Energy resource demands of food production

Historically food has been produced by using solar energy, natural fertilizer and manual labor. However, as populations have increased food products had to be increased proportionately so it has become necessary to use industrial equipment instead of manual labor and artificial fertilizer in place of manure. Thus, in modern agriculture, fuel energy has largely replaced animate energy. This has made the food delivery system one of the most energy intensive industries. It is apparent that this demand for energy will increase because the world population is expected to double by the end of the century and hence will require rapid increases in food production.This paper sets forth the energy supply and demand situation as it concerns food production. Also, considered are externalities such as climate and population. Finally, an agenda for future research in the energy-food sector is presented.     

Biogas as a sustainable energy source in Nepal: Present status and future challenges

Cattle manure, human excreta and agriculture residues are used in anaerobic bioreactors in many parts of the world to produce methane gas, which is used for the purpose of cooking and lighting. Since such waste materials are readily available in farms, rural people of many developing countries have been benefited from this technology. Besides, this technology is cheaper and simpler, thus, gaining popularity throughout the world. Nepal is one of the least developed countries with the vast majority of people involved in subsistence agriculture. The use of biogas technology in Nepal has benefited the country in improving health, environment, economy and energy conservation. In this paper, we present the state of the biogas sector in Nepal.     

India's energy consumption: Composition and trends

Early studies of Indian energy consumption have largely been confined to commercial fuels, yet it is claimed that the higher proportion of energy consumed is non-commercial. Recent studies have looked more closely at non-commercial energy, and at the contribution of human and animal energy. This article examines and aggregates all forms of energy consumed — non-commercial and animate, as well as commercial fuels. The problems encountered with levels of aggregation are discussed, and the limitations of the conventions used are pointed out. A striking feature of the aggregated energy consumption statistics is the strong effect of the level of aggregation on the relative contribution of different energy forms.     

Subsistence electricity renewable energies and development

This article suggests that the use of some new and renewable sources of energy (NRSE) in rural electrification may lead to ‘subsistence electrification’. Grid rural electrification, it is argued, contributes to development not by substituting for existing fuels and energy sources at lower cost but by transforming the marginal costs of supply. Techniques commonly used to evaluate NRSE do not capture the developmental implications.     

Energy and agriculture in developing countries

The author explains trends in energy use in agriculture in developing countries at the global, national and farm level. It is shown that energy input in traditional agriculture is quite significant if the role of animals is taken into account. The author explains how currently agriculture makes a net energy contribution towards meeting the basic needs of cooking, heating and local industry, and with the modernization of agriculture, the availability of crop residues and animal wastes is expected to decline, widening the gap between demand and supply of energy for the survival needs of the poor in developing countries. The author states that there is an immediate need to initiate policies and programmes — such as energy pricing, subsidies, biogas plants and gasification units — to improve the efficiency of agro-energy.     

Wind-driven seawater desalination plant for agricultural development on the islands of the County of Split and Dalmatia

The vital economic activities of the islands of the County of Split and Dalmatia are in the area of agriculture and tourism. Providing sufficient water supplies stands as an essential condition for their economic development, particularly with respect to the development of the two vital economic activities of agriculture and tourism. The use of renewable energy sources at Croatian islands is looked on as a necessity and represents a fundamental condition for their sustainable development. The paper presents the main features of the existing, built and planned, water supply systems on the islands of the County. Furthermore, the paper is an analysis of the place and role of the wind-driven seawater desalination plant in ensuring the water quantities indispensable for the proposed development of agriculture, as well as the analysis of the main features of the investments related to this development.     

Households’ access to electricity and energy consumption pattern in Nigeria

Access to substantial quantity and quality energy infrastructures is essential to rapid and sustainable economic development. Access to modern energy services directly contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction through the creation of wealth. No country can develop and sustain beyond subsistence means without having at least minimum access to energy services for the larger portion of its population. The present study examines the households’ access to modern energy (electricity) services and pattern of energy consumption in Nigeria. It was found that the access to modern form of energy in the country is very low despite the country's abundant energy endowment. Greater proportions (over 40%) of Nigerian households do not have access to electricity and still depend largely on traditional forms of energy (e.g., firewood and kerosene) as energy sources.     

