The EROI of agriculture, its use by the Via Campesina

1
The EROI of agriculture, its use by the Via
Campesina

• Origins of this paper
• Work on energy and agriculture (from Podolinsky
  1880 to Pimentel 1973 and beyond).
• The CEECEC project Teaching and Learning
  Ecological Economics with Civil Society
  Organizations (2008-10) www.ceecec.net

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Are the following statements useful for agrarian
activists?
Biofuels have a low EROI, energy return on
energy input Biofuels contain much virtual
water the water used to grow them Biofuels
increase the HANPP (human appropriation of net
primary production of biomass) to the detriment
of other species
3
History of social metabolism

• Haberl, Helmut (2001) The Energetic Metabolism
  of Societies, Part I Accounting Concepts. In
  Journal of Industrial Ecology 5 (1), pp. 11-33.
• Haberl, Helmut (2001) The Energetic Metabolism
  of Societies, Part II Empirical Examples. In
  Journal of Industrial Ecology 5 (2), pp. 71-88.

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History of social metabolism

• Fischer-Kowalski, Marina Walter Hüttler
  Society's Metabolism. The Intellectual History of
  Material Flow Analysis, Part I and II. In
  Journal of Industrial Ecology.

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The EROI

• Energy return on (energy) investment
• Hall, Charles A. S., Cutler J. Cleveland, Robert
  K. Kaufmann (1986) Energy and Resource Quality.
  The Ecology of the Economic Process. New York.
  Wiley Interscience.

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Applications of EROI

• E.g. the extraction of Alberta oil sands what
  is the ratio between the energy obtained and the
  energy spent? Much lower than in average oil
  extraction.
• Agriculture can be seen as a system of
  transformation of energy. What are the energy
  inputs into agriculture (not counting sun energy,
  that is free) and what is the output?

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The EROI of agriculture

• When Pimentel et al in 1973 calculated the EROI
  of agricultural systems (the acronym was not yet
  invented), they showed that the energy efficiency
  of modern agriculture was declining compared to
  traditional agriculture.
• Agriculture had been a source of endosomatic
  energy for humankind.
• Modern agriculture consumed more energy than it
  produced!!!
• There was already some research on energy in
  agriculture in traditional agriculture, by
  anthropologists (e.g. Roy Rappaport, Pigs for the
  Ancestors, 1967).

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The first calculation of the EROI of agriculture

• As I explained in Ecological Economics Energy,
  Environment and Society (1987) and before that in
  an article in the JPS of 1982, S.A. Podolinsky
  (1850-91) had published in 1880 accounts for
  French agriculture on the energy input/output
  ratio in different systems (forests, natural
  pastures, sown pastures, wheat).
• In the input he included human and animal work,
  counted in kcal, comparing this to the output,
  also in kcal. He mentioned guano but did not give
  the energy-equivalent.

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Podolinsky

• His main point was that the total kcal per
  hectare harvested increased when we put in more
  energy in agriculture in the form of human work
  and work of animals directed by humans.
• Agriculture was a producer of energy.
• He did not foresee that the energy input into
  agriculture would increase so much.
• He sent his work to Marx in 1880.

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Podolinsky

• Podolinsky also mentioned the difference between
  using the flow of solar energy and the stock of
  energy in coal. The task of labour was to
  increase the accumulation of solar energy on
  earth rather than the simple transformation into
  work of energy already accumulated on earth. Work
  done with coal was inevitably accompanied by a
  great dissipation of heat-energy into space.
• The energy productivity of a coalminer was much
  larger than that a farmer could obtain, but this
  energy surplus from coal was transitory he
  wrote.

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Engels reaction to Podolinsky

• if one chooses, one can translate into a
  physical language (ins Physikalische übersetzen)
  the old economic fact that all industrial
  producers have to live from the products of
  agriculture, cattle raising, hunting,and fishing
  but there is hardly much to be gained from
  doing so.
• Engels also wrongly wrote that the energy value
  of a hammer, a screw or a needle calculated
  according to the costs of production is an
  impossible quantity, concluding In my opinion
  it is absolutely impossible to try and express
  economic relations in physical magnitudes.

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A missed chance

• Engels negative reaction to Podolinskys work,
  and Marxs silence from 1880 to the end of his
  life in 1883 may be seen as a missed change for
  an ecological-energetics Marxism.
• Actually Podolinskys work is relevant
• not only in the Marxist context.

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A tradition of thought, Vernadsky

• Podolinskys work on energy and agriculture
  received Vernadskys approval. In a section of La
  Géochimie (1924) Vernadsky wrote about several
  authors (Felix Auerbach, John Joly) who explained
  life as a process which used energy and reversed
  or slowed down the dissipation of energy.
• He then added a memorable phrase Podolinsky had
  studied the energetics of life and tried to apply
  his findings to the study of the economy
  (Vernadsky, 1924 334-5).

