[Cabrone]

TomSaidak you need to understand EROEI (energy return on energy invested--use the search function above.) It is a key concept in the study of industrial ecology which looks at energy flows and especially energy accounting.

It is highly likely that the amount of energy required to cook the turkey guts into fuel is greater than the energy that would be available in the resulting stew.

What you propose is really a form of perpetual energy, a variant of that old saw perpetual motion. Think of modern turkey production. They are raised in hot houses kept warm all winter with copious quantities of fuel oil or propane. Their food is grown on giant farm with monster tractors and then shipped to Purina to be ground, hydrolyzed, formed, packaged into Turkey Feed. Which is trucked on big Semis to the turkey farm.

And you expect the entropic waste product of a modern industrial system to power that system and also drive Mom, Chuck, and Britney to the Mall? That Sir is . . . Madness

Exactly, thermodynamics in action.

Whenever you change one energy source to another you will always lose energy in the conversion process.

Therefore it stands to reason that the more conversions you make, the more you will lose. That's entropy I'm afraid.

This process may slow losses but it will never be a solution to our energy woes.

The only realistic escape routes are renewables, nuclear and energy conservation I'm afraid.

Alternatively if you don't care about cooking the planet then burn coal.

[TomSaidak]

Pstarr wrote:

TomSaidak you need to understand EROEI (energy return on energy invested--use the search function above.)

Thank you, but I understand it quite well.

The 10:1 ratio given for food production is flawed. At that ratio taken literally, then we are using 23% of oil consumption just to PRODUCE food. I assure you, we are not. 20% of US oil consumption goes to "industrial processes". Not just food production.
The 2nd mistake that using that ratio is that it totally ignores energy input from the sun. TDP ultimately is a form of solar power, deriving its energy from the sun, stored in biological "batteries".
This is not new science. Its old science. First discovered when people noticed plants need light to grow..... And then confirmed when they discovered this little thing called photosynthesis. On top of the solar energy, the 10:1 ratio doesn't mention the actual biomass produced for that 10 calorie input, just what hits your table. The actual biomass produced is several orders of magnitude greater then that one calorie that arrives for dinner. You don't eat all of the corn plant - just the kernels, leaving the cob, leaves, cornsilk, stalk and roots you don't eat behind. And without all those parts that those 10 calories were used to produce, you wouldn't have your kernels to eat.
As for the energy required to convert, I repeat that for every 5 barrels of oil delivered, 6 were produced, and the 1st barrel is used to provide the energy to "cook" the feedstock to produce the other 5 barrels. TDP is not interested in your food as feedstock until you throw it away. The major feedstock is the entire biomass left behind as trash. To get your 1/4 pound hamburger, someone kills a 1260 pound steer. When dressed, the weight of the carcass is reduced to about 800 pounds. TDP uses the 460 pounds of carcass labeled inedible PLUS the 5 tons of manure that steer produced in the 12 month before it was killed. And that 10:1 ratio pretends that the 460 pounds of waste and manure do not exist.

[kublikhan]

The 10:1 ratio given for food production is flawed. At that ratio taken literally, then we are using 23% of oil consumption just to PRODUCE food. I assure you, we are not. 20% of US oil consumption goes to "industrial processes". Not just food production.

The US food system uses over 10 quadrillion Btu (10,551 quadrillion Joules) of energy each year, as much as France's total annual energy consumption. Growing food accounts for only one fifth of this. The other four-fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm.

Globally, some 28 per cent of the energy used in agriculture goes to fertiliser manufacturing, 7 per cent goes to irrigation, and 34 per cent is consumed as diesel and gasoline by farm vehicles used to plant, till, and harvest crops. The rest goes to pesticide production, grain drying, and facility operations (see latest data from the Earth Policy Institute

Rising Oil Prices Will Impact Food Supplies
Energy Conversion

10 quadrillion BTU is about equivalent to the energy in 1.7 billion barrels of oil. The US used 7.5 billion barrels of oil in 2005. Which is about the equivalent of 23% of US oil consumption. Of course, not all of that energy comes directly from oil. Some comes from electricity, some from other fossil fuels, etc. But you get the idea. If you still think this is wrong, please provide a source to back up your argument.

