Bringing It to the Table by Wendell Berry Page B

farms of New England were abandoned because of progress or because they were no longer productive or desirable as living places. They were given up for one very “practical” reason: They did not lend themselves readily to exploitation by fossil fuel technology. Their decline began with the rise of steam power and the industrial economy after the Civil War; the coming of industrial agriculture after World War II finished them off. Industrial agriculture needs large holdings and large level fields. As the scale of
technology grows, the small farms with small or steep fields are pushed farther and farther toward the economic margins and are finally abandoned. And so industrial agriculture sticks itself deeper and deeper into a curious paradox: The larger its technology grows in order “to feed the world,” the more potentially productive “marginal” land it either ruins or causes to be abandoned. If the sweeping landscapes of Nebraska now have to be reshaped by computer and bulldozer to allow the more efficient operation of big farm machines, then thousands of acres of the smaller-featured hill country of the eastern states must obviously be considered “unfarmable.” Or so the industrialists of agriculture have ruled.
    And so energy is not just fuel. It is a powerful social and cultural influence. The kind and quantity of the energy we use determine the kind and quality of the life we live. Our conversion to fossil fuel energy subjected society to a sort of technological determinism, shifting population and values according to the new patterns and values of industrialization. Rural wealth and materials and rural people were caught within the gravitational field of the industrial economy and flowed to the cities, from which comparatively little flowed back in return. And so the human life of farmsteads and rural communities dwindled everywhere, and in some places perished.
     
    IF THE SHIFT to fossil fuel energy radically changed the life and the values of farm communities, it should be no surprise that it also radically changed our understanding of agriculture. Some figures from an article by Professor Mark D. Shaw help to show the nature of this change. The “food system,” according to Professor Shaw, now uses 16.5 percent of all energy used in the United States. This 16.5 percent is used in the following ways:
    On-farm production3.0%
Manufacturing4.9%

Wholesale marketing0.5%
Retail marketing0.8%
Food preparation (in home)4.4%
Food preparation (commercial)2.9%
    Apologists for industrial agriculture frequently stop with that first figure—showing that agriculture uses only a small amount of energy, relatively speaking, and that people hunting a cause of the “energy crisis” should therefore point their fingers elsewhere. The other figures, amounting to 13.5 percent of national energy consumption, are more interesting, for they suggest the way the food system has been expanded to make room for industrial enterprise. Between farm and home, producer and consumer, we have interposed manufacturers, a complex marketing structure, and food preparation. I am not sure how this last category differs from “manufacturing.” And I would like to know what percentage of the energy budget goes for transportation, and whether or not Professor Shaw figured in the miles that people now drive to shop. The gist is nevertheless plain enough: The industrial economy grows and thrives by lengthening and complicating the essential connection between producer and consumer. In a local food economy, dealing in fresh produce to be prepared in the home (thus eliminating transporters, manufacturers, packagers, preparers, etc.), the energy budget would be substantially lower, and we might have both cheaper food and higher earnings on the farm.
    But Professor Shaw provides another set of figures that is even more telling. These have to do with the “sources of energy for Pennsylvania agriculture” (I don’t think the significance would