The argument that food security at present is not possible without fossil fuels hinges on the deep integration of fossil fuels into every stage of modern food production, distribution, and storage. This systematic aspect of energy is usually ignored by the Green/climate change Leftist fanatic lobby.
Modern agriculture is heavily mechanised, and this mechanisation depends on fossil fuels. Tractors, harvesters, and irrigation pumps run on diesel or petrol. For example, a single tractor can consume hundreds of gallons of diesel during planting or harvest season. Without these machines, farming would revert to labour-intensive methods, drastically reducing efficiency and output. In 2023, the U.S. alone produced over 15 billion bushels of corn, much of which is grown on large-scale farms that rely on such equipment. Scaling back to manual labour or animal-powered farming would not only be impractical but would also fail to meet global food demand, which supports a population of over 8 billion people as of 2025.
Beyond machinery, fossil fuels are critical for producing fertilisers and pesticides. The Haber-Bosch process, which synthesises ammonia for nitrogen fertilisers, relies on natural gas as both a feedstock and an energy source. This process is responsible for roughly 50 percent of the world's food production, according to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Without natural gas, fertiliser production would plummet, leading to lower crop yields. For instance, during the 2022 global energy crisis, fertiliser prices spiked due to natural gas shortages, and farmers in places like Sri Lanka faced severe yield drops after a sudden shift to organic farming—a cautionary tale of what happens when fossil fuel-dependent inputs are removed too quickly.
Once food is grown, it needs to be transported, often over long distances. The global food supply chain is a complex web that relies on fossil fuels at every step. Trucks, ships, and planes—all powered by diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel—move food from farms to processing plants, then to markets and consumers. In the U.S., the average food item travels about 1,500 miles before reaching a plate, according to studies from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. For perishable goods like fruits and vegetables, refrigerated transport (also fossil fuel-dependent) is essential to prevent spoilage. Without fossil fuels, this system would collapse, leading to regional food shortages, especially in urban areas far from agricultural regions.
Consider a country like Japan, which imports over 60 percent of its food due to limited arable land. Most of these imports arrive via cargo ships burning bunker fuel, a petroleum derivative. If fossil fuels were eliminated, Japan's food security would be immediately jeopardized, as alternative energy sources like electric ships are not yet scalable or cost-effective for such massive global trade. The same applies to landlocked regions or countries with harsh climates, like Canada, where local food production cannot meet demand year-round.
Food security isn't just about growing and transporting food—it's also about processing and storing it to ensure a stable supply. Many staple foods, like grains, are processed into flour, pasta, or other products using energy-intensive machinery powered by electricity, which is often generated from fossil fuels. In 2023, about 60 percent of global electricity came from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). While renewable energy is growing, it's not yet reliable or widespread enough to fully replace fossil fuels in the energy grid, especially in developing countries where food insecurity is already a pressing issue.
Storage is another critical factor. Cold storage for perishable goods like meat, dairy, and vegetables relies on refrigeration systems that consume significant amounts of electricity. A sudden loss of fossil fuel-generated power would lead to massive food spoilage. For example, during power outages caused by natural disasters, grocery stores often lose thousands of dollars' worth of inventory within hours. On a global scale, this would translate to billions of tons of food waste, exacerbating hunger and instability.
Proponents of renewable energy argue that solar, wind, or biofuels could replace fossil fuels in agriculture. However, these alternatives face significant hurdles. Solar and wind power are intermittent, meaning they can't provide the consistent energy needed for 24/7 farming operations, especially during peak seasons. Battery storage technology, while improving, is not yet advanced enough to store energy at the scale required for industrial agriculture. For instance, a single combine harvester might need the equivalent of several Tesla Powerwalls' worth of energy to operate for a day—far beyond current battery capabilities.
Biofuels, another proposed alternative, compete with food production for land and resources. In 2022, the U.S. used about 40 percent of its corn crop for ethanol production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Diverting more land to biofuels would reduce the amount available for food crops, driving up prices and worsening food insecurity, especially for low-income populations. Moreover, producing biofuels still requires energy inputs often derived from fossil fuels, creating a circular dependency.
Fossil fuels also play a role in maintaining geopolitical stability, which indirectly supports food security. Countries that export food, like the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine, rely on fossil fuels to maintain their agricultural dominance. If these countries were forced to abandon fossil fuels without a viable alternative, their food exports would drop, leading to global shortages. The 2022 Ukraine-Russia conflict already disrupted grain exports, causing food prices to spike worldwide. A broader reduction in fossil fuel use would amplify such disruptions, as countries scramble to secure limited food supplies, potentially leading to conflict and famine.
