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Organic Oil Lets face it: our world has become increasingly maddening. Bad news mounts each day: unending wars, financial crises, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones killing thousands, chaotic climate change, vanishing pollinating bees and polar bears, rising oceans, thinning forests and a host of human-created or worsened threats. We live in uncertain times with an even more uncertain future. We face unprecedented, unpredictable converging threats. What can one do to remain somewhat sane? The ostrich approach of denial by burying ones head in the sand will not be effective or life-enhancing.It is a good time for an increasing number of people to return to the multiple benefits and pleasures of growing at least part of their own food by gardening and farming. In addition to satisfying the need to eat and drink, farming can also help deal with depression, passivity, and other forms of psychological suffering. It can help treat both the body and the soul. Farming can be done in ways that preserve the Earth and put humans in direct contact with it.Since growing ones own food is not possible for everyone, it is also a good time to establish direct relationships with local farmers and shop more at farmers markets, farm stands, and by subscribing to Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Urban agriculture, farms on the urban fringe, and rooftop gardening are becoming increasingly popular. The large city of Havana, Cuba, grows 70% of its own food. Necessity will change how people get their food in the near future.Many Americans take their food sources for granted, assuming that super-markets will be able to always supply them with what they need. Having lived in Hawaii when delivery disruptions and the lack of transportation across the ocean left bare shelves in food stores, I know the panic this can cause.The Silent Tsunami, Misery Index and Mud CakesA silent tsunami of hunger sweeps the globe, reports the head of the United Nations World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, speaking in late April at a food summit in London. The heightened hunger threat endangers 20 million of the worlds poorest children and is pushing 100 million people into poverty.This is the new face of hungerthe millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are, Sheeran reports. The worlds misery index is rising.During 2008, food riots have already broken out in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. You are seeing the return of the food riot, one of the oldest forms of collective action, commented Raj Patel in an April 25 San Francisco Chronicle article. The University of California at Berkeley scholar wrote the new book Stuffed and Starved: Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System.The World Bank estimates that food prices have risen 83% in three years; other estimates are in the 60 and 70 percent range. Even in the wealthy United States, we have recently seen rationing of rice and other staples by food giants such as Costco and Wal-Marts Sams Clubs, the two biggest warehouse retail chains. Such trends are likely to continue and are creating stockpiling and hoarding.In the poorest districts (of Haiti), there is now a brisk trade in mud cakes, writes Patel in an article titled The Troubles with Food, published at http://www.redpepper.org.uk . Mothers feed the biscuits, made with water, salt, margarine and clay, to their children. The cake puts a dampener on hunger, at least for a couple of hours, but leaves your mouth dry and bitter for several hours more, he continues.Industrial agriculture will be one of the many aspects of human life on the planet hit by the dwindle/demand oil trend and the related peaks of other fossil fuels, such as natural gas. Industrial agriculture depends upon petroleum in many ways  to run tractors and other machines, to make chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and to fuel the trucks that transport food an average of 1500 miles from field to fork. Oil is the most important ingredient in most of conventional food. As the dwindle/demand rate intensifies, food will be less available and more expensive. Famine is likely.Survival will require that more people return to an earlier energy supply  muscle power. As someone who made a transition in the early 1990s (while in my late 40s) from a livelihood based on college teaching and related intellectual activities to one based on farming, I can report that there are many advantages to such a change. I feel better as a result of living on the land, growing some of my own food, and sharing that organic food and the farm itself with others.I have found my local place. In 2003 I accepted a great job offer in Hawaii, but after a couple of wonderful years, I felt so homesick that I returned to my farm.So this will be a report from the farm front, which will focus on some of the psychological benefits of farming.The multiple consequences of a diminishing supply of humanitys major energy source at this point in history will include hardships, stress, and suffering. There are many ways of dealing psychologically with such matters, including with family, friends and professional counsellors. This article will explore what I have come to describe as agropsychology and agrotherapy.I was trained to be a counsellor. Quite frankly, I was not good at delivering individual therapy. I got too emotional and involved. I did not adequately develop the necessary professional armor and shield. I did not take enough distance from the people I was working with or have enough impulse control. So I shifted more to teaching, group work, and writing. In the time since my more conventional psychological training, some forty years ago, self-disclosure and emotional men have become more acceptable as sex roles and professional codes have evolved.