As an example of how insidious the dependence on fossil fuel is, let’s go back to the turn of the century, when farm animals were used for crop cultivation. If you had horses or oxen, so much land was needed just to graze the animals. So before the advent of fossil fuel, farmland had to be used that competed with land needed to grow food. Sound familiar? It seems fossil fuel has taken away our ability to see what’s normal. So in our post-petroleum world, should we return to agricultural techniques used in the past, the use of land to support farm animals or otherwise produce energy will be necessary. It is here, on the farm, that the use of biofuels was pioneered. But a lot is going on at the farm these days. The USDA crop production report is projecting a US corn crop of 13.1 billion bushels this year, the largest since 1933. Harvesting was hampered by a scarcity of low-sulfur diesel used by harvesting equipment. But what if you could harvest without the need for fossil fuel, yet not compete for farmland? Welcome to The Case for the Electric Tractor…

“We have made connections with activist and inventor Stephen Heckeroth and are seeking to test cutting edge agricultural equipment for a post-petroleum world. The electric tractor does not compete for food and prime agricultural land for fuel, has a significantly reduced carbon footprint, increases the scale of acreage that can be cultivated, and is easy to operate for the 50 Million New Farmers that Richard Heinberg is calling for in the coming century. Stephen is not the only person who has made the electric tractors. John Howe has been working on retrofits of agricultural equipment powered by electricity.”

“As Stephen points out: Our future is only as sustainable as the tools we use to get there. The daily energy income from the sun is gigantic and it is feasible to use already existing renewable energy infrastructure to “re-fuel” the Electric Tractor. If the farm has yet to invest in renewable energy infrastructure, it is also possible to charge the batteries with standard 110V power (or 240 volts in other parts of the world).”

energybulletin.net/electric tractor

In the excerpted article, corrections have been made to the output power of the electric tractor, however the demonstrations were still impressive. Perhaps there is hope for the farmer in the post-petroleum world. Beyond oil, beyond corn, if the farmer can survive, so can we. The root problem is not one of energy, or food production, but overpopulation. Just how many people can the earth support sustainably in the twilight of Peak Oil?

And then my wife came up with this: “Why don’t they put solar panels on the roof of the barn?” Great idea, considering the inventor uses a solar array of 40 sq. ft. to charge his electric tractor. Speaking of rooftop solar, a company known as Envision Solar is designing carports and other structures with integral solar arrays: wikipedia.org/Envision_Solar.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 8:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.