KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – What will our world look like in 2040? Will we zip around in George Jetson spaceships? Could the Internet be encoded into our DNA? What about a vacation to another planet?

Maybe that’s bold thinking, but it’s fun to dream about the future. Now two University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture researchers are being recognized for their vision of our world in 30 years. Specifically they want to find ways to produce our food supply without expending too much energy and the heavy use of fossil fuels.
 
Dr. Daniel De La Torre Ugarte and Dr. Chad Hellwinckel of the Department of Agricultural Economics recently were awarded by the Farm Foundation in its 30-Year Challenge Policy competition. The two UTIA researchers won first place in the Global Energy Security category for their paper titled “Peak Oil and the Necessity of Transitioning to Regenerative Agriculture.”
 
The full title of the Farm Foundation competition report is “The 30-Year Challenge: Agriculture’s Strategic Role in Feeding and Fueling a Growing World.” The researchers received $2500, and Dr. Hellwinckel accepted the award this week at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.
 
“I’m so glad we were selected,” Dr. Hellwinckel says. “The Farm Foundation is an organization that really addresses how we will meet the challenges of the future.”
 
“The Farm Foundation is one of the premier agricultural institutes in the United States,” says Dr. De La Torre Ugarte. “They highlight ideas, and validate the importance of those ideas.”
                                   
The researchers believe the earth’s supply of oil will diminish in coming decades, and agriculture may be too dependent on this increasingly scarce and expensive resource. They urge a transition to “regenerative” agriculture to avoid being locked into a system that depletes our soils. “Regenerative” ag refers to a process that mimics the dynamics found in nature which allow systems to maintain their own fertility, build soil, resist pests and diseases and be highly productive.
 
Currently the U.S. food production system uses about 10 percent of all the fossil fuel consumption in this country. For the first time in our history, it led to a situation where agriculture actually uses more energy than it creates. “If the future includes a scarce resource, we need to go another direction,” says Dr. Hellwinckel. “The choices we make now set us on a course.”
 
The UTIA researchers see a sharp decline coming in the availability of “cheap” energy. They suggest that as energy becomes scarce, agriculture must transition to practices that run on solar energy, regenerate soil fertility and produce crops and food in abundance. They say to believe agriculture can continue to function under its current energy balance is “folly.”
 
“Everything needs energy, and we can’t count on cheap fossil fuel energy,” Dr. De La Torre Ugarte says.
 
The researchers also address the importance of replenishing our soils in the future. Each year 75 billion metric tons of soil erode from the earth’s agricultural lands, and another 30 million acres are abandoned due to over-exhaustion of the soil. That’s the equivalent to losing an area the size of Ohio each year.
 
“Land use is a key issue,” says Dr. Hellwinckel. “Fields need to be diverse with more reliance on perennials and increased rotations between crop use and animal pasture use. We also need a higher ‘hands to acres ratio,” he adds, meaning we could use more farmers.
 
Dr. De La Torre Ugarte is a professor in the Ag Economics Department and Associate Director of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center. He holds a Ph.D. and Masters from Oklahoma State University. He is a native of Peru, and earned his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Pacifico in that nation. He has been with UTIA 17 years.
 
Dr. Hellwinckel is a research assistant professor at UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center. He received his doctorate from UT in Geography in 2008. He also holds a Masters from UT in Agricultural Economics, and a BS in Economics and Urban Studies from St. Olaf College. He has also served as a Peace Corp volunteer in Panama and with the US Forest Service in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. He is a native of Olathe, Kansas.
 
Agricultural Economics is a department within the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, a unit of the UT Institute of Agriculture.