In developing nations, where food insecurity is already a challenge, the reliance on fossil fuels is even more pronounced. Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, often depend on diesel-powered irrigation pumps to grow crops during dry seasons. Without access to affordable fossil fuels, these farmers would struggle to produce enough food, pushing millions into hunger. The World Bank estimated in 2023 that 700 million people globally were already food insecure—any disruption to fossil fuel supplies would make this crisis far worse.
Transitioning away from fossil fuels is a long-term future goal, but it must be done gradually, over the century, to avoid catastrophic impacts on food security. Current renewable technologies are not yet capable of fully replacing fossil fuels in the food system. For example, electric tractors exist, but their high cost and limited battery life make them impractical for most farmers. In 2024, John Deere introduced an electric tractor prototype, but it's still in the testing phase and not widely available. Similarly, green ammonia production (using renewable energy instead of natural gas) is being researched, but it's not yet commercially viable at scale.
A sudden shift away from fossil fuels would also have economic ripple effects. Farmers already operate on thin margins—higher energy costs or reduced yields due to a lack of fossil fuel inputs would drive many out of business. This would reduce food supply, increase prices, and disproportionately harm the world's poorest populations, who spend a larger share of their income on food.
Food security in 2025 is inextricably tied to fossil fuels, which power the machinery that plants and harvests crops, produce the fertilisers that boost yields, fuel the transportation networks that distribute food, and provide the energy for processing and storage. While renewable energy holds promise for the distant future, it's not yet capable of replacing fossil fuels without causing significant disruptions to the global food system. A premature or poorly planned transition could lead to widespread hunger, economic instability, and geopolitical conflict.
For now, fossil fuels remain a necessary component of feeding the world, and any move away from them must be carefully managed over the century to ensure that food security is not compromised.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/food_security_requires_fossil_fuels.html
"An AT essay by Jeffrey Folks caught my eye this morning, on "The Danger of Going Hungry." He points out that it's not as unlikely as you might think, even though we live in the most agriculturally productive region on earth.
The question is how to maintain and even increase our current food production levels, without compromising quality and variety. To make a long story short, that requires GOP leadership at the national level; and like so many other questions, the answer revolves around energy policy.
Our Food Production Depends On Fossil Fuels
Our productivity is nearly 100% dependent on the availability of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to power everything from diesel trucks and tractors, to grain-drying machinery, to canning plants, to refrigeration. Intensely efficient storage and delivery of foods — fresh, frozen, canned and refrigerated — is also dependent on fossil fuels.
In fact, food production, shipping and refrigeration account for more energy consumption than pretty much anything else in America.
The lunatic left-wing fringe (LLWF) wants us to transition away from fossil fuels entirely, because they think carbon dioxide (CO2) is a bad, bad thing. LLWF governments in Canada and Europe are taxing the production of CO2, because it allegedly causes global warming. People like Al Gore want us to do it here as well.
Many more governments, including America under Obama (and a POC/LGBTQ committee that was operating Biden like a Muppet), spend billions on solar farms, wind farms and battery farms, with components built in China.
And some of the best farmland in the world has been forfeited for these renewable energy farms. The concrete foundation for one wind turbine, for example, consumes one third of an acre.
But China, India and the Third World don't even care about CO2. China and India build massive renewable energy farms for other reasons: they're the largest nations on earth, and have very little oil or natural gas to drill. China's status as "world's biggest producer of renewable energy" is often touted by China and LLWFs in the West, but it's not done out of altruism.
Since Chinese factories build 90% of the world's solar panels, wind turbines and high-capacity ion batteries, and since they control every price and can operate at a loss for decades, China can charge itself whatever's convenient for these components. (It's much the same for military hardware: China charges itself $25.00 for an AK-47 that can be sold in the U.S. for almost $2,000.)
But as I've mentioned elsewhere, between what they're building in their provinces and in the Third World, the Chinese bring one new coal-fired power plant online roughly once every 48 hours. And India is doing much the same.
For America, it would be altruism. We're the world's largest producer of fossil fuels. Even Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia together can't rival our fossil fuel production, because they have very little coal. Petroleum, in addition to providing diesel fuel, lubricants and hydraulic fluid, is also essential in producing most fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
I've heard we can buy electric tractors now; but they're hideously expensive, underpowered, and have an extremely short range before hours of recharging. That would be financial suicide for any corn farmer during a typical harvest. Giving up fossil fuels would either require trillions of dollars we don't have, or an immediate return to Little House On the Prairie, otherwise known as Amish technology.
And Amish technology would require a reduction in U.S. population to roughly 60-90 million. Horse-drawn plows and horse-drawn grain wagons can only feed so many people.
Almost all of those 60-90 million would be producing food, or building those plows and wagons, so forget about building cars. Desk jobs would have to be reserved for the elderly and disabled; if you can walk more than a mile, you can do it weeding a farmer's field. We'd be the most prosperous country in the Third World.
