[Peakoil] Carbon price and Peak Oil

[Antony Barry]

On 20/05/2011, at 3:46 PM, Ruth Cully wrote:

> In his Canberra talk last year, Professor Kjell Aleklett said that US agriculture used 7 kilojoules of oil energy (or fossil fuel energy) for every kilojoule of food produced. Can anyone confirm this data?


I've seen figures around this. I suspect it depend on what you include and different crops would be quite different and different where the crop is grown. For instance there is energy needed to -

* pump water for irrigation
* make pesticides
* make fertilisers
* run harvesting machines
* process the crop to a useable form
* carry it to market

Remember prior to the industrial revolution 70% of the population at least was required to produce the food needed to support themselves to leave a surplus of 30% for non agricultural pursuits artisans, military, priests etc.  In Australia it is down to 5% in agriculture who can feed us and provide even more for export.

Industrial scale agriculture is a mechanism for converting fossil fuel into food.

We escaped a malthus crisis with the green revolution. But it needs fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural machinery and transport. After peak oil it will fail.

Tony

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