五月阅读机经10 类似文章

Primary productivity is the scientific evaluation of the transformation of solar or chemical energy into biomass (Manning 38).  Manning reminds his readers of the law of conservation of energy, which states that the amount of energy that exists is constant, so it can only be changed into new forms of energy, and cannot be created.  This law of physics is important because humans gain their energy from consuming plants or animals that eat plants, rather than creating their own energy (Manning 37). The idea behind the green revolution is to manipulate the land using fossil fuels to produce more food than would naturally be possible. In essence, the energy that exists in fossil fuels is being transformed into food energy for human consumption.

Out of all of the energy that the earth naturally produces, humans consume forty percent (Manning 37).  Furthermore, two-thirds of the forty percent humans consume rests in three kinds of crops- rice, wheat and corn (Manning 38).  Ironically, unprocessed wheat is not edible and a large portion of corn is not eaten raw but processed into types of sugars (Manning 43).  Although the initial increase of sugar consumption cannot be linked to the green revolution, the continuation and the growth of its ingestion can be. The initial growth was linked to the industrialization of England at the end of the 1800s. During that time, the British got one sixth of their total nutrition from sugar (Manning 43, 44).  Today, Americans consume the same amount, which is also double what nutritionists would (Manning 44).  The link between the United Kingdom in the late 1800s and the United States today, is a result of different forms of industrialization.  The industrialization of agriculture also known as the green revolution allowed for the continuation of massive consumption of sugars in a population as large as the United States.  Only because of the green revolution could the extensive accessibility of the sugar be possible to the United States, otherwise it would have continued to be a luxury commodity as the population grew.  The formations of these crops that are not as nutritionally beneficial or initially edible are two large examples of how the energy from fossil fuels is harnessed.

However, what is more astonishing than the massive consumption of the human population and the cultivation of so few crops is the amount of energy, specifically in fossil fuels, required to produce these crops on such a large scale. Because food is a necessity to human existence, the ability to have such a prominent role in agricultural production is highly valuable.  Additionally, the alteration of the land to create these fields and crops can result in much more harm to the earth than the short-term benefits of the mass production of crops.  On average, it takes ten calories of fossil fuel burning in order to create one calorie of food (Manning 42, Smoker 519).  According to the U.S. department of agriculture, on average citizens consume 3,800 calories per a day as of 2000. There is approximately 35,000 calories in one galloon of oil and it would take 38,000 calories of oil to make enough food for the average US citizen. Therefore, it takes a little more than a gallon of oil to produce for one person in the US and the US alone has a more than 315 million people according to the US Census Bureau.  Therefore, more than 315 gallons of oil is to make food for its citizens each day.  The extremely large amount of oil used in food production is the reason why the current system is unstable and how such a strong economic connection between oil and food exists.

In fact, the connection between wealth and agriculture has a long history. However, Manning has provided an interesting hypothesis. Manning claims that in agricultural societies one sees the first indication of status possibly associated with wealth (Manning 39).  Typically, anthropologists studying the leap from hunter gather to agricultural society struggle to explain the progression.  This is primarily because upon comparing human remains of hunter gather societies and agricultural societies, one finds that the first agriculturalists were highly malnourished (Manning 39).  In fact, hunter gathers living directly on the land often ate much better than the initial agriculturalists, thus complicating the understanding of why humans would chose to adopt this way of life (Manning 38).  He claims in comparison to hunter gathers, which required groups to work together in order to survive, those who practiced agriculture were capable of having more individualized roles in society (Manning 38).  Therefore, although the majority of people were malnourished some people were benefiting from this situation. This benefit is the first appearance of wealth (Manning 38).