Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Eating Fossil Fuels, by Dale Allen Pfeifer
http://www.mountainsentinel.com/content/eatingfossilfuels.pdf

Commentary
I have taken the Author’s Note from the end of the original article and
moved it up here to the commentary. I must say that the large outcry I
expected to follow the release of this article did not materialize. I
expected a reactionary attack from the religious right. To my surprise, the
reactionary attack came not from the right but from the left. For many
years, Progressives and Radicals have held that modern technology can
provide for all and that hunger in the world today is caused by power
disparities and a lack of true democracy. While this is correct, it ignores
the fact that modern agriculture technology relies heavily upon fossil
fuels. As pointed out in this report, 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
left cannot see that we are entering a new age of resource depletion. Their
old standard that a more equitable society can support us all no longer
applies. As environmentalists have warned for years, we have exploited the
planet to its limits, and now we are entering a new age of scarcity. The
left must adjust their thinking. We can all still profit from a more
equitable socio-economic system. But we will have to make some hard
choices. Here follows the original Author’s Note from the end of the
article.

This is possibly the most important article I have written to date. It is
certainly the most frightening, and the conclusion is the bleakest I have
ever penned. This article is likely to greatly disturb the reader; it has
certainly disturbed me. However, it is important for our future that this
paper should be read, acknowledged and discussed. I am by nature a very
positive and optimistic person. In spite of this article, I continue to
believe that we can find a positive solution to the multiple crises bearing
down upon us. Though this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is
simply a factual report of data and the obvious conclusions.

Introduction

Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they
eat. Until the last century all of the food energy available on this planet
was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or
you ate animals which fed on plants, but the energy in your food was
ultimately derived from the sun.
It would have been absurd to think that we would one day run out of
sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant, renewable resource, and the process
of photosynthesis fed all life on this planet. It also set a limit on the
amount of food which could be generated at any one time, and therefore
placed a limit upon population growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of
flow into this planet. To increase your food production, you had to
increase the acreage under cultivation, and displace your competitors.
There was no other way to increase the amount of energy available for food
production. Human population grew by displacing everything else and
appropriating more and more of the available solar energy.
The need to expand agricultural production was one of the motive causes
behind most of the wars in recorded history, along with expansion of the
energy base (and agricultural production is truly an essential portion of
the energy base). And when Europeans could no longer expand cultivation,
they began the task of conquering the world. Explorers were followed by
conquistadors and traders and settlers. The declared reasons for this
expansion may have been trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at
the base it was all about the expansion of agricultural productivity.
Wherever explorers and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off
loot, but they left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and
establish their own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until
there was no place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day
landowners and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural
productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all of
the productive land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture. What
remains is either too steep, too wet, too dry or lacking in soil
nutrients.1
Just when agricultural output could expand no more by increasing acreage,
new innovations made possible a more thorough exploitation of the acreage
already available. The process of “pest” displacement
and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with the industrial
revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened the clearing and
tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland which could be tended
by one person. And with every increase in food production, the human
population grew apace.
At present, nearly 40% of all land-based photosynthetic capability has been
appropriated by human beings.2 In the United States, we divert more than
half of the energy captured by photosynthesis.3 We have taken over all the
prime real estate on this planet. The rest of the biota is forced to make
due with what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species
extinctions and in ecosystem stress.
The Green Revolution
In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation
commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted
in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from
new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950
and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe,
world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in
the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional
energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it
result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for
the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels. The Green Revolution was
made possible by fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, and
hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.
The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average
of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most
extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or
more.6 We are quite literally eating fossil fuels.
In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually
to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy
consumption is broken down as follows:
• 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
• 19% for the operation of field machinery
• 16% for transportation
• 13% for irrigation
• 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
• 05% for crop drying
• 05% for pesticide production
• 08% miscellaneous8
Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets
and household cooking are not considered in these figures.
To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern
agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires
the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not
considering the hydrocarbon feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer
Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30
2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10
Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of
nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of
diesel fuel, or 4.04 billion gallons.
Of course this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the
energy requirements for modern agriculture.
In a very real sense, we are 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.11 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.
