m83.    How do we produce food?

Industrialized agriculture uses lots of fossil fuels, water, fertilizers, and pesticides to produce huge amounts of one crop or animal for sale. Plantation agriculture grows bananas, sugar, coffee, and cacao for export. Traditional subsistence agriculture produces enough food for a family’s survival with a small amount to sell or put aside. Traditional intensive agriculture requires intensive human input to get a higher yield for family use and for sale.

The green revolution involved the planting of a monoculture plus large amounts of fertilizers, water, and pesticides, to produce an over abundance of crops and to improve the species. In the U.S., about 10 units of fossil fuel energy are needed to produce one unit of food energy. If humans stopped eating meat and other factors remained the same, the world's fossil fuel reserves would last an additional 260 years.

e01.    What is biodiversity?

e12.    Where are tropical forests?

e17.    How do organisms use matter?

e22.    What do we eat? 

e23.    How is soil important to plants?

g17.    Is some matter more useful than other matter?