I blog when I have something useful to say. For that reason I sometimes go long periods of no posts. Here is a stunning picture of a topic near and dear to my heart. The picture c/o National Geographic and the website on sustainable AG says it all. It shows in pictorial form the amount of energy used from fossil sources to produce a given amount of beef flesh for human consumption. AS the website states, the fossil energy comes from many sources, not just oil and so oil was chosen as the proxy for the sources. The article states that 26 units of fossil energy is needed to produce one unit of “beef” energy. I would like to source this research to verify these numbers as the previous data I have in hand states the ratio more like 7 or 8 to one. A graph from the site is included sowing the correlation from IEA and other sources of the correlation of food to oil price which I have long suspected but never have previously seen in such graphic form. It is obvious that this has societal, financial and ethical implications. I suspect this graph would only be valid in an energy profligate big ag type of agriculture but perhaps not. The website is here. Click on the images to enlarge them.
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