The 2nd mistake that using that ratio is that it totally ignores energy input from the sun. TDP ultimately is a form of solar power, deriving its energy from the sun, stored in biological "batteries".

I am not ignoring the energy input of the sun. It's just that the energy input from the sun is far outweighed by the energy input of the fossil fuels used. Again, actually growing the crops is only 1/5 of the energy used. Most is used for transportation, processing, etc.

[kublikhan]

On top of the solar energy, the 10:1 ratio doesn't mention the actual biomass produced for that 10 calorie input, just what hits your table. The actual biomass produced is several orders of magnitude greater then that one calorie that arrives for dinner. You don't eat all of the corn plant - just the kernels, leaving the cob, leaves, cornsilk, stalk and roots you don't eat behind. And without all those parts that those 10 calories were used to produce, you wouldn't have your kernels to eat.
As for the energy required to convert, I repeat that for every 5 barrels of oil delivered, 6 were produced, and the 1st barrel is used to provide the energy to "cook" the feedstock to produce the other 5 barrels. TDP is not interested in your food as feedstock until you throw it away. The major feedstock is the entire biomass left behind as trash.

This is another mistake you have made. You assumed the inedible biomass left behind is trash. This is not the case. The inedible portion of the biomass left behind is not hauled off to landfills. Is is left in place and helps maintain soil fertility. Already, our modern agricultural techniques are depleting soil fertility faster than it can be naturally replaced. One farmer referred to modern farming methods as "soil mining" because of the way we are depleting the soil's fertility. If you remove the inedible portions of the plants from the fields as well, you are going to accelerate topsoil depletion past their already alarming levels.

Another factor you have failed to consider is the inefficiency of nature's form of solar power. Even if you grew the biomass in a sustainable fashion, trimmed down the use of oil to minimal levels, and build your TDP plant directly on the farm to minimize transportation and storage costs, you still would not be able to compete with alternative energy from either an EROEI perspective or a cost perspective. Plants are not designed solely to harvest the sun and convert it directly into a form of energy humans can use. They have to survive a host of conditions like weather, predators, etc. Where as alternative energy is designed solely to harness the sun and turn it into human usable power. This gives AE an enormous advantage over biomass derived energy generation.

Now biofuels are kinda like solar power. Plants capture the the sun's light and convert it to energy. We then convert the plants into fuel, and then turn the fuel into useful power.
Photovoltaics skip a few of those steps, converting sunlight directly to power without any pesky nature getting in the way. It turns out that creating biofuel with an acre of land produces about 100 times less power than covering that same land with solar panels.

Photovoltaics 100X More Efficient than Biofuel

Why are we trying to grow our energy when we can harvest it directly from the sun.

Cellulosic Ethanol Vs. Solar

[Pops]

This has all been said before but I'm bored so:

TDP could be a decent transition tech but relies on a primary energy source the depletion of which this site is all about - just like ethanol. Except TDP, ethanol plants and even power lines have a real problem with NIMBRism short term - and the short term is the period in which we'll have the best chance to make a transition.

Con-Agra had a waste product it found a market for - it might have been a better plan to use that waste for fertilizer but oil gave a better return. I did work for the largest egg producer west of the Rockies and they used everything but the cluck - chicken shit and almond shells make great compost.

But in the end, compost for the flower bed, guts from a Butterball plant, Egg McMuffins and that stuff in the landfill all rely on cheap energy and it ain't always gonna be around.

[TomSaidak]

Oh, where to start, where to start.....

Pstarr wrote:

Somewhat like methane, an attempt to capture waste and mitigate pollution but in no way a primary energy source.

And as you said, like methane capture, an annoyance and potential danger. The less this stuff is handled the safer all of us are.

If you don't touch it, what do you think is happening with it? In Mt. View, our Shoreline Ampitheatre is still belching methane. When it first opened, they had to shut it down while they installed a pipe system to carry the methane away. Methane is function of decomposition and is happening whether we do something about it or not. TDP would stop the methane cycle cold. Well, hot. Or something...

Pops wrote:

But in the end, compost for the flower bed, guts from a Butterball plant, Egg McMuffins and that stuff in the landfill all rely on cheap energy and it ain't always gonna be around.

