Intensive agriculture the least efficient

Not got the datas with me but if you measure the total energy in and energy out then the simplest agricultural systems in the semi nomadic tribes produce about 2ce the energy that is put in through human labour. This declines rapidly until you have the American intensive agriculture system using 4 times as much energy as it gets off the land. The reason why it is so cheap is because oil is cheaper than human labour - but by diminishing returns the marginal cost of extracting that extra yield from the land is always increasing. Amazingly Adam Smith and Marx and others seem to my eyes to have missed this fundamental factor our of their economic models!

Two important features of this. The cost of fuel and the cost of intensive agriculture are linked- as we saw recently in the commodity markets and mysteriously no-one ws able to explain! It also means that creating bio-fuel intensively is a big blunder.

American feeds 40% of the world with the produce from its grain belts. This is only feasable at current fuel prices. The money spent in Iraq might not be so random if we consider the food implications of Opec power. At the same time the red flag should be waving for all those countries who are in the process of dismantling their subsistence/traditional farming communities and traditions. What the hazy eyes western school boys call "development" is actually the building of "dependency" and what lies ahead is huge aid debt and starvation. It has been seen throughout Africa for decades but still the aid agencies blame it on bad-government, civil war and climate. Everything except cash crops and western economic intervention.

Its another obvious fact that if humans were as incapable as the "top" of the pile say the bottom of the pile are then the human race would have gone to extinction millions of years ago. Like so much in this topsy turvey world it is actually the bottom of the pile who support the top and it is the top of any trophic system which goes extinct when times change.

Its sad for UK (where I live) that we have no traditional agriculture any more and no workforce who could farm the land were oil and petrol machines and fertiliser to run out or become too expensive. Agriculture is certainly somewhere I may look to be employed if only because food is something I actually do need. I've certainly no faith in the smoke and mirrors of current economic theory and management.