Energy use for subsistence and prospects for development

This paper focuses on the present use of energy in the developing countries in order to estimate the energy required for subsistence-level activities and to see how much surplus is available for economically productive activities, taking into account both commercial and non-commercial (firewood, farmwaste) sources of energy. The energy required for subsistence is estimated to be in the range of 0.3 to 0.4 tce per capita. The consumption of most low income groups countries is below this level if only commercial energy is considered. Relations are derived to explain the uses of each of these energy forms in terms of economic and demographic variables from a sample of 82 countries. These relations are then employed to show that the dependence on non-commercial energy is likely to continue beyond 2000 AD and that, inspite of the annual rise of commercial energy consumption by 6%, the improvements in per capita consumption are small because of an increase in population and a decrease in per capita non-commercial energy.     

The role of energy productivity in U.S. agriculture

This paper investigates the role of energy on U.S. agricultural productivity using panel data at the state level for the period 1960–2004. We first provide a historical account of energy use in U.S. agriculture. To do this we rely on the Bennet cost indicator to study how the price and volume components of energy costs have developed over time. We then proceed to analyze the contribution of energy to productivity in U.S. agriculture employing the Bennet–Bowley productivity indicator. An important feature of the Bennet–Bowley indicator is its direct association with the change in (normalized) profits. Thus our study is also able to analyze the link between profitability and productivity. Panel regression estimates indicate that energy prices have a negative effect on profitability in the U.S. agricultural sector. We also find that energy productivity has generally remained below total farm productivity following the 1973–1974 global energy crisis.     

Possibilities for the application of solar energy in the European Community agriculture

In this paper are described the methodology followed and the main results of a study performed under contract for the Commission of the European Communities. Its aims were to collect energy consumption data in European Community agriculture broken down by regions and final uses, to perform a state of the art of the solar energy systems that have been tried in agriculture, to analyze the variables and barries that influence the development of solar energy systems in agriculture and to provide a general assessment for each region regarding the various possible solutions for each agricultural application. Our study was limited to thermal forms of energy consumptions and the sectors analyzed were: rural houses (space heating and hot water production), shelter heating, hot water production for animal husbandry, greenhouse heating and crop drying. In any of the sectors we give an assessment on the possibilities of penetration of solar technologies in European Community countries.     

A co-integration analysis of the price and income elasticities of energy demand in Turkish agriculture

Agriculture has an important role in every country′s development. Particularly, the contribution of agriculture to development and competitiveness is increasing with agricultural productivity growth. Productivity, in turn, is closely associated with direct and indirect use of energy as an input. Therefore, the importance of energy in agriculture cannot be denied as one of the basic inputs to the economic growth process. Following the importance of energy in Turkish agriculture, this study aims to estimate the long- and short-run relationship of energy consumption, agricultural GDP, and energy prices via co-integration and error correction (ECM) analysis. Annual data from 1970 to 2008 for diesel and electricity consumptions are utilized to estimate long-run and short-run elasticities. According to ECM analysis, for the diesel demand model, the long-run income and price elasticities were calculated as 1.47 and −0.38, respectively. For the electricity demand model, income and price elasticities were calculated at 0.19 and −0.72, respectively, in the long run. Briefly, in Turkey, support for energy use in agriculture should be continued in order to ensure sustainability in agriculture, increase competitiveness in international markets, and balance farmers′ income.     

Sustainability and future alternatives of biogas-linked agrosystem (BLAS) in China: An emergy synthesis

The biogas-linked agriculture has experienced a rapid development in recent years in rural China, which serves both as part of the country's developmental strategies of cleaner energy and an important reaction to sustainable agriculture call. This paper provides an overview of the economic and environmental performance of biogas-linked agrosystem (BLAS) in China by focusing on efficiency, emission mitigation effect and sustainability. An emergy synthesis combing emergy accounting and emergetic ternary diagram are utilized to evaluate the overall BLAS and its four subsystems (i.e., planting subsystem, breeding subsystem, aquaculture subsystem and biogas subsystem) in terms of current status and future development. Our findings indicate that despite a high energy transformity at system scale and a great dependence on economic input, BLAS advantages itself with high biogas production efficiency and significant emission mitigation effect. Furthermore, the sustainability zone analysis shows that the overall BLAS, planting and aquaculture subsystems maintain medium-term sustainability under all policy scenarios, despite the fact that breeding and biogas subsystems stay in an unsustainable situation due to their relatively severe environmental load. Among all the studied future options, continual biogas construction and effective technological revolution instead of expanding investment in traditional agriculture are preferable routes to further improve the system performance. Last but not least, emissions mitigation, energy efficiency and system sustainability are unveiled to be positively correlated within BLAS, which entitles it a promising energy alternative to enhance biogas energy utilization in the local agriculture in face of today's energy crisis.     

