Aug 24 2010
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“ The fundamental fact is that we have an inescapable choice in our food system: use small amounts of energy, or vast amounts of land. By spending not much energy to make fertilizer and run machinery — and trivial amounts of energy to ship the stuff we grow from the places it grows best — we have spared and conserved hundreds of millions of acres of land that otherwise would have had to be brought into agricultural production. That’s land that protects wildlife, that adds scenic beauty, and it’s also often land that is highly erodible or otherwise unsuitable for farming. Let’s not forget that in the old days of local agriculture, vast amounts of unsuitable land were plowed, especially in the Northeast and Appalachia, with truly devastating effects on soil erosion.
— Stephen Budiansky on the not-so-hidden cost of lower-yield agriculture.
