[XCSSA] ROEI: Your Tummy and a SUV in the Food Pantry, the 10x Ratio

[xcssa@xcssa.org]

Humm, regarding Food and Petro energy ratios  -- Return on Energy
Investment (ROEI) for your stomach turned back 200 years ... might
be a little hungry ...

> Corn/Grass/"Grow-it" Based Ethenol:
> Or any agricultural based hydro-carbon source = bad ju ju.  If we 
> should ever become dependant upon such "fuel crops".. all it would 
> take would be one big drought, fungus infestations (natural or 
> terrorist launched) creating one bad harvest.. and our entire 
> economy could take a big dive.  Why not just turn
> the clock back 200 years and go back to horse & buggy?!

Yes, a 100% fuel crop dependency would be trickey.  Americans
have 70+ years of food infrastructure build-out for our eating
interests/habits/desires.  The mega-BTU/kilowatt-hours required 
for just one bag of cheetos is amazing ... 

Realize that for every food calorie you eat -- in America -- it
takes about 10x calories of other energy -- petro, hydro, nuclear,
solar, whatever -- to get that calorie to your tummy.  See:

http://www.solartoday.org/2006/mar_apr06/wake_up.htm

Salient Quote #1:

"In the United States, food travels more than 1,000 miles on 
 average, requiring over 10 times the petroleum energy to 
 produce than its solar energy food value (calories). As a 
 practical matter, we are eating mostly petroleum."

And See:

http://www.solartoday.org/2005/july_aug05/chairs_cornerJA05.htm

Salient Quote #2:

"Then I read an astonishing statistic: It takes about 10 fossil fuel 
 calories to produce each food calorie in the average American diet. 
 So if your daily food intake is 2,000 calories, then it took about 
 20,000 calories to grow that food and get it to you. In more familiar 
 units, this means that growing, processing and delivering the food 
 consumed by a family of four each year requires the equivalent of 
 almost 34,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, or more than 930 gallons of
 gasoline. (For comparison, the average U.S. household annually 
 consumes about 10,800 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or about 
 1,070 gallons of gasoline.) In other words, we use about as much 
 energy to grow our food as to power our homes or fuel our cars. "

"Overall, about 15 percent of U.S. energy use goes to supplying  
 Americans with food, split roughly equally between the production 
 of crops and livestock, and food processing and packaging. David 
 Pimentel, a professor of ecology and agricultural science at 
 Cornell University, has estimated that if all of humanity ate the 
 way Americans eat, we would exhaust all known fossil fuel reserves
 in just seven years. "
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