It’s too bad we can’t simply drink petroleum directly (Pollan)
October 13th, 2007 | Published in Agriculture, Energy, Quotes
Every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it—or around fifty gallons of oil per acre of corn. (Some estimates are much higher.) Put another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce a calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the Naylor farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every calorie of energy invested. From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it’s too bad we can’t simply drink the petroleum directly.
–Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), p. 46