Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 02:37 PM 12/24/2007, you wrote:

> Granted the semi is more fuel efficient. But let's don't forget to allocate
> part of the embodied energy in the semi manufacture, or the cost of the
> highways. Moreover, it's unlikely that the 1400 mile food was grown without
> costly fossil fuel inputs and heavy machinery with embodied energy in its
> manufacture.


Throwing in a few more observations about efficiency here--efficiency 
is not necessarily the highest desired outcome. Machines can be made 
more efficient. Working with the land, with animals, with the weather 
and the climate, is not always amenable to increases in "efficiency." 
Nor is it always desirable. Making efficiency the most important 
outcome treats non-predictable components as though they can be made 
predictable. In the short term, this may work. But it works by 
pretending that the physical system is an open one, or by simply 
ignoring the warning signs of an unstable system.

Viewing people and other living organisms (not to mention the short 
term weather and the long term climate) as comparable to machines is 
short-sighted and stupid. Just ignoring for the moment the embedded 
energy, as a system extends it dependencies, it becomes more 
vulnerable to known problems and more at risk for unknown or 
unconsidered or just unpredictable ones. Making one part of the 
system more efficient (whatever that may mean to the people involved 
in that part of it) often creates completely unexpected problems in 
other parts of the system. What is needed is not increases in 
efficiency, but increased understanding of how all the components of 
a living system work together.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com