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Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture |  | Author: Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 387573
Media: Paperback
Pages: 125
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0865715653
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.19
EAN: 9780865715653
ASIN: 0865715653
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The miracle of the Green Revolution was made possible by cheap fossil fuels to supply crops with artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. Estimates of the net energy balance of agriculture in the United States show that ten calories of hydrocarbon energy are required to produce one calorie of food. Such an imbalance cannot continue in a world of diminishing hydrocarbon resources.
Eating Fossil Fuels examines the interlinked crises of energy and agriculture and highlights some startling findings:
• The worldwide expansion of agriculture has appropriated fully 40 percent of the photosynthetic capability of this planet.
• The Green Revolution provided abundant food sources for many, resulting in a population explosion well in excess of the planet’s carrying capacity.
• Studies suggest that without fossil fuel-based agriculture, the United States could only sustain about two-thirds of its present population. For the planet as a whole, the sustainable number is estimated to be about two billion.
Concluding that the effect of energy depletion will be disastrous without a transition to a sustainable, re-localized agriculture, the book draws on the experiences of North Korea and Cuba to demonstrate stories of failure and success in the transition to non-hydrocarbon-based agriculture. It urges strong grassroots activism for sustainable, localized agriculture and a natural shrinking of the world’s population.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 worldwide famine or sustainability? August 15, 2007
Lesley Thomas (the ether)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is one of the best books I've read in the last several years on the theme of peak oil. It's an easy read, a fast read, and meticulously researched. What this jaded reader found most informative and startling were the descriptions of the recent agricultural breakdown of North Korea and Cuba after they lost access to Soviet and Chinese oil. North K's situation was horrific and remains so (3-6 million dead from famine, and just today I read about more severe flooding there, taking out all their infrastructure, this flooding exacerbated by their lack of oil since they have to cut down their forests for fuel, a desperate tactic grimly outlined in Eating Fossil Fuel). In contrast, Cuba's is a story of hope, ingenuity, community, and is pretty uplifting in how they feed themselves, though many Americans would find their diet of nigh zero meat and dairy protein upsetting. At least they live, no thanks to the embargo. Whlie North Korea dies, miserably. Which way will we go? Everyone should read this book and take it to heart, NOW.
Also highly recommended for those who like to learn from history: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and for fictionThe Greenlanders
By Lesley Thomas, author of Flight of the Goose
We Need to Bring Back the Victory Garden February 27, 2008
MerryRose (East Haddam, CT USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I wish I had read this book last year, I would already have prepared a vegetable garden to plant this spring. I know about Peak Oil, etc. but this book really got my attention. It provides a clear explanation of how dependent our food supply is on fossil fuels. Higher and higher food prices are in store for us, soon. And that's before we start to see food shortages. The agricultural land in the U.S. can only support about 200 million people, and we have almost 300 million. Plus this agriculture is heavily dependent on oil (to run the irrigation pumps, harvest, process and transport the products), and natural gas (to make fertilizer..who knew?). In a politically unstable world of rising fuel prices, not to mention a future without those fuels, do we really want to rely on imported food to feed our nation? Or go to war over food? This book outlines the problems and has an action plan and extensive list of resources to help solve the problems. Yes! There are things you can do to avert this crisis, whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country.
Spade up those (organic) Victory Gardens, folks, and learn how to provide and preserve at least some of your own food. Support your local food producers. This year. You'll be glad you did.
This is an important book. September 9, 2007
B. Pfeiffer
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a must read for everyone. It carries an important and sonewhat frightening message.
The Wane Of Industrial Agriculture? April 29, 2007
Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States)
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
As a farmer, albeit part time, I am concerned about rising fuel prices, and other costs of production, nearly all energy related. In this book author Dale Allen Pfeiffer reviews possible consequences of the coming worldwide peaking of the production of conventional oil. These consequences may be dire and not limited to transportation, also affecting agriculture as we know it. Industrial agriculture with it's vast corporate interests tends to be very fuel inefficient, which includes all sorts of things such as tilling, fertilizer, perticides, harvesting, processing, transportation to markets, and more. When peak oil hits food may become much more expensive.
Do we have time to correct this, as a move to a sustainable food production system would allow? Pfeiffer writes to this question to some length, the jury is still out on it. He does write that most oil experts expect about a two percent decline per year of oil after peak oil hits, that would allow a transition, however rough, to a more energy efficient food production infrastructure. Pfeiffer gives the example of North Korea, where many have starved after their oil supply was mostly cut off after the Soviet Union collapsed, very poor planning there, then gives the example of Cuba, which also lost most of it's supply of Soviet oil, and how they successfully overcame that and converted to a sustainable agriculture system. North Korea and Cuba remain exceptions, Pfeiffer writes, as they abruptly lost most of their oil stream. The rest of the world will face a more gradual decline (my guess, sometime between now and 2025 peak oil will hit). Anyway, Pfeiffer writes that production and consumption need to be closer to each other, with local communities and individuals participating in food production. This is obviously a large and difficult problem to solve. There is also discussion in the book about corporations with their special interests which could be a problem to overcome. In the last chapter Pfeiffer describes twelve 'fun' activities if you want to become an activist. Farmers' markets, for example, are a good way to sell local produce to local people, eliminating the middleman, and overall more energy efficient than buying food shipped thousands of miles, Pfeiffer writes. But in reality the marketplace will determine the real winners and losers here, with convenience and quality also considerations, none of this is stressed in the book. Overall, though, Pfeiffer gives readers a great introduction to a subject that will probably get much more attention in the future.
good concise review of the coming crisis in agriculture April 25, 2007
John G. Curington
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
"Eating Fossil Fuels," by David Allen Pfeiffer, is a fascinating review of the upcoming crisis in production of food for our population. He starts with a quick discussion of land degradation and water degradation, and then goes into the data behind the use of fossil fuels in modern agriculture. With the approaching decline in global oil production, our ability to produce food will be severely compromised.
For anyone who reads much about "peak oil" or modern agricultural policy, this will come as no surprise. Pfeiffer's book shines, though, in his discussions of the examples of South Korea and Cuba. It is fascinating to consider the different paths taken by each of these countries during their politically-imposed sudden drop in oil availability.
Pfeiffer goes finishes with a discussion of sustainable agriculture and some ideas for what a concerned activist might do.
On the whole, I learned much from the short, well-written book about an important topic.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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