Fossil Fuel Costs
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 which 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.12 As of 1990, we
were using approximately 1,000 liters of oil to produce food of one hectare
of land.13
In 1994 David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the output/input
ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.14 For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal)
of fossil energy consumed, U.S. agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The
input figure for this ratio was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture
Organization of the UN) statistics, which consider only fertilizers
(without including fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without
including pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field
operations. Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and
machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to and
from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of farm
buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these energy costs
brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.15 Yet this does not
include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to retail outlets,
refrigeration or household cooking.
In a subsequent study completed later that same year (1994) Giampietro and
Pimentel managed to derive a more accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel
energy ratio of agriculture.16 In this study, the authors defined two
separate forms of energy input: Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy.
Endosomatic energy is generated through the metabolic transformation of
food energy into muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is
generated by transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning
gasoline in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at
fossil fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.
Previous to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic
and exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of
the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed
countries.17 The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered
societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed
countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90
to 1.18 And the nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as
well.
The vast majority of endosomatic energy is no longer expended to deliver
power for direct economic processes. Now the majority of endosomatic energy
is utilized to generate the flow of information directing the flow of
exosomatic energy driving machines. Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in
the United States, each endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the U.S.
induces the circulation of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a
small gasoline engine can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline
into 8.8 KWh (Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for
one human being.19
In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of
exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the
consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery
expenses, but excludes household cooking).20 The U.S. food system consumes
ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is
made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.
Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United
States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic
energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on
one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of
exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the
daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system.
Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet
will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the
current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per
capita to produce.
Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next
decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food.
Soil, Cropland and Water
Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically enhanced
agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater
and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused
serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed
cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of
fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon based fertilizers
must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more
energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.
It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural
environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering
rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made
susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each
year.22 Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the
United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about
100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation
rate.23 Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses which once
covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is
increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion
removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural
soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more
than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in
order to produce crops.
Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to
erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road
building and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from
farmland.24 Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United
States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding
human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability.
Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for
the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based
economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this
reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense
of agriculture.
Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture
consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is
occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and
south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a
trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies
60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the
majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground
water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the
earth’s crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually
is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer which supplies
agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central
plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate.
The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.28
We can illustrate the demand which modern agriculture places on water
resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that
produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of
water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize
requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is done
to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel
the United States into a water crisis.
In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the
U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.30
This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation
practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a
monoculture.31 This results in an increase in corn pests which in turn
requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had
increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically
engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still risen
4-fold.32
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.
US Consumption
In the United States, each person consumes an average of 2,175 pounds of
food per person per year. This provides the U.S. consumer with an average
daily energy intake of 3,600 Calories. The world average is 2,700
Calories per day.33 Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast
food. Fast food accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the
average U.S. citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of
four.34
One third of the caloric intake of the average American comes from animal
sources (including dairy products), totaling 800 pounds per person per
year. This diet means that U.S. citizens derive 40% of their calories from
fat—nearly half of their diet. 35
Americans are also grand consumers of water. As of one decade ago,
Americans were consuming 1,450 gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest
amount expended on agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase,
consumption by 2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider
to be minimal for human needs.36 This is without taking into consideration
declining fossil fuel production.
To provide all of this food requires the application of 0.6 million metric
tons of pesticides in North America per year. This is over one fifth of the
total annual world pesticide use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.37
Worldwide, more nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied
through natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground
aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of
important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly
approaching exhaustion.38
Total U.S. energy consumption is more than three times the amount of solar
energy harvested as crop and forest products. The United States consumes
40% more energy annually than the total amount of solar energy captured
yearly by all U.S. plant biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North
America is five times the world average.39
Our prosperity is built on the principal of exhausting the world’s
resources as quickly as possible, without any thought to our neighbors, all
the other life on this planet, or our children.
Population & Sustainability
Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population is
projected to double by 2050. As the population expands, an estimated one
acre of land will be lost for every person added to the U.S. population.
Currently, there are 1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each
U.S. citizen. By 2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. !.2 acres per
person is required in order to maintain current dietary standards.40
Presently, only two nations on the planet are major exporters of grain: the
United States and Canada.41 By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will
cease to be a food exporter due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S.
economy could be devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S.
annually. More importantly, millions of people around the world could
starve to death without U.S. food exports.42
Domestically, 34.6 million people are living in poverty as of 2002 census
data.43 And this number is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many
of these people do not have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens,
this number will increase and the United States will witness growing
numbers of starvation fatalities.
