AN ENERGY ANALYSIS OF THE DAN TAYLOR FAMILY'S OZARK FARM

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To say nothing of the vast amounts of fossil fuels which go into the production of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, extenders, flavorings, Colorings, packaging, etc., now used by the agribiz food and fibers industry. Or the additional fossil fuels wasted in cleaning up the air, water, and land polluted by the use of these same fertilizers, pesticides, packages, etc. Or the fossil fuels burned to operate a large segment of society's health establishment ... a segment that would probably be entirely unnecessary if our population were not exposed to the steadily increasing load of chemicals, preservatives, extenders, etc., that is routinely pumped into its food, the air it breathes, the water it drinks, etc. And so on and on.

Is there any way to break this escalating agribiz gluttony for fossil fuels? Yes, there is. Redesign-by reaching both back into the past and forward into the future-the production of food and fiber so that it needs less instead of steadily increasing quantities of fossil fuels. Reverse the rapidly accelerating trend toward centralized, big, fossil-fuel-based, "state of the art" agribusiness. Decentralize farming. Put it back into the hands of people who care, instead of corporations and managers who operate only for a profit. Scale agriculture down. Introduce more intermediate technologies. Make farming less dependent on fossil fuels and more dependent on solar-driven natural energies (which, after all, must ultimately sustain society anyway when the fossil fuels are all depleted). And start doing it now (while the change can still be made relatively easily) instead of later (when it may not be possible to make such changes at all).

OK. How do we begin this massive undertaking? Obviously, by defining the problem. By inventing and organizing and refining a set of tools that can help us figure out where we now stand and what we must do to get to where we'd like to be.

One of the best of those tools so far invented is the Energy Analysis devised by Dr. Howard T. I have applied Dr. Odum's methods to a study of the Dan Taylor family's Arkansas farm, which was the first-place winner in MOTHER's recent Food Self-Sufficiency Competition (see MOTHER NO. 45, pages 82-87). Some of the results were quite interesting.

In conducting one of these studies, we make use of energy flow diagrams that graphically represent the system being examined. This helps us to comprehend highly complex systems and to discover relationships we otherwise might have overlooked.

The drawing which accompanies this article illustrates the energy flow that takes place on the Taylor farm. This is a simplification (a "mini-model") of a much more detailed diagram that I have developed ... but it contains everything we'll need to introduce you to Dr. Odum's concept and to explain the basic operation of the Taylor farm.

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