I wrote sometime back in October about the conference, Back to reality? A conference in Montana and the coming election., I attended at the Mountain Sky Ranch in Montana. This has been an event held every other year for a while now, but it was my first time. The group has a very pretentious title: "The FOCers". FOC stands for Friends of Charlie, Charles Sing, Professor of Human Genetics at the U. of Michigan being the instigator organizer. Charlie sends us things about sustainability in agriculture, energy, etc. from time to time. I just received this and want to share it:CU study Eating less, eating local and eating better could slash U.S. energy use, CU study finds
By Susan Lang <mailto:ssl4@cornell.edu> Look below the break to see what they found.
The link above takes you to the Cornell University study. It is short and sweet and won't take long to read.
Eating less, eating local and eating better could slash U.S. energy use, CU study finds
By Susan Lang <mailto:ssl4@cornell.edu>
How much energy we use to produce food could be cut in half if
Americans ate less and ate local foods, wolfed down less meat, dairy
and junk food, and used more traditional farming methods, says a new
Cornell study.
First of all I hope this is not news to anyone. I have been reading about it in a variety of studies for some time now and, although I can't recall details, they all seem to be saying the same thing. Meat and dairy production is a huge energy consumer, transportation of food is as well and finally, the use of fertilizer rather than other methods is wasteful. What we in the FOCer's group wonder about is why this information is not more widely known. Here's what the Cornell group claims:
'We could reduce the fossil energy used in the U.S. food system by
about 50 percent with relatively simple changes in how we produce,
process, package, transport and consume our food,' said David
Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and agriculture in the College
of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell.
Pimentel's analysis was co-authored with five former Cornell undergraduates: Sean Williamson, Courtney Alexander, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Caitlin Kontak and Steven Mulkey, all Cornell Class of 2007. These people were all in Pimentel's Environmental Policy course in 2006. The study is published in the academic journal Human Ecology.
According to Pimentel, about 19 percent of the total fossil fuel used in
this country goes into the food system. That turns out to be about the same amount we use to fuel cars. It seems clear that if he is correct, changes in the food system could reduce energy consumption. Here is a summarry of what the researchers recommend (go to the link for details):
* Eat less and cut down on junk food. Americans, on average,
consume about 50 percent more calories than recommended by the
federal government for optimal health and get one-third of their
calories from junk food.
* Eat less meat and dairy.
* Eat more locally grown food.
* Use more traditional farming methods.
Pimentel's team also shows how using methods to reduce soil erosion, irrigation and pesticide use, through such things as crop rotation, manure and cover crops, could cut the total energy now used in crop production.
Is this a fiction? I think not. The use of our land in general has not been seen as a problem by many until recently. the ownership of property, if you will recall, was one of the major differences between the Native Americans whose land we appropriated and the Colonial way of thinking. The extent of differencve here is hard to comprehend. Many of the treaties we had them sign had this difficulty built into them. So issues about land use and ownership go back a long way. When the human population was sparse there were no worries. Now the differences loom up under banners like "sustainability" and even "survival".
There is much more to learned about these issues. More than that, this is still another case where when we dig below the surface of our problems, it is our own habits and excesses that raise their ugly head.
We have met the enemy and he is us!