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[Livingontheland] Breaking our Fossil-Energy Addiction through Organic Foods and Farming
- From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
- To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: [Livingontheland] Breaking our Fossil-Energy Addiction through Organic Foods and Farming
- Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 07:43:44 -0600
fromhttp://www.theroundup.org/keynotes.html
Breaking our Fossil-Energy Addiction through Organic Foods and Farming
America is a nation addicted to cheap fossil energy. Nowhere is this
addiction more evident than in our systems of farming and food production.
The fundamental purpose of agriculture is to transform solar energy into
food energy, to use renewable energy from the sun to sustain human life on
earth. However, todays industrial food systems require about ten calories
of non-renewable fossil energy for each calorie of food energy produced.
Much of this energy is used in food processing, transportation, and
storage; but even at the farm level, todays agriculture requires two to
three calories of fossil energy for each calorie of food energy consumed.
Over the next few decades, declining global production of petroleum and
natural gas will require American agriculture to break this addiction to
fossil energy. Farming must return to its historical, organic roots,
relying on permanent, living systems of farming to renew and regenerate the
productivity of both land and people as they collect and transform solar
energy into food. Food systems in general must shift from industrial to
sustainable and from global to local to break their dependence on
non-renewable energy. The end of cheap fossil energy will require major
changes in all aspects of American society, but none will be more critical
than the return to organic foods and farming.
-------------------
paul tradingpost@lobo.net
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
--Henry David Thoreau
- [Livingontheland] Breaking our Fossil-Energy Addiction through Organic Foods and Farming, TradingPostPaul, 09/17/2006
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