An energy balance and greenhouse gas profile for county Wexford,Ireland in 2006

In this paper an energy balance and a greenhouse gas profile has been formulated for the county of Wexford, situated in the south east of Ireland. The energy balance aims to aggregate all energy consumption in the county for the year 2006 across the following sectors; residential, agriculture, commerce and industry, and transport. The results of the energy balance are compared with the previous energy balance of 2001 where it is found that the residential sector is the biggest emitter of CO₂ with 38% of total emissions with the transport and industry/commerce sectors sharing second place on 28%. Consumption of oil is seen to have increased significantly in nearly all sectors, accounting for over 70% of the total final energy consumed (TFC) while the total primary energy requirement (TPER) sees oil consumption accounting for 91% of all fuels consumed. To take into account the contribution of agriculture in total GHG emissions the gases CH₄ and N₂O will be estimated from the agricultural and waste sectors. The results show that methane contributes 25% of total GHG emissions with agriculture being the primary contributor accounting for 36% of total emissions.     

Structural change in energy use

Structural change in the economy, from agriculture to industry to services, causes similar sector shifts in final energy use. This paper illustrates such energy sector shifts for 11 world regions from 1971 through 1998 and discusses their impact on the decline in energy intensity.     

The need for an alternative energy strategy in the agricultural economies of the Third World

The relationship between energy availability and food productivity is examined for 31 developing countries which obtain at least 30% of their Gross Domestic Products (GDP) from agriculture. In those countries where energy is particularly scarce, such as many of the African states, food production is now falling behind population growth rates. Since these countries now have to spend more of their own export earnings on imported energy, mainly oil, than hitherto, their main opportunity for acquiring needed energy supplies for agriculture is in the form of locally produced energy, chiefly as biofuels within decentralised integrated energy systems at the village community level. Such an alternative energy strategy is shown to be feasible and necessary to prevent the already low nutritional standards of the world's poorest countries from deteriorating even further.     

Improving households’ access to electricity and energy consumption pattern in Nigeria: Renewable energy alternative

Access to substantial quantity and quality energy infrastructures is essential to rapid and sustainable economic development. Access to modern energy services directly contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction through the creation of wealth. No country can develop and sustain beyond subsistence means without having at least minimum access to energy services for the larger portion of its population. The present study examines the households’ access to modern energy (electricity) services and pattern of energy consumption in Nigeria. It was found that the access to modern form of energy in the country is very low despite the country's abundant energy endowment. Greater proportions (over 40%) of Nigerian households do not have access to electricity and still depend largely on traditional forms of energy (e.g., firewood, kerosene, etc.) as energy sources. However, Nigeria is abundantly endowed with renewable energy resources. This can be significantly developed to generate modern and clean electricity to meet the yearning demand of its citizens without imposing serious hazard on the environment.     

Emergy account for biomass resource exploitation by agriculture in China

On the basis of Odum's ecological economic measure of emergy as embodied solar energy, a system account of biomass resource exploitation by agriculture in China 2004 is developed in this paper, which supplements a former study on corresponding long-term historical trends during 1978 to 2000 (Chen et al., 2006. Emergy-based analysis of the Chinese agriculture. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 115, 161–173). The aggregate fluxes and indicators for biomass resource exploitation in China 2004 are calculated and illustrated when compared with those for 2000 to elucidate the latest status of the Chinese agriculture as the exploitation sector for biomass resource. Data sources and algorithm are presented in detail as basic references for related analysis involving the ecological economy of biomass exploitation in agriculture.     

中国能源作物制备液体生物燃料现状及发展趋势

考察和分析了我国能源作物开发液体生物燃料的历程、能源作物资源制备液体生物燃料的现状及未来的发展趋势,以期对现存的主要问题及如何借鉴国外相关经验进行交流,寻求和探讨我国能源农业健康发展的有效路径,为我国生物燃料产业的发展提供有益的参考.     

Effect of post-harvest processing on energy returns in agriculture,with special reference to developing countries

The increasing emphasis on mechanized farming, sophisticated post-harvest technology, and extensive processing of agricultural produce has led to progressively diminishing energy returns on the energy inputs in the agriculture sector. This paper evaluates the energy inputs and outputs in these various operations and examines the effect of the evolving technology on the energy returns from these operations.     

Determinants of electricity demand for newly electrified low-income African households

Access to clean, affordable and appropriate energy is an important enabler of development. Energy allows households to meet their most basic subsistence needs; it is a central feature of all the millennium development goals (MDGs) and, while a lack of access to energy may not be a cause of poverty, addressing the energy needs of the impoverished lets them access services which in turn address the causes of poverty.