Dining Out On Oil

The next time you and your family sit down to dinner, consider this: it currently takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food. In fact, it takes 7-10 calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to the dinner plate.

The food industry burns about one-fifth of all petroleum consumed in the United States — that’s about same amount used by all cars. Much of this isn’t simply fuel to run tractors or semi’s to transport vegetables or meat. It begins with how the industrial revolution of the food chain has changed how food is produced. It begins with cheap, abundant, commodity corn.

Commodity corn has taken a sunlight-fueled organism and turned it into a fossil fuel machine. Every bushel of commodity corn requires the equivalent of one and one-third gallons of oil to grow it — 50 gallons per acre. Corn is the most widely produced feed grain in the United States with around 80 million acres of land are planted to corn. That’s nearly 100 million barrels of oil dedicated simply to growing corn using fossil fuel-based synthetic fertilizers, fossil-fuel based pesticides, and fossil-fuel driven machinery.

Because of its availability and low-cost, cattle are are fed a concentrated high-corn diet which produces rapid weight. Petroleum is one of the most important ingredients in the production of meat. Assuming that a steer in its lifetime eats 25 lbs of corn per day and reaches a weight of 1,200 lbs it will have consumed the equivalent of 35 gallons of oil — nearly a barrel.  Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), where most livestock is raised, is virtually city built atop sea of petroleum.

The modern, productive farm is a tremendous accomplishment that has allowed millions of people to be fed through the labors of a small group of farmers and others. However, by relying on fossil fuels instead of the sun for calories, one might want consider the story of the meal: where was it grown, how was it raised, where did it come from — what did it truly cost? A dinner may seem cheap and reasonable, but often its cost can be hidden.

If you are interested in learning more, here are a few links:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals – “What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.” Note: many of the above-mentioned statistics come this Michael Pollan book.

Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil – “Today the food system is even more reliant on cheap crude oil. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase.”

Fossil Fuel and Energy Use – “Conventional food production and distribution requires a tremendous amount of energy—one study conducted in 2000 estimated that ten percent of the energy used annually in the United States was consumed by the food industry. Yet for all the energy we put into our food system, we don’t get very much out”

The Oil We Eat – “We learn as children that there is no free lunch, that you don’t get something from nothing, that what goes up must come down, and so on”