ABSTRACT
The agricultural “modernization” of the last several decades has been largely a process of putting ever greater amounts of energy into agriculture in order to increase harvestable yields. But most of this additional energy input comes directly or indirectly from nonrenewable fossil fuels, a form of industrial-cultural energy (Chapter 20 of Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems). This reliance on industrialcultural energy over biological-cultural energy is a major factor in shifting our energy “balance sheet” into the red: for many crops, we invest more energy than we get back as energy in food. Because of this unfavorable return on our energy investment, coupled with our dependence on nonrenewable energy sources, agriculture cannot be sustained into the long-term future without fundamental changes in how we view and use energy (Chapter 20 of Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems).
