Forces Driving More
and tall, was a hard-earned accomplishment—something I not so
humbly pointed out to anyone within earshot.
After the fire, each family member dealt with the loss differently.
For me, the long days and sometimes nights of hard work had been
for naught. All the extra effort I’d put forth with nothing to show for
it would take time to get over.
Despite the tragedy, what had happened that year set the stage for
new insight. Previously, I thought of farming as a means of fulfilling
consumer wants. Farms existed to satisfy their sensory pleasures: thick,
marbled cuts of T-bone steak; ripe, juicy tomatoes; succulent, deep-red
cherries; freshly picked ears of bright yellow sweet corn. Each offered
taste and flavor, appearance and color, textures, aromas, even sounds.
Farmers produced foods to please food shoppers.
The fire allowed me to see food and farming in a new light. Farm-
ing was the business of combining different kinds of energy, then
transforming that energy into sustenance people wanted to eat. On
our operation, it began with the Sun’s rays that plants converted into
chemical energy before animals transformed that plant energy into
muscle and fat. There were other forms of energy involved as well. Ki-
netic energy brought water to irrigate plants. Farm machinery came
from mechanical energy. Fossil energy powered tractors and equipment.
And physical energy sowed and then harvested plants, built haystacks,
and fed animals.
While food is prized for its sensory appeal, its true value is the
energy it provides, with minerals, nutrients, and fiber as added bo-
nuses. Seeing food through this lens, one realizes that life-sustaining
sustenance is not possible without the Sun. Also that plants are never
indispensable (so far as humans are concerned), and that farming is
really the business of energy.
Prior to farming, energy embedded in food was outside human con-
trol. Breeding new plants, enslaving other humans, deploying draft ani-
mals, building water wheels, forging moldboard plows, and combining
fossilized plants (coal) with water to produce steam (and a new measure
for energy called horsepower) were all incremental steps to channeling
energy into making more food.