this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 38 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

It's not just fertilizer:

it takes about 7.3 units of (primarily) fossil energy to produce one unit of food energy

Assessing the sustainability of the US food system: a life cycle perspective

With all the fertilizer, heavy equipment and agricultural practices the food production today is very inefficient from an energy perspective.

Without cheap, abundant energy available the whole food production system is not sustainable

[–] kungen@feddit.nu 21 points 2 days ago

Exactly. The Swedish government or something did some study recently to determine if we'd be able to be self-sufficient under a longer time if we needed to be, as we currently have a lot of food imports. The conclusion was "yes, but there won't be as much food diversity".

However, they completely ignored the fact that we only have a ~90 days strategic reserve of oil, and that basically all the machining used for farming runs on diesel. And there's currently no goals to change that.

If we can't import or refine diesel anymore, we will starve.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago

plug myself into the power socket for more efficient energy usage.

got it.

brb

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

I'm surprised to see this truth known on the Internet, I guess Lemmy actually is smarter than most other social media out there :o