Would you like the crude oil dressing with your tomato salad, or how about the coal-crusted sea bass? If only it were so easy to see the effect of fossil fuels on food production, even environmentally friendly foodies might find their lunch turning to ash in their mouth.
The global food system is more dependent on fossil fuels than we tend to recognise. They power the tractors that plough fields and the pumps that suck up groundwater to irrigate. They are used to make fertiliser and other agrochemicals. They propel the trucks, trains and ships that transport food. In fact, we may as well think of ourselves as eating fossil fuels.
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So says energy scholar Vaclav Smil (see, Energy expert Vaclav Smil on how to feed the world without trashing it) who has done some calculations to illustrate this point. He estimates producing an average baguette requires the equivalent of about 30 millilitres of diesel fuel. A kilogram of roast chicken requires over 300 millilitres. Surprisingly, a kilogram of tomatoes cultivated in a heated greenhouse and trucked far away requires twice as much diesel as the bird.
For a healthier planet, we must find a way to stop 'eating' fossil fuels
Seafood, especially farmed fish (see, Why farming fish is more unsustainable than catching them in the wild), is often even worse due to the inefficiency of being fed on smaller, wild-caught fish. Producing a kilogram of farmed sea bass uses a shocking 2 litres of diesel, according to Smil.
This intensive use of energy from fossil fuels helps us produce a global food surplus. It is also a major reason why agriculture generates around a third of greenhouse gas emissions and is a dominant driver of biodiversity loss. For a healthier planet, we must find a way to stop 鈥渆ating鈥� fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, ending that dependency will be even tougher than decarbonising the power grid or transportation.
But there are a thousand things we could be doing better now. Slashing food waste should be a top priority. Government should support farming practices that conserve carbon-storing soil and use water and fertiliser better. And we should eat much less meat. If we don鈥檛, we are stuck seasoning each bite with diesel.
