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Return On Investment
Billy wrote:
.... The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan p.45 - 46 http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...ls/dp/01430385 83/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1 The reason Greene County is no longer green for half the year is because the farmer who can buy synthetic fertility no longer needs cover crops to capture a whole year's worth of sunlight he has plugged himself into a new source of energy. When you add together the natural gas in the fertilizer to the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, you find that every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it gallons of oil per acre of corn. (Some estimates are much higher.) Put another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce a calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the Naylor farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every calorie of energy invested. .... ok, i see where the 1 calorie amount comes from, but i see hand waving for the 2 calorie amount. is that detailed some other place? songbird |
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