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H.T. Odums farming with petroleum, 1970

• Since the 1940s, ecologists have published on the
  flow of energy in ecosystems. There was a Russian
  tradition before that.
• Raymond Lindeman's classic paper on energy flow
  in ecosystems of 1942, helped by G. Evelyn
  Hutchinson, at Yale Univ.

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Arguments in favour of the peasantry

• Via Campesina is a peasant and small farmer
  International. Members MST in Brazil etc, famous
  activists Rafael Alegría, José Bové, Joao Pedro
  Stedile
• 17 April, first time there is a Peasants Day.
• Main objetive Food sovereignty is the right of
  individuals and governments to choose the way
  they produce and consume food while respecting
  our livelihoods, and policies that support this
  choice.

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Via Campesina and energy in agriculture

• Faced with global warming, false solutions are
  promoted (such as agrofuels from monocultures
  including tree plantations), which undermine food
  sovereignty.In fact, industrial agriculture is
  one of the main drivers of climate change,
  carrying food around the world, imposing
  industrial forms of production (mechanization,
  intensification, use of agrochemicals,
  monoculture ...), destroying biodiversity and its
  ability to capture carbon,
• transforming agriculture from a producer of
  energy into an energy consumer.

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Agrofuels

• Via Campesina is aware that agrofuels have a low
  EROI.
• Via Campesina is aware that agriculture has
  become a consumer of energy and not a
  producer of energy.
• They say that feeding cars instead of people is
  insanity.
• This is remarkable in a peasant movement that
  should be pleased with the increased demand of
  agricultural products for the new agrofuel market.

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Via Campesina solutions

• Small scale agriculture, which is labor
  intensive and uses little energy and can
  actually help stop the effects of climate change.
  A genuine agrarian reform to strengthen
  small-scale agriculture, promote food production
  as the primary land use, and consider food as a
  basic human right that should not be treated as a
  commodity. Local food production that ends the
  unnecessary transport of food and ensure that
  what comes to our table is safe, fresh and
  nutritious. Stop patterns of production and
  consumption that promote waste and unnecessary
  consumption by a minority of humanity, while
  hundreds of millions of people still suffer
  hunger and deprivation.

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In summary

• Via Campesina does not quote Pimentel, nor
  Podolinsky, does not even quote Martinez-Alier or
  anybody else.
• Via Campesina clearly explains in its documents
  that the EROI of agriculture has decreased (not
  using -yet- the acronym), and this becomes an
  argument against agrofuels, one more argument in
  favour of the peasantry and food sovereignty.

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Not only energy matters, matter matters too
(N.Georgescu-Roegen)

• Via Campesina could use other arguments for Food
  Sovereignty, e.g. peak Phosphorous.
• They could also use not only the pesticide
  threadmill but the transgenic threadmill
• (R.Binimelis et al, in Geoforum, 2009,
  referring to newly developed resistance to
  Glyphosate from Sorghum halepense, a weed, in
  Argentinas soybean fields).

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A postcript on Guano, Liebig, Marx, and
Neo-Malthusianism

• Marx and Engels were one generation younger
  than the agricultural chemists (Liebig, 1803-73,
  Boussingault, 1802-87) who published their
  researches on the cycles of plant nutrients
  (phosphorous, nitrogen, potassium), influenced by
  the threat of decreasing agricultural yields and
  the wholesale imports of guano after 1840mainly
  from Peru.
• The analyses of the composition of guano, and
  also of other manures and fertilizers well known
  to farmers (bones, for instance), laid the
  foundations for agricultural chemistry.

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Stoffwechsel

• Marx found Liebigs writings interesting because
  because
• - he described the natural conditions of
  agricultural fertility and their undermining by
  capitalist agriculture
• - he foresaw the development of the productive
  forces by the fertilizer industry. This was
  useful for the polemics against Malthus.

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Marx and Malthus

• Marx wrote to Engels on 13 February 1866 that
  Liebigs agricultural chemistry was more
  important for the discussion on decreasing
  returns than all the economists put together.
• This must be interpreted in this sense the
  economists talked about decreasing returns in the
  intensive margin but these could be overcome by
  fertilizers.

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Was Marx right in dismissing decreasing returns?

• It would seen so, but energy accounting of
  agriculture shows that there is a decreasing
  efficiency in the use of energy in modern
  agriculture.
• Pimentels work of 1973 helped the birth of
  ecological economics. From a physical point of
  view, modern agriculture was less productive.

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Was Marx right in attacking Malthus?

• Yes, in a way. (Malthus thought that improving
  the situation of the poor was counterproductive).
• No, because Marxists did not support bottom-up,
  feminist Neo-Malthusianism of the 1900s as much
  as they should have (e.g. Emma Goldman).
• Cf. Francis Ronsin, La grève des ventres
  Propaganda néo-malthusienne et baisse de la
  natalité en France, XIXeXXe siècles (Paris
  Aubier, 1980