Oil and food

I'm currently researching the links between fossil fuels and farming, spurred on to a large extent by the excellent BBC documentary A Farm for the Future (available in 5 bits on Youtube). A couple of things to read on this subject:

What will we eat as the oil runs out was the November 2007 lecture given by Richard Heinberg. A cogent analysis of what oil has to do with food production, and what factors are driving food prices and shortages. Grim but necessary reading.

Heinberg is no stranger to the Post Carbon Institute, whose epic read The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a Post Carbon Food System says it all in a forward-looking way.

And Jonathan Wright, of Thompson Small Farm, near Calgary, is waving the flag for farming sustainability in a series of postings for New Resilient.

The IAASTD's awesome 660 page report on world farming, Agriculture at a Crossroads (don't worry, the key findings are summed up at the beginning).