THE TIGHTENING CONFLICT: POPULATION, ENERGY USE, AND THE ECOLOGY OF AGRICULTURE
- Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel David Pimentel
- October 1, 1993
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THE TIGHTENING CONFLICT: POPULATION, ENERGY USE, AND THE ECOLOGY OF AGRICULTURE
An NPG Forum Paper
by Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel
October 1993
For the time being, the United States and much of the industrial world have achieved very high agricultural production and low food costs on the basis of extremely intensive use of fossil energy. Some industrializing countries, such as China, are forced by demographic pressure to follow suit. It is a trap. Such agriculture devours its own base, and the fossil fuel era is drawing to a close, with petroleum likely to be the first to go. The United States, with oil resources amounting to about 15 years’ consumption and already dependent on imports for half its oil, is not very well placed for the transition. China is worse off. The situation calls for a renewed respect for the natural systems that support agriculture and for population policies that bring demand into line with the ability of the Earth to produce food on a sustainable basis.
Mario Giampietro is a senior researcher at the Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione, Rome, and presently a visiting scholar at Cornell University, where David Pimentel is a professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
In the last half-century, the technological development of agriculture has dramatically changed the performance of farming. The changes have been both positive and negative: on the positive side a more stable and abundant food supply has resulted; on the negative side more environmental degradation, more dependence on fossil energy, and lower energy efficiency. Understanding the reason for these changes requires exploring the relationship between technological development, population, natural resources, and environmental sustainability for development. For this reason, in this paper, we will discuss the use of energy in agriculture and its relation to the performance of the economy (in part I), and the issues of future development, standards of living, and a sustainable environment related to population pressure (in part II).
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