This would directly oppose other LLWF imperatives: a mostly information and services economy, open borders and unlimited immigration. Internal inconsistency is the hobgoblin of small left-wing minds. Imperative "A" always contradicts Imperative "B," and both contradict Imperatives "C" and "D."
In fact, we'd have to shut off immigration completely and adopt the unthinkable policy China has imposed for roughly 80 years: one child per family, with any additional pregnancies aborted, and a constitutional amendment to match.
The alternative — import enough food for the other 250 million, plus any new illegal immigrants, every year until the sun burns out — is equally unthinkable, politically and economically.
"Green Energy": A Lunatic Left-Wing Fringe Solution
Regional issues can also arise, primarily due to left-wing politics in some of our most productive agricultural regions. Until around 1970, California and Oregon produced more food than any four of the other states combined.
But left-wing political leaders in California demolished dams and cut off irrigation water to save a tiny species of fish. Construction of new coal-fired and nuclear power plants hasn't been approved by their state EPA in roughly half a century. Plants powered by natural gas have been slow-walked, and apparently will be cast aside as well.
Oregon, Washington, and every other state that's so Blue it's ultraviolet did much the same. All these states prefer wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and tidal energy. So they're vulnerable to rolling blackouts and brownouts, even in the best of times.
Michael Shellenberger, an award-winning somewhat left-wing environmentalist, has fully explained why the LLWF solution is pure folly, in chemical terms. Ion batteries, solar panels and wind turbines contain heavy metals: cadmium, antimony and lead.
Cadmium causes cancer. All three are toxic. Letting them into our groundwater is pure suicide.
Like any other cheap, Made-in-China electric appliance, solar panels and wind turbines have a service life of 20 years or less. Ion batteries are even worse: 4-5 years. At some point, either on the way to a landfill or after they get there, they get crushed. Rainwater would seep into them and leach out the heavy metals into the groundwater.
Here we see LLWF Imperative "A" contradicting Imperative "B" again. Do we want zero carbon emissions, or clean water for ourselves, our livestock and our crops? The latter is non-negotiable.
They have to be recycled, which currently costs more than buying them in the first place. Originally, solar panel designs included a lot of silver; they were expensive, but recovering silver offset the cost of recycling.
They were redesigned to be much cheaper, eliminating almost all the silver, because LLWFs wanted everybody to be able to afford them. So now nobody can afford to recycle them. They're mostly toxic waste.
Smart policy would have forced the installer to deposit the cost of recycling when they were first purchased. But the LLWFs thought that installing millions of them, as quickly as possible, was far more important than planning (and preparing financially) for what we'll do with them 20 years from now, when they burn out.
Internal inconsistency ... again.
As Shellenberger observed, within 20-30 years we're going to be facing a disposal crisis with all these burned-out "green energy" components.
Most homeowners who have solar panels just wanted free energy. Being "green" about it is usually just virtue signaling; like the Chinese, they're more cheapskate than "green."
The cheapskate factor will surface whenever Shellenberger's disposal crisis arises. Rather than pay for recycling, cheapskate homeowners will be dumping burned-out solar panels in ditches, along country roads in the middle of the night, by the millions.
Landowners along those country roads will be stuck with the recycling costs, unless they dump them along some other country road.
A Sensible Republican Solution
In this case, an ounce of prevention is worth 10,000 tons of cure. A GOP president, with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, can impose an annual fee on every solar panel, wind turbine and ion battery in America, whether it's installed or in a warehouse.
It has to pro-rate the projected cost of recycling against the projected remaining service life. This money must be deposited into a separate national trust fund, much like Social Security, to be doled out whenever owners who paid fees into the fund are removing their burned-out units.
The money gets doled out directly to the recycler. Then the owners are free to install new units and pay fees again, or switch back to traditional, non-renewable energy.
Just like every other sensible Republican initiative, Democrats will fight it tooth and nail — and their propaganda bureaus, formerly known as "news media," will be screaming bloody murder.
We'll see focus stories every night on MSNBC and CNN, showing some working-class family that was barely able to afford installing solar panels 19 years ago, with some (left-wing) government subsidy, and is now forced to pay again in advance to recycle them, with no subsidy.
But it has to be done, in the next four years. And we need to achieve energy independence again through fossil fuel production, as we did during Trump's first term, but lost during the POC/LGBTQ Muppeteer committee's term.
Otherwise we face Shellenberger's disposal crisis, or one of the other unthinkable choices outlined in the first half of this essay. My refinement of Jeffrey Folk's observations is that food security requires sensible energy policy, which in turn requires GOP leadership in Washington."