Our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.
—President Barack Obama, as quoted by Michael Pollan during his Long Now talk.
Think about this: It takes up to 55 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy.
Go watch.
Citation needed. I’ve heard 6:1, not 55:1.
He gave a range of 10:1 to 55:1, depending on the food source. You could always ask Mr. Pollan.
Where does the 6:1 number come from?