That 10:1 ratio is more about processing food or conditioning land. Though the 6.6% of oil consumption for farm machinery and equipment isn't chump change either. Your comment about transition goes to the heart of the matter. Ideally, we want BEV vehicles. For a number of reasons, that is not going to happen too quickly. I agree NIMBYism is a concern, but much of the waste is all ready creating smell problems. Heck, try East San Jose in June when the garlic et al drying plants in Gilroy are going full bore... Not to mention landfills. And I don't even want to get into stockyards or manure piles large enough to be a concrete form for a football stadium...
About ain't gonna always be around....... One of the possible TDP feedstocks is old landfills. Or even current ones - we can still excavate those out. They will run out - eventually. But not for 10 to 20 years or more.

Kublikhan wrote:

This is another mistake you have made. You assumed the inedible biomass left behind is trash. This is not the case. The inedible portion of the biomass left behind is not hauled off to landfills.

I never said anything like that. That is why I specify MSW and Aggricultural Waste as two separate categories. As evidenced by the 4.6lbs of MSW per person. As for plastic, we MAY start using recycled plastic in the US. But we have been exporting it to Asia for I don't know how many years - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... tml?page=2. And I shudder to think about the environmental mess that has been causing. Not to mention the mess Ag Waste is causing being plowed back into the fields, causing major environmental problems, http://www.aquatechnology.net/agriculturalwaste.html has the prettiest pictures and graphics.

A mid 90's State of Tennessee article for elementary kids stated we produce over 21 tons of waste per person per year. That was 10 years ago, and everything else I could find keeps talking about that number increasing. A full 51% of that was AG Waste, 38% mining, 8% industry and 3% MWS. I wish my google shei was better as I would love to see what the break down for Ag Waste is. I am beginning to wonder how much of that is wood. If that is the case - even better as dried wood chips yield between 20% and 50%. I know lots of it is being used for electricity, but bio diesel would seem a better use. As for the MSW figures, I didn't get those from CWT. I got those from Green Energy. They have been running a 100 ton MSW/day facility since March 2008. I got the figures in September 2008.

Thanks for the energy breakdown. I notice we both got to 23% oil equivalent. The upshot of your figures is most of the energy is electrical. We don't use oil for electricity in the US.

Someone said something about going to the farmers. Funny you should mention that...... http://www.energy-arizona.org/archive/x ... io-oil.php.

For the moment, I am off in search of better numbers on US waste as I cannot get all the figures to match. Manure plus carcasses is leaving a really big deficit in the numbers. Suggested websites will be greatfully appreciated.

[Ludi]

One of the possible TDP feedstocks is old landfills. Or even current ones - we can still excavate those out. They will run out - eventually. But not for 10 to 20 years or more.

Wow, 10-20 whole years! Neat. So what then?

[Pops]

About ain't gonna always be around....... One of the possible TDP feedstocks is old landfills. Or even current ones - we can still excavate those out.

I agree they will eventually be mined.

But again one comes up against the ROI.

I'm just wondering when some company decides it is worthwhile to make the commitment to chase expensive TDP oil with equally expensive diesel in a volatile market.

Yea, we have wasted lots and some will mine those troves at a point but it seems to me the time for investment in such is growing to a close.

[lonewolf]

... not this turkey shitte again - how many freaking times/ways do we have to debunk this stinking offal? Old turkey gut scams apparently never freaking die ...

[kublikhan]

As for plastic, we MAY start using recycled plastic in the US. But we have been exporting it to Asia for I don't know how many years - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... tml?page=2. And I shudder to think about the environmental mess that has been causing.

This source says even in the days of shipping recycled plastic to China, it was still recycled. And with the high price of oil, there is even more demand to recycle plastic. With new technology, we will probably be seeing even more recycling going forward. This further undermines your argument of using municipal waste for TDP, it does not strengthen your argument.

Not to mention the mess Ag Waste is causing being plowed back into the fields, causing major environmental problems, http://www.aquatechnology.net/agriculturalwaste.html has the prettiest pictures and graphics.

This source confirms much of the waste is used as fertilizer or is already used for fuel. This source is advocating a new processing technology for the animal waste that pollutes rivers to turn into into a high grade organic fertilizer, an alternative to costly chemical fertilizers. I don't see how this strengthens your argument either.

