Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food, and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture
The book Eating Fossil Fuels looks at agriculture and our food supply through the lens of energy and energy balance. When you add up the energy inputs of fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, irrigation, and tilling, the food produced on a typical acre of land today takes many more calories of energy to produce than the maximum energy that could possibly be generated from the sun through photosynthesis. Where does the extra energy come from? Mostly from fossil fuels. What does this mean? The current food system is unsustainable and in many more ways than most people realize. If you look at the energy content of the food we eat, we are literally eating fossil fuels.