We all know that oil is not renewable and that it is polluting our environment. As we analyze the oil markets daily, it is our conviction that non-OPEC countries like the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Indonesia and Norway are "over the top” in their oil production, and that slowly but surely their oil production will continue to decrease. This is the "Peak Oil” theory: more than half the reserves in these countries are gone and whatever effort is made or technology is deployed, less and less oil will be pumped up. On the other hand, we believe that OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so on, still have ample reserves and that they will reinforce their grip on the oil markets. So the big question is: what is the clean energy of the future? Is it energy from one source or will it be a combination of several energy sources? And which energy will be used less and less? I discuss this theme with many commodity experts and opinions are as diverse as there are commodities on Mother Earth.

Renewable energy from the first generation is basically vegetable oil from plants growing on agricultural land. However, with agricultural land plateauing in our world and the global population increasing from 7 to 9 billion people in the coming 30 years, agricultural land should be used to grow food for human beings and livestock, and not for producing gasoline or diesel for our cars. This is because less land will be available for agriculture. Only a country like Brazil, where there is still a lot of barren land that can be converted into fertile agricultural land, is a good exception. If a country has vast amounts of land, sugarcane production to make ethanol and sugar simultaneously can coexist very well. However, most countries do not have this luxury and shrinking agricultural land due to urbani­zation is the norm in our world. From 1950 to today the available cropland per person in our world has shrunk from 0.5 to 0.2 hectares. Are we heading towards "Peak Food”?

Today, the world’s farmers feed 7 billion people. Over the next 50 years, farmers will have to grow more food than has been produced in the previous 10 000 years combined. Will they be able to do it? Not without help. If farmers could just plant more acreage, there would not be a problem. In this book I show how it can be done with research, and systems like intercropping, double cropping, and ferti­lizing marginal land. Figure 1.9 shows the decline in the amount of arable land per person on Mother Earth.

Blame erosion, desertification, or urban development. Mother Nature will continue to mete out natural disasters — and the world’s population will continue to grow relentlessly. So get ahead of the curve. Invest in companies that invest in agricultural research and make agriculture more efficient.

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