- some initial background to this strand of the day
You may be interested in reading this from 2005:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5045
Or this, from http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/:
“Conventional food production and distribution require 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. A 2002 study from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that, using our current system, three calories of energy were needed to create one calorie of edible food. And that was on average. Some foods take far more, for instance grain-fed beef, which requires thirty-five calories for every calorie of beef produced. What’s more, the John Hopkins study didn’t include the energy used in processing and transporting food. Studies that do estimate that it takes an average of seven to ten calories of input energy to produce one calorie of food.”
If you are keen on this theme, have a look at the highly entertaining and readable book by novelist Barbara Kingsolver “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”. She and her family tried - for a year - to eating mainly food that they had either grown themselves or that was locally produced.
In this occasional blog I will be passing on information about the organisation of the event as well as give some background to the themes which the day is about. The event will be one (so far fairly rare) opportunity for us to tackle these issues from the ground up as a community, mainly through sharing and learning together. We will have a chance to be exposed to some of the foremost thinkers and doers in the field of climate change, peak oil and the future of our planet. Let's make good use of their contributions and offerings.