Gene Logsdon, Green Hypocrisy

via EB

Green Hypocrisy
Gene Logsdon, Organic To Be
There’s a lot of loose talk going around these days about “green” alternatives to save the world. Most of that green is really about the color of money, not the environment. The latest green sensation involves a farm tractor that recently broke the record for fast cultivation (fast food requires fast cultivation). According to the news, a 570 hp. AGCO tractor, pulling a 60 foot disk, ripped up 1,591 acres of dirt in 24 hours, or, and I quote, “a football field every two minutes.” And, say the AGCO people, the tractor used only about a gallon of fuel per acre in the process. That makes it a “green” tractor, even though it is not a John Deere. My ancient WD Allis Chalmers (orange) uses about a gallon of fuel per acre too, but pulling a much smaller disk and at a slower speed, it would take me all summer to disk up 1,591 acres.

So why am I not impressed? As is the case for most green sensations, the whole story is not being told. Take for example the ethanol fiasco, the noble idea that the world can be saved from oil shortages by producing ethanol fuel from corn. That notion has been thoroughly debunked but it still lives its own green life as farmers and ethanol plant owners seek to take advantage of the huge subsidies involved. If all the tillable acres in the world were planted to corn to make ethanol, the amount of fuel produced would equal about 17% of what we burn, say the experts, and then we’d starve to death and wouldn’t need any fuel.

So too, a tractor that burns only a gallon of fuel per acre, ethanol or regular, while steaming along tearing up the earth at the rate of a football field every two minutes, isn’t telling the whole story. How much fuel was used mining and smelting and refining the steel used in that 570 hp behemoth? How much fuel used turning the steel into machined parts? How much fuel used transporting workers to and from the mines and the factories? How much fuel needed to heat the factories? To transport the tractor to its ultimate buyer? To transport the executives and advertisers on their worldwide rounds to publicize a heap of iron big enough to rip up a football field in two minutes? And don’t forget to add in the airplane fuel used to fly them to meetings where they mostly play golf. How many gallons of fuel are used to drive the tractor to and from the fields between episodes of ripping up 1,591 acres in 24 hours? How many more gallons have to be burned by other tractors and trucks in planting all that land ripped up by the disk, spraying the crops grown thereon, harvesting the grain, hauling it to market or to storage, not to mention the huge amount of fuel needed to dry the grain after it is in storage to keep it from rotting. Then of course the grain has to be shipped far and wide across the world to its final destination, usually the rumen of an animal penned up in a fattening factory. And remember, even at a gallon per acre, there’s a lot of gas involved ripping up many hundreds of thousands of acres.

Now compare that to another kind of farming, where 1,591 acres would be planted permanently to grass and clover and grazed by 1,000 head of cows or 3000 head of sheep. No annual cultivation would be needed at all. No erosion. No soil compaction. Not even half the machinery cost would be involved, and if the meat, wool, and dairy products were sold locally, only half the transportation costs.

There would be an earth-shattering record in fuel savings, a record that would not mean shattering the earth.
(19 October 2007)
Writer-farmer Gene Logsdon is one of the U.S.'s national treasures. -BA