WHY FOOD AND ENERGY AS AN ISSUE?

Global food systems are not sustainable. Industrialised food consumes ten times more energy in production and distribution than enters our bodies as nutrition. In 'developed' countries, the food consumption of a single family generates eight tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.

People in industrialised countries - that probably includes you and me - eat between six and seven kilogrammes of food additives every year.

This madness is enabled by non renewable fossil fuel. But what to do? Doors 9 breaks the food systems issue into bite-sized design chunks. “If food production efficiency is measured by the ratio between the amount of energy required to produce a given amount of food, and the energy congtained in that food, then industrial agriculture is by far the least efficient form of food production ever practised. From farm to plate, depending on the degree to which it has been processed, a typical food item may embody input energy between four and several hundred times its food energy”. Fact: In the USA, food traves an average oif 1,300 miles from farm to plate.

[Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War, And the Fate of Industrial Societies. Clairview, 2005].