What happens when oil is too expensive to transport food around the world?

To avoid famine and food conflicts‚ we need to plan to re-localise our food economy. This map is part of that process – showing the food requirement ’footprints’ around settlements in SW England.

Use the pan and zoom controls to view your chosen area‚ and read more about how Geofutures is mapping our food future below.

The UK’s future food security depends upon domestic farmers‚ the market network and some clever use of data. Planning for our food future needs to start now.

In December 2008, Geofutures founder Mark Thurstain-Goodwin told the National Food Markets Conference in Blackpool that the UK’s food security is more precarious now than before we faced the WW2 U-boat blockade.

We are heavily dependent on the global food economy. When oil supplies diminish and prices inevitably rise in future‚ we will no longer be able to afford to import our foods. The answer must lie in re-localising our production of food‚ fibre and fuel‚ but as Mark argues‚ there are ways in which we can use data to hugely improve how efficiently this is done. The map here is part of that analysis.

Peak Oil and food security

Many argue that Peak Oil (the time when extraction from the world’s oilfields hits its physical maximum‚ beyond which it can only diminish with corresponding increases in price) is imminent‚ or even past. The time when oil prices start to affect food supplies doesn’t begin when oil runs out completely‚ but long before that‚ when oil-fuelled global distribution becomes increasingly uneconomic.

This is a central concern of the Transition Network‚ the fast-growing movement enabling communities to plan for increasing their resilience for a post-oil economy now‚ including re-localising food production.

Calculating food footprints

A food footprint is only a very basic representation of the land required around a town to feed its population‚ based on the calculation below.

The map above illustrates circles around communities with a population of over 800, and we can view them as ‘overlapping’ i.e. the absolute size of the land required by that community irrespective of whether this overlaps another footprint, or ‘non-overlapping’ i.e. a footprint size reflecting the size a footprint needs to be according to availability of ’free’ land not occupied by another footprint. In both cases, the size of the circles reflects land which is currently occupied by farmland and gardens‚ i.e. technically available for food production.

The map also allows the footprints of the major towns in the region (Bournemouth, Bristol, Cheltenham, Exeter, Gloucester, Plymouth, Poole and Swindon) to be switched on and off to see the demand that these centres create, although the non-overlapping footprint sizes always reflect the footprint of major towns even when they are not visualised.

Food footprints illustrate simply‚ but powerfully‚ how large an area is needed to fulfil the basic needs of an urban population. It’s a good example of the use of geographic information (GI) science – putting data onto a computerised map‚ in order to create a picture of what’s going on in a way anyone can understand – in which Mark’s company Geofutures specialises.

Can the UK feed itself?

Permaculture expert Simon Fairlie performed a series of calculations on the potential for land to produce enough food‚ fibre and fuel under a series of agricultural regimes. Taking one which Fairlie calls ’Livestock Permaculture’‚ 1 hectare of combined agricultural and forestry land supplies 4.4 people.

Crudely on this basis‚ the whole UK landmass could feed 98 million people – many more than our current population of about 61m – but of course the population is not evenly distributed‚ nor is all land equally productive.

A supporter of the Transition movement‚ for these reasons Mark nonetheless warns against individual communities becoming insular as they plan to re-localise. They may have plenty of surrounding productive land‚ but if it falls within the food footprint of a larger settlement‚ there will be competition for its resources.

How do we plan for the food future?

So how do we plan for a future without cheap food imports‚ without oil-fuelled central distribution depots? Mark argues that the data and technology we have available now can point the way to a domestic food economy in which food can still be moved from areas of lower population to the nearest areas of food deficit‚ having been produced in those areas which best suit farming of grain‚ fruit‚ dairy or vegetables.

GI maps and analysis show us where the population hotspots are‚ and where certain farming types predominate. They also highlight additional future issues for the mix‚ like areas at risk from sea level rise and changes in rainfall and temperature.

Advanced spatial analysis can provide the key to planning how centres of agricultural production can supply their regional hinterlands‚ how the footprint of London and the home counties can co-exist with the footprints of the towns it encompasses‚ and how we can avoid serious food shortages in future.

The scale of a study of this kind and the investment required would not be large – especially compared with the risk of heading into a food crisis blindfold – and Geofutures is seeking research partners and funding to continue this work.

For more information about the Geofutures food footprint analysis, or how GI can help you achieve spatial insight in this or another field, please contact us.

More information about the Transition Network can be found here.