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To: Joe Brower
Energy Reconfiguration means using biotechnology to develop crops that require much less fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and machinery to harvest.

That's going to play real well with the "Splice Rope, Not Genes" crowd...

7 posted on 03/03/2004 12:54:54 PM PST by Eala (Sacrificing tagline fame for... TRAD ANGLICAN RESOURCE PAGE: http://eala.freeservers.com/anglican)
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To: Eala
Actually it's the Genes crowd that require the high levels of herbicides. The massive monoculture ag practices we've used for 50+ years requires lots of pesticides and fertilizers.

FWIW, losing oil wouldn't be a big deal. As was mentioned, we're still sitting on huge coal reserves. Beyond that most folks don't know that when the automobile age was just beginning there was a controversy over which fuel to use. The choice was either gasoline or alcohol. Back then, early 1900's, the American Petroleum Institute lobbied for standardizing on gasoline saying that oil would always be plentiful.

The variety of plant materials that can be used to make alcohol is astounding. We'll never run out of fuel. Even if you do need oil, all we have to do is take the limits off American farmers and put all the land taken out of production back in use. Corn oil as in Mazzola will run any diesel just fine. You just need to ramp up production to drive the price down.

As far as fertilizer to do all that, I was at a farm where they have been doing without chemical fertilizers for over forty years. In a recent year they actually had too much nitrogen in the soil. All that excess nitrogen resulted in a drought year when the corn didn't get enough moisture to use the nitrogen put in by the planting of hairy vetch the previous year. Once the cheap oil disappears the alternative knowledge is available to transition to other energy sources .
47 posted on 03/03/2004 3:14:17 PM PST by meatloaf
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