A mid 90's State of Tennessee article for elementary kids stated we produce over 21 tons of waste per person per year. That was 10 years ago, and everything else I could find keeps talking about that number increasing. A full 51% of that was AG Waste, 38% mining, 8% industry and 3% MWS.

Again, even if you minimize the amount of fossil fuel energy spent on processing and transporting the food, it still takes more oil to grow the food than you get out of TDP. You will still come out net oil negative using TDP if your feedstock is AG waste grown using modern agricultural methods. Mining waste cannot be used as a feedstock. Some industrial waste could, but not all. That leaves the 3% of MWS that we already discussed as providing only a tiny fraction of our oil use.

Thanks for the energy breakdown. I notice we both got to 23% oil equivalent. The upshot of your figures is most of the energy is electrical.

Source?

... not this turkey shitte again - how many freaking times/ways do we have to debunk this stinking offal? Old turkey gut scams apparently never freaking die ...

I would not call it a scam. It's a nice way of turning waste into oil. Of course it could never provide more than a fraction of our oil needs, but that does not make it a scam.

[TomSaidak]

Kublikhan wrote:

This further undermines your argument of using municipal waste for TDP, it does not strengthen your argument.

While it one sense I obviously see TDP as valuable, I am more interested in the truth, what ever that may be. When I started posting here, I beleived that TDP could supply about 78% of our current oil consumption. See my welcome post, I came here as much for an education as anything else .

Posting here has changed my thinking. Where I am at numerically is at or about 50% from existing feedstocks. I am trying to figure out ways to verify that figure.

Kublikhan wrote:

This source confirms much of the waste is used as fertilizer or is already used for fuel

It also confirms that much of the fertilizer is WASTED by putting too much of it in the soil - more then the soil can handle. One analogy would be like putting 10lbs of food on your dinner plate and you only eat one pound. The question becomes one of what exactly is TOO much. At this point, easily found facts and figures become rather thin. I'm sure they are out there, but finding them apparently requires better google foo then I have.

We both wrote:

TomSaidak wrote:
Thanks for the energy breakdown. I notice we both got to 23% oil equivalent. The upshot of your figures is most of the energy is electrical.
Source?

I saw a table that I have not been able to relocate that broke US oil consumption by sector. I remember many of the numbers, passenger cars and light trucks use 40%, large trucks use 24 or 26%, Farmers use 6.6% for their machinery. Industry uses 20%. Using math, 23%-6.6% is 16.4%. If we are assuming oil is used, where is it being used? And how exactly is it being used. Nothing I can find suggests that we are using 10%'s or our oil consumption for fertilizer and pesticides. That article said specifically that transportation to the store for sale and transportation to get us to the store and back home was NOT part of the calculation. You yourself said that storage was included. Dunno about you cobber, but no oil is used to refridgerate MY food. I use electricity. Since none of my electricity comes from oil, that part of the energy budget is NOT oil. The article specifically talked about milling and processing to cereal. As far as I know, that is all electrical. No plant is buring oil to do this.

Most of the established recycling for wood and excess manure is for making electricity. I would suggest that this may not be the best use of the materials. We use only a small percentage of wood waste as it is because something on the order of 60% is "unrecoverable". It could turn out that is the gold mine for TDP because it doesn't care if it is buried in something else - the 2nd step in the process is crunching it all up.

Kublikhan wrote:
Again, even if you minimize the amount of fossil fuel energy spent on processing and transporting the food, it still takes more oil to grow the food than you get out of TDP. You will still come out net oil negative using TDP if your feedstock is AG waste grown using modern agricultural methods.

We have not established that yet. It is the crux of the equation. TDP is a pathway to energy. At 6 billion tons AG Waste, using CWT's 10% conversion (10 tons yields 1 ton of oil), you get a whopping 52% of US oil consumption. The question becomes two fold, a) is that a realistic conversion number and b) does using that much AG Waste cause problems for the farming community. We appear to be circling around that.

I do want to clarify one thing. The 10:1 energy ratio is not about putting energy INTO the Ag products. It is about what we do to GET that Ag product. It ignores the product left behind. For every 1/2 lb hamburger/steak you eat, 40 lbs of manure were created, and .15 lb of the carcass was left behind as indedible. The fertilizer does not add one calorie to Ag products. It allows the Ag products to get their energy from the sun. Pesticide does not add one calorie to Ag Products. It makes sure that more calories are available for processing and delivery.

