EddieMill’s Recent Comments

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  Energy and organic agriculture

  Great--

  Here's your next project: how does the choice to choose organically grown produce impact climate change emissions?

  Food produced in a sustainable way does not just impact local environment in improving water quality, soil quality, etc.  It also uses significantly less energy to produce the same amount of food.  Remember, the energy source to grow food is ultimately the Sun, but much of the energy of our modern agriculture system relies on fertilizers (made from natural gas), machinery, and relies on pesticides (from petroleum) to produce.  Nearly 10 calories of fossil energy go into production and transport of 1 calorie of food, in a system that in 1940 used 2.3 calories per calorie. As Michael Pollan put it, "we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases."

  In a preliminary model I did, I came up with about a 70% energy savings in a smallholder organic farm.  This is a huge deal!  This means that we may not have to cut back or change our consumption patterns to fight climate change, it may be as easily as demanding better produced food from the source.

  What do you think?

  -Eddie Miller
  Boston University
  emiller@bu.eduOn Roni Neff explains how the media miss the story on food's connection to climate change posted 1 year ago 5 Responses