Modern agriculture, as it is practiced in the United States, consumes large amounts of energy. Farm machinery used in planting, cultivating, harvesting, and transporting crops to processing plants or to market consumes large supplies of liquid fossil fuels such as gasoline or diesel. The energy required to produce fertilizers, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals is the second largest energy cost associated with agriculture. The use of fuel required by pumps to irrigate crops is also a major energy consumer. Additional energy is used in food processing, distribution, storage, and cooking after the crop leaves the farm. The energy used for these activities maybe five times as much as that used to produce the crop.
About 16 percent of the total energy used in the United States is consumed by systems devoted to feeding people, and most of the foods consumed in the United States require more calories of energy to produce, process, and distribute to the market than they provide when they are eaten. The next major development in agriculture will be the biotechnical revolution, in which scientists will be able to use molecular biological techniques to produce new crop varieties. In the future, agricultural scientists may be able to develop crop plants that can be produced, processed, and distributed with less impact on other resources.
See also: Water and Irrigation, Commercial Impact
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