You can get hydrocarbons anywhere, petroleum is convenient, but certainly not required.
The raw material of fertilizer is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Methane is none of those - it's just a carrier for nitrogen.
Same with pesticides, they are organic molecules so need hydrocarbons, but you can use any hydrocarbon, from trees, grass, whatever. Oil is cheap, so they use it, but it would not be a big problem if you had to use something else.
95% of the world'a food supply is dependent on petrochemical based inputs of which we are starting to see a decline in availability.
If you can show me ANY process to turn trees into pesticides as you suggest in any kind of energy efficient manner I'm open to revising my opinion, and would probably change careers to focus on that industry as I think it'd be a world changer. However I think you are very wide of the mark on the science in making such a suggestion.
Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification to turn the tree into useful feedstock gases, then use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process to turn those gases into the exact same mixed hydrocarbons found in petroleum.
I have been respectful of your comments in this thread so please don't see me as being overly harsh, but you are saying things that are nonsensical.
We don't love hydrocarbons because of what they are but because the energy we get from them exceeds the energy necessary to produce them so they're a net source of energy, and not by a little - oil is something like 100:1 EROEI positive. Nothing comes close in terms of lifecycle EROEI.
Talk about moving the goal posts.
Look, of course oil is used for energy, no one disputes that. The method of making synthetic hydrocarbons is not as efficient as just finding it in the ground. But it is a net positive for energy, and in a world where it's hard to find oil it would work just fine - especially if all you needed was pesticides and other organic chemicals.
If we run out of energy we are going to be in much bigger trouble than pesticides - but we won't run out of energy, because if we come close then public sentiment will shift and nuclear power will be OK again - and we have at least 10,000 years worth of that - at a minimum.
This article is about population, and your claim (I think), is that we can't actually sustain as much population as we think because we're going to run out of oil AKA energy. Except you are wrong about that, just like you were wrong about "If you can show me ANY process to turn trees into pesticides" - which I did.
We have many many options for energy besides oil, and we can sustain our population just fine.
Oil is a fundamental part of our food making process. Something that's 1x EROEI positive is not remotely analogous to oil at 100x. Oil is used throughout the entire process from pesticides to mechanical farming instruments to shipping. Any small change in pice, availability or EROEI of alternatives affect all elements of the chain. We currently add about 10 calories of oil per calorie of food produced. This is unsustainable. Oil production is at or near peak flow rates. This is widely understood by folks in the industry, of which I was once one. Oil's relationship to food and population is complex and multifaceted but it is absolutely tied to it at this point.
This is a problem both in terms of oil as a feedstock and as an energy source. You cannot separate these out.
I really am interested what this mythical new energy source is you have in mind. I suspect you understand properly neither the science behind nuclear nor solar which also have significant full life cycle EROEI issues and are dependent on other resource inputs.
Further NPK inputs to agriculture are also incredibly energy intensive - go checkout some pictures of phosphorous mining to get an idea. The original point I was making was that the Green revolution and other solutions of the past bought us temporary respite. Exponential curves don't continue forever in the real world.
Of course you can. They are completely independent of each other.
> I really am interested what this mythical new energy source is you have in mind. I suspect you understand properly neither the science behind nuclear nor solar which also have significant full life cycle EROEI issues and are dependent on other resource inputs.
Nuclear. I'm not a big fan of solar - the EROEI is too low, and it requires too many resources to make enough of it, and too much land area.
I am well aware of how much energy it takes to grow food, and make fertilizer. But energy is fungible - it makes no different how you get it, as long as you get it.
You keep saying that oil is 100x, but that is no longer true. Oil is now 35 or lower. New nuclear reactors beat oil now. Older ones don't but are quite close.
You seem obsessed with the need for oil, that oil is somehow special. But oil is just another source of energy. It can be easily eliminated (assuming another source of energy is available).