While I have a great deal to learn others might be interested in this publication --
Energy in Agriculture and Society: Insights from the Sunshine Farm Marty Bender Updated January 14, 2002 http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/03/28/3accb0712 This report speaks about agriculture & also compares energy ratios e.g. "energy ratio of 1.7 to 1 for outputs to inputs, or simply 1.7" - National energy ratios for farming in various countries 0.3-3.1 to 1 - Petroleum and natural gas 10 - US Coal 9 - Nuclear 4 - Renewable liquid fuels 1-3 - Renewable solid fuels 6-13 - Gasification of biomass 2-5 - Flat-plate solar collectors 2-5 - Direct combustion of crop 3-4 - Biogas 1.4-5.6 - Hydroelectric 10 - Electrochemical photovoltaic arrays 8-10 - Parabolic-thermal reflectors 8-10 - Wind-electric turbines 16-20 ?? - Energy conservation and efficiency double-pane windows 136 ceiling insulation 61 - Passive solar design 10-25 Some excerpts -- "The importance of national food security dictates that we should reduce farming's dependence on fossil fuels. As part of The Land Institute's mission to use nature as measure for developing sustainable agriculture and culture, the Sunshine Farm Project has been exploring the possibilities of farming without fossil fuels, fertilizers or pesticides." " The purpose of the renewable energy technologies in our project is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels but not our dependence on local energy systems." "Australia relies mostly on low-input crops (e.g., wheat), free-range animal rearing, and extensive use of leys (i.e., grazed legume cover crops) instead of commercial fertilizer for cropland nitrogen needs. Likewise in America, before the tremendous increase in commercial fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation after World War II, American farming in 1940 had a national energy ratio of 2.3 (Table 2)." "As documented by the US Department of Energy, during 1979-1986 the US obtained 7 times as much new energy from savings through conservation and efficiency than from all net increases in domestic energy supplies based on fossil fuels, nuclear power, and renewable sources.20,21 Hence conservation and efficiency should be fully developed, as well as renewable energy sources." "By these strategies for inputs and outputs, mixed farms and US agriculture should be able to increase their energy ratios to 3, perhaps 4, the former figure already achieved by Australia (Table 2)." "An aggressive national program of energy conservation and efficiency will be required to sufficiently reduce energy consumption such that the US economy could be powered by renewable energy sources without using too much land. Absent such measures, for example, if the nation's current transportation sector were to be fueled solely by the gross yield of ethanol from corn grain, then half of the entire US must be planted to corn.24.25.26" "Nonetheless, some energy scholars believe that energy conservation and efficiency will make it quite possible to power our current standard of living with renewable energy sources.30,31 Solar technologies would be particularly important in meeting US energy needs since they have much greater energy ratios and power densities than renewable fuels derived from agriculture." `` Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