There are some things which we can do to at least alleviate this tragedy.
It is suggested that streamlining agriculture to get rid of losses, waste
and mismanagement might cut the energy inputs for food production by up to
one-half.35 In place of fossil fuel based fertilizers, we could utilize
livestock manures which are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock
manures contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each
year.36 Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet
altogether.37
Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel postulate that a sustainable food
system is possible only if four conditions are met.
1. Environmentally sound agricultural technologies must be implemented.
2. Renewable energy technologies must be put into place.
3. Major increases in energy efficiency must reduce exosomatic energy
consumption per capita.
4. Population size and consumption must be compatible with maintaining the
stability of environmental processes.38
Providing that the first three conditions are met, with a reduction to less
than half of the exosomatic energy consumption per capita, the authors
place the maximum population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.39
Several other studies have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy
and Population, Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of
Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel,
David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm). Given that the current
U.S. population is in excess of 292 million,40 that would mean a reduction
of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the
United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black
plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the
European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian
populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took
them nearly two centuries to emerge.41
None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel
production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned
agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not
become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production
(and subsequent decline of production after 2010), along with the peak of
North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this
agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S.
population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability;
the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for
sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current
6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion—a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds.
The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And
the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as
never experienced before by the human race.
Three Choices
Considering the utter necessity of population reduction, there are three
obvious choices awaiting us.
We can—as a society—become aware of our dilemma and consciously make
the choice not to add more people to our population. This would be the most
welcome of our three options, to choose consciously and with free will to
responsibly lower our population. However, this flies in the face of our
biological imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the
ability of modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of
the religious right to consider issues of population management. And then
there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in
order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best
choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.
Failing to responsibly lower our population, we can force population cuts
through government regulations. Is there any need to mention how
distasteful this option would be? How many of us would choose to live in a
world of forced sterilization and population quotas enforced under penalty
of law? How easily might this lead to a culling of the population utilizing
principles of eugenics?
This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture
of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis
and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which
civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more
than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario,
conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population
would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those
survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their
civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those
survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.
The questions we must ask ourselves now are, how can we allow this to
happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does our present lifestyle mean
so much to us that we would subject ourselves and our children to this fast
approaching tragedy simply for a few more years of conspicuous consumption?
(Endnotes)
1 Availability of agricultural land for crop and livestock production,
Buringh, P. Food and Natural Resources, Pimentel. D. and Hall. C.W. (eds),
Academic Press, 1989.
2 Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et
al. Bioscience 36, 1986. http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3
3 Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population
Size, Pimental, David and Pimental, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum,
1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm
4 Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Henry H. and
Pimentel, David. Ambio Vol. 23 No. 3, May 1994. The Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences. http://www.dieoff.com/page36htm
5 The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of
Agriculture, Giampietro, Mario and Pimentel, David, 1994.
http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm
6 Op. Cit. See note 4.
7 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Pimentel, David and
Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994.
http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm
8 Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure based
corn production, McLaughlin, N.B., et al. Canadian Agricultural
Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2000.
9 Ibid.
10 US Fertilizer Use Statistics.
http://www.tfi.org/Statistics/USfertuse2.asp
11 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary,
Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network,
11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm
12 Ibid.
13 Op. Cit. See note 3.
14 Op. Cit. See note 7.
15 Ibid.
16 Op. Cit. See note 5.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Op. Cit. See note 11.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Op Cit. See note 3.
26 Op Cit. See note 11.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Op. Cit. See note 3.
31 Op. Cit. See note 5.
32 Op. Cit. See note 3.
33 Op. Cit. See note 11.
34 Food Consumption and Access, Lynn Brantley, et al. Capital Area Food
Bank, 6/1/2001. http://www.clagettfarm.org/purchasing.html
35 Op. Cit. See note 11.
36 Ibid.
37 Op. Cit. See note 5.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Op. Cit. See note 11.
41 Op. Cit. See note 4.
42 Op. Cit. See note 11.
43 Poverty 2002. The U.S. Census Bureau.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty02/pov02hi.html
35 Op. Cit. See note 3.
36 Ibid.
37 Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé, Frances Moore. Ballantine Books,
1971—revised 1991. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/
38 Op. Cit. See note 5.
39 Ibid.
40 U.S. and World Population Clocks. U.S. Census Bureau.
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
41 A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.
42 Op. Cit. See note