Kublikhan wrote:

....it still takes more oil to grow the food than you get out of TDP. You will still come out net oil negative using TDP if your feedstock is AG waste grown using modern agricultural methods.

Going with the 1/2 burger analogy.......

Lets do the math..

At time of slaughter, your average cow weighs 1260 lbs, is 25 months old, and has produced 54,750 lbs of manure in the last 12 months of its life.
Your (corporate you) 1/2 of hamburger represents .65 lbs of former living cow, and 40.34 lbs of manure. The calorie count at 80% lean for your hamburger is 576 food calories, or 576,000 thermal calories. Manure has 2110 btu/lb WET. At 0.0039683 btu per thermal calorie, 1lb wet manure has 5317138.321 thermal calories in it. At 40.34 lbs of manure left behind by your hamburger, your hamburger left behind 372.4640574 thermal calories per thermal calorie you ate. At the 10:1 ratio, your 1 thermal calorie of hamburger required 10 to thermal calories to make it, and left 362 thermal calories of potential energy behind. So yes, TDP can potentiall extract more oil then was required to produce your food. And yes, to make the calculation I multiplied the food calories by 1000 to compare thermal to thermal. Something I have not been able to confirm was done for the 10:1 ratio often cited in our forums here. This does NOT include the .15 lbs of cow left behind by your 1/2 lb hamburger. I hit my peak math abilities for the day.

Sources include but are not limited to:
http://tammi.tamu.edu/ManurtoEnrgyE428.pdf
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-units-d_664.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_calo ... round_beef
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_manu ... ce_per_day
http://www.herdplus.com/services/herdpl ... report.pdf

[TomSaidak]

Lonewolf wrote:
... not this turkey shitte again - how many freaking times/ways do we have to debunk this stinking offal? Old turkey gut scams apparently never freaking die ...

It is not a scam. As to whether or not it should die...
In the movie Battle of the Bulge, there is a scene where a chaplain starts his sermon to the US troops fighting the battle by saying “Is this trip worth it?”
My purpose in jumping in on this thread is to see whether or not either TDP or CDP is “worth it” and how much it can deliver. Obviously, at this point I feel it is.
Is TDP/CDP “the answer?”
No. Not by itself, and it will never be. As part of a comprehensive strategy, I believe it can be an important factor. It should be clear that just making oil from anything HAS to be coupled with greatly reduced consumption of oil. At this point in time, I do not know how much can be done. A full 80% of our oil consumption goes to transportation. Given the current state of technology, I do not know how much we can reduce that amount, nor how quickly. Forced deployment of PHEV technology can cut that down to 40%, after that, I do not know how much lower we can go. Aviation gains in efficiency would potentially lead to more air travel. I do not know that a PHEV tractor is something we want to do as the extra weight may do nasty things to our farm land. So that would leave 6.6% as untouchable. All electric trains may be more efficient then diesel electrics, but stringing the lines may be problematical. The average 5 wheeler uses a 450 hp engine, but I don’t know what the cost benefit of changing that to HEV would do. At the current state of technology, the cost may just be too high. This is important to the TDP discussion for the obvious reason – the less oil we use, the less oil TDP/CDP will have to replace.
The value for me in all this is determining what the real capacity of TDP/CDP is. I want real numbers. I could take the 3% from MSW Kublikhan calculated, and since MSW only represents 4% of total US waste, argue that means we can still hit 75% from total waste. A reasonable proposition if it was a simple ratio problem. As Kublikhan and others have taken the time to use real numbers, I want to use real numbers in response.
Pending review by you all (thank you very much ), I believe I have demonstrated that a lot of energy does get left behind in the agriculture cycle. Waste does produce more energy then we “put into” it. As Kublikhan has pointed out, a lot of waste has other uses. We have yet to agree on a final number, though I feel we are getting there. While TDP can take an unspecified amount of waste and produce an as yet unidentified amount of oil, we have not reached consensus/agreement at the numbers. I would ask that peeps continue to bear with me and help me answer that question.
My google foo has appeared to have hit its limits. I could use help with coming up the following numbers:
We are producing over 10 tons of “ag waste” a year per person. I have NOT been able to find a breakdown for that. Of that waste, how much exactly is being plowed back into the soil? How much of what is being plowed back is too much for the soil to handle? A large percentage of wood waste is listed as unrecoverable – what the heck does that mean? Is it buried in cement? Soaked in copper green? What does our current paper to recycled paper to what (left in the landfill or recycled again?) exactly?

