The Oil Drum

In looking at the findings of H.R. 80, the Self-Powered Farm Act, it seems to me that it is not the agricultural worker productivity that is the most direct effect of the green revolution but rather the land productivity. Mechanization is separate from the understanding of fertilizer, development of new crop varieties and methods of disease and pest control and mechanization has had some effects that require mitigation. Soil erosion and compaction which grow with mechanization together with loss of fisheries in esturaries like the Chesapeake Bay from mechanized fertilization methods have needed responses like no-till or carefully timed application of fertilizer. Mechanization has led to a reduction in farm diversity and an increase in corruption in companies like ADM.

There are fossil energy inputs in both mechanization and chemical inputs, but only the chemical inputs boost the per acre yield. Mechanization simply reduces the number of family farms.

The goal of making farms energy self-sufficient using biomass feedstocks pretty much has to cut into food production. The EROEI of corn ethanol (1.3) means that a farm can never reach the factor of 2 goal in the bill even if it only produces corn for ethanol. A method with an EROEI of 4 requires half the land to be used for energy, cutting the food supply in half. On the other hand, wind farms or solar collectors can use land more efficiently for energy production and may not cut into food production nearly as much.

There is a question though if it makes sense to require energy self-sufficiency for a farm and not also do so for a home or a business.

One further way to look at this: Iowa is devoting about a quarter of its corn crop to making around 2 billion gallons of ethanol or about 160 billion MJ of energy a year. The installed wind capacity in Iowa is about 1.3 GW and this represents about about 0.6% of Iowa's wind potential. But, already, wind is producing 12 billion MJ/yr in Iowa (30% capacity factor). So, if Iowa used just 10% of its wind potential, it would produce as much useful energy as using all of its corn for ethanol since ethanol is burned at about 30% efficiency.

Not all of Iowa has class 3 or better wind, yet in terms of energy production, the state would do better with wind than with ethanol. Does it make any sense to say to the less windy farm that it has to make ethanol even though plenty of energy is available from the windier farm in the same state?

Energy self-sufficiency may not have the farm as a fundemental unit.

Chris