Energy use in biologically intensive farming.

• Author: Moore, Steve
• Position: 80% Less Energy - Report

At a time of Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas there is concern over an external energy crisis that is beyond one's control. Peal Oil means the highest point in available supplies and the beginning of a decline in availability. The challenge of Global Warming is connected to this phenomenon. Additional global challenges are beginning on a per person basis with natural resources becoming less available in general. These are Peak Farmable Soil, Peak Farm Water, and Peak Food. The real energy crisis, however, is mainly an internal one of human energy! We are the source of and the solution to the "Energy Crisis." The wonderful thing is that we are an energy-efficient solution. There is a lot we can accomplish.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution--which depends on large reserves of petroleum, natural gas and other non-renewable energy sources--fewer people have been able to grow more of the food we eat. In other words, we have substituted non-renewable fossil fuels for renewable human energy. This paradigm shift has resulted in the use of increasing amounts of energy calories per unit of food calorie produced. In both our agricultural and industrial pursuits, we have been "consuming" the planet with various forms of combustion. The biological basis of the planet is being lost.

While the human population quadrupled from 1860 to 1991, our use of inanimate energy increased 93 times. [1] As natural gas and petroleum--the basis of fertilizer, pesticides and gas-powered machinery in conventional agriculture--have become prohibitively expensive, it may take 3 to 4 times the area to produce an annual diet for one person, using conventional methods. [developed from 2]

Another measure of energy inefficiency is the fact that the average piece of food in the United States travels 1,400 miles before it is consumed. [3] The distance is even greater for vegetables and fruit.

What does this fossil-fuel dependent kind of transportation system mean? One calorie of strawberry, grown in California, packaged, shipped, distributed, wholesaled, retailed and placed on the table in New York City, requires 435 calories of energy. [4] The average calorie of fruit placed on a table in London, England, requires 63 calories of energy--just for transportation.

What is needed in the future is a renewable biological basis of prosperity. Better-tasting food varieties can be grown locally with energy sustainability using biologically intensive farming.

A proactive approach combines millennia-old biologically intensive farming, with a modem systems approach that accounts for diet, soil fertility, energy and water use. This type of system can provide all the calories, calcium, protein and other important nutrients as well as carbonaceous and nitrogenous biomass for compost to develop and maintain sustainable soil fertility. One method, GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farming, [5] has the potential to produce food with:

* 67% to 88% less water,

* 50% to 100% less purchased nutrient (in organic fertilizer form), and

* 90% less energy

compared with conventional farming practices, while producing higher yields per unit of area and time, using open-pollinated seeds and building up the level of soil fertility up to 60 times faster than occurs in natural ecosystems.

Biologically intensive farming was used successfully for over 4,000 years in China, [6] was practiced in Greece 2,000 years ago and kept the Mayan civilization thriving when used on a neighborhood basis a millennium ago. More recently, six people used a form of biologically intensive agriculture in Biosphere II in Arizona to feed themselves, using the equivalent of 3,562 square feet per person. [ceveloped from 7]

With such local biologically intensive food production, food raising can become energy efficient.

Overall, the US food system uses 10 Quad (10 X [10.sup.15]) Btu of energy each year, most of which energy is derived from...