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| One of 4 trays of seedlings. |
It’s always good to broaden
your horizons, especially when it comes to saving energy. While I focus on
buildings it’s good to be aware of the other parts of life that impact energy
consumption and the environment. I also like food fresh from the garden.
How can a backyard garden
save energy? I lifted a paragraph from the Sustainable
Table website which covers the
basics.
Conventional food production and distribution
requires 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.
(Note for the Nerd: 1 Btu
equals 252 calories.)
If you bypass the
supermarkets and food factories you can turn that formula around. Whether you
plant a large scale garden or just grow a few herbs and vegetables in containers
you can eliminate the bulk of the fossil fuel used and take advantage of one of the most
efficient solar collectors available, leaves.
The net gain (food calories
available/fossil fuel input) varies by crop, but using seeds you will save
transportation energy (lighter, less bulky to transport) and if you use natural
fertilizer and/or compost that you till in by hand you can easily get more
calories of energy out than you put in. The sun supplies the balance.
The real bonus of course is
the food, you get to select what you grow and the freshness makes the tastes
sublime. You will never taste a better tomato than the one that you pull from
the vine and eat still hot from the sun.
If you’re not inclined to
garden there are other options to get fresh local foods. The USDA has a searchable database of farmers markets. You might be surprised at
what’s just down the road.
You could by a share in a
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) organization and get a weekly supply of
fresh veggies throughout the growing season. Here in NH, and I’m sure
elsewhere, there are winter markets for locally produced bake goods and some
greenhouse/cold frame grown crops. I’m not sure what the energy penalty is for
greenhouse operation, but it could conceivably still be better than flying food
in from South America.
