I would be interested in your bibliography, if you can send it.
I guess the sad truth is that I don't have any reference I can put my hands on
now which backs up the statement that it takes the energy equivalant of 2
gallons of gasoline for our current food system to provide an American with a
day's supply of calories, equal to about one cup of gasoline. That's about the
30 to 1 ratio of input to output in the food system that I've seen over the
years in various places. Last weekend I got several references for food and
energy in Science, 4/12/94 and 4/19/94, but haven't been able to get to a
library yet.
It IS a wonder that the world's best funded and most extensive agriculture
information and education system (the USDA) doesn't have that information
readily available to its staff. I'm just a one family, self-funded operation
mostly working on education, art and local problems. ( Come to think of it, much
of our work is to repair the damage done by our distant large-scale food system,
aided and abetted all these years by the very agricultural establishment which
doesn't know how much energy it takes to feed ourselves, or what the effects of
that food system are on our society.)
A lot of the trouble is in determining the bounds of the system. (And this is a
concern greatly reinforced by your announcement of the AgImpact group.) The
view from Connecticut, with twenty five years of organic growing experience,
lots of time spent in urban public schools,and years of study of environmental
problems, is that the bounds of the system must include the whole planet and
everyone on it.
Agriculture is increasingly marginalized by the global food distribution system
which already takes over three quarters of the food dollars and has its eyes on
a greater share. The food system's demands for long-lasting, identical, exotic,
year-round, low cost (subsidized if possible) raw materials seems to be the
driving force behind most research today. Joan Gussow's Chicken Little and
today's announcement of sheep clones speak to us here. Environmental
considerations are certainly good window dressing.
To study the impacts of *just* agriculture (which is an unjust agriculture) is
to eliminate any possibility of really solving the problems with our society and
our environment. Even a totally benign agriculture, would do little for my
wife's fifth graders. The food that is available to them ( salty, fatty chips
and artificially flavored and colored sugar water)is slowly killing them, and
creating huge amounts of non-biodegradable trash. It is creating enormous future
health care costs. This system doesn't provide the foods that we know are
healthy - whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, delicious, low-fat, low
-salt meals. These urban children get soda and sugar cereals, even from the
school and government feeding programs. (In one week they get juice from
Austria, Argentina,Brazil, the Phillipines, Thailand and the USA.) This food
system provides them with no hope of jobs or community or knowledge of the
workings of the planet. Many of them are stuck in Bridgepoort because machines,
chemicals and concentrated control pushed their parents and grandparents off the
land somewhere else.
Near the time I joined Sanet, Molly Anderson proposed a beginning definition of
sustainable with -
" Food comes from farmers (it's not spontaneously
generated in supermarkets). Farmers don't receive most of
our food dollars, but they get a higher proportion when
customers use direct-marketing outlets."
It seems a bit presumptous to say food comes from farmers when it really comes
from the interaction of the sun and plants. Home, school and community gardens,
as well as hunters and gatherers also produce food. For decades the Agricultural
Establishment has ignored small scale sustainable solutions and made agriculture
fit an economic mold. We can't get to a sustainable food system using an
economic paradigm, at least not within the warped economics of latter day,
heavily-subsidized tax system-designed capitalism.
Lettuce may be an overworked example, but it works because it is such a perfect
example of so many of the problems in the food system. The USDA's Food Review,
with no comment detailed the incredible concentration and pesticide use of the
lettuce system. ( 92 % of the lettuce is grown in the deserts of California and
Arizona on increasingly large farms which use more pesticides the larger they
are. Even if they were all organic/sustainable, the water and transportation
subsidies cost us all to the disadvantage of local farmers here while the fossil
fuel used degrades the environment for the whole world with acid rain and
climate change.
You'd think someone in the Government system would be saying that this is
insane, crazy and stupid!!! It's like the ag economist in CT who thinks it is
just fine for us all to pay 22 cents a dozen to the Connecticut Egg Farmer who
owns over two thirds of the layers in the state, and despite subsidized feed,
energy and extension services, still can't compete with farmers from France. So
we pay to subsidize his sale of brown eggs to the wealthy in HONG KONG and the
MIddle East. Sometimes the authorities loose authority and respect by not
speaking to the problem. Here we seem to have at least two examples and we
haven't gotten beyond eggs and lettuce. Check out beef, or a can of soda.
Back to lettuce. Every year for the last five years, we have produced twice a
year using the labor of fifth grade students for an hour a week, enough lettuce,
greens and healthful weeds to feed the whole class salads in the Fall and Spring
and still have enough left to make a salad for most of the teachers too. This
is on land that was asphalt when we started, and is a project that is more
resisted than supported by the school administration.
If we can't and don't talk long and seriously about the very real differences
between the lettuce from California and the lettuce from Bridgeport, we will
continue to see all the indicators of human, societial and environmental health
go downhill. The Bridgeport lettuce not only provides real nutrition without
detrimental effects everywhere else on the planet, it also provides self-esteem,
an educational context and lifelong useful skills for these children.
The Agricultural Establishment has a tendency to draw the bounds of the system
narrower and narrower. It is easier that way. (Easier to count one farm with
over 2,000,000 layers than 200,000 families with 10 layers each.)
The announcement of agImpact doesn't bode well for future problem solving.
I'm sorry I don't have just exactly the info you want. Mayber someone who reads
this post will have it. I'd certainly like to know more precisely, but I think
it doesn't matter. The evidence I see daily convinces me that energy use is
just one of many ways the current system is unsustainable.
Best regards,
Bill Duesing
Solar Farm Education
71042.2023@Compuserve.com