We are What We Eat

My colleague Norio has dug up another stunning article called Eating Fossil Fuels. Based on the book by David Allen Pfeiffer its main point is hard to ignore. Current agricultural production is expending more energy than it is producing. Much of the energy expended is of the fossil fuel and especially the petrochemical variety. Whether you believe in peak oil scenarios or not, what is indisputable is that as the cost of oil continues to increase the cost of food will also soar-unless we drastically change our approaches to food production. Or, as Pfeiffer succinctly points out in the forward:

…without the fossil fuel input, modern agriculture will fail and we will no longer be able to produce the food necessary to sustain more than a fraction of our present population 

 The article makes some other significant points as well:

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold. Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country. As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

What used to sound like gloom and doom pessimism is now the emergent results from our inter-related thinking, actions and the way we have been engaging the world. Don’t you think it’s time we tried another way?

(The article can also be downloaded HERE)

 

Tags: food crisis, peak oil, sustainability