Once we can agree as to what TDP/CDP can do with existing feedstocks, I will start working at filling in the gap. There may or may not be much to do there. One example is the algae to oil process. In watching Ecopolis, several issues were pointed out. One was getting algae to produce suitable diesel without further petrochemical refining. I have to wonder how much solar energy is wasted doing that? The second issue is processing the algae to get the fuel out of it. That ultimately may be another pathway to TDP/CDP oil. A plant, called kenaf is being suggested as a replacement for wood pulp for paper. It grows 15’ in 5 months. Without fertilizers. That could be another pathway. Before I get headed there, I would like to know how much of a gap to fill. “A lot” will not be a helpful answer.
Another possible future path for TDP/CDP is delaying when we hit peak oil, buying us time to come up with “the answer.” Another reason it would be a useful to pursue is that once we can get away from using oil for transportation, the next step would be to start replacing industrial uses for oil. This would suggest that there is a future for TDP/CDP beyond transitioning transportation.

[dohboi]

I don't have the numbers, but I doubt we are putting more back into the soil than it can take.

Without fossil fuel-based and -fascilitated fertilizers, we will have to put much more back into the soil.

As industrialized society collapses, there will be much less "waste" of any sort. Things will be reused to a much larger extent, and while mining of landfills for various things (in other words living on waste heaps as happens now in much of the third world) will happen more and more, the economics of this will never be very remunerative, as pops notes.

You are obviously convinced that this is the bright, shining path for the near future. Perhaps you have already invested in this in some way and are looking for recruits. If so, you may be wasting your time on this kind of forum. We are mostly confirmed doomers.

[TomSaidak]

As a good teacher, I have put off all my grading until the day before I have to go back to class. I am taking a short break.

Dohboi wrote:

Perhaps you have already invested in this in some way and are looking for recruits. If so, you may be wasting your time on this kind of forum.

Nope, not a single cent. I am interested in finding solutions however.

Dohboi wrote:

We are mostly confirmed doomers.

Really?? I never noticed that......
If I want to reality test a plan, can you think of a better place?

Dohboi wrote:

I don't have the numbers, but I doubt we are putting more back into the soil than it can take.

Yeah, neither of us have numbers on that. There are innumerable sites that mention it is a problem. The EPA is trying to get a handle on it, and that may be part of the problem as it is pushing ranchers/farmers to till it back in as a way of "handling" the problem. A number of sites also make it sound like stockyard wet manure is not being tilled back in. Both sources are causing major run off/water table and NOX problems. I am working on quantifyting it, but I am hitting the limits of my google foo.

As for being doomers, I frankly am not there. There are problems in the future, but not insurmountable ones. My largest concern is that if push comes to shove, this country will turn to coal. For me, THAT is the nightmare scenario to be avoided. I do believe in Peak Oil as a concept, but it comes down to when we will get there. At this point TDP/CDP maybe a major, permanent solution so we completely avoid peak oil, or give us a big enough time break to find the answer. As you pointed out, what kind of solution will also determine how much of an answer it can be.

Pstarr wrote:

TomSaidak where have you been. You've only been a member a week or so. Just discovered peak oil?

If you are referring to the concept of Peak Oil, I have been aware of it for some decades now. If you are referring to just the website, that I only found in the last couple of weeks.

[kublikhan]

I saw a table that I have not been able to relocate that broke US oil consumption by sector. I remember many of the numbers, passenger cars and light trucks use 40%, large trucks use 24 or 26%, Farmers use 6.6% for their machinery. Industry uses 20%. Using math, 23%-6.6% is 16.4%. If we are assuming oil is used, where is it being used? And how exactly is it being used. Nothing I can find suggests that we are using 10%'s or our oil consumption for fertilizer and pesticides.

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture. In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994). Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
· 19% for the operation of field machinery
· 16% for transportation
· 13% for irrigation
· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
· 05% for crop drying
· 05% for pesticide production
· 08% miscellaneous

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold. Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system.

Eating Fossil Fuels