need money to survive. A financially broken government will not be able to support them. The only way that survival would be possible is by finding work on a small farm, there they would receive food and housing.

A small farm can prosper even if fuel costs are high. But it must have no expenses for farm machinery or oil based chemicals. Low labor costs will produce a harvest of crops that will be marketable at a profit. The small towns that surround the farm will reduce transportation costs to almost nothing. A horse drawn wagon is all a farmer needs for a local delivery.

The era of the large farm is coming to an end.
They survived only because of cheap fuel. Soon their tractors and the rest of their farm machinery will be idle.
The high costs of insecticides, weed killers and fertilizers will help drive them out of business. Their land will be parcelled off and sold to business people who want to invest in small farms.

Houses in the suburbs will become worthless. Their distance from urban jobs will make them too expensive to live in. The land surrounding the big cities will be turned into farmland. The highways will be crowded with horse drawn wagons transporting food to the shopping stalls scattered all over the city.

Life will not come to an end in the nation; it might just be a great beginning. Millions of small towns and farms will become the foundation of our economy. Local newspapers will return with relevant news to small communities. The parasitical cultures that now exist will be gone. Unemployment and homelessness will be a thing of the past.

All these events will come about naturally. The scarcity of oil is producing a new way of life. It would be a waste of our mental and physical facilities to try to change our destiny. Future generations will look back and be glad the era of cheap energy finally came to an end.
melpol