Where your food comes from.
I am proud to grow melons. They are delicious and healthy.
It takes fossil fuels to grow them.
Most of the work I do to prepare a field to plant in melons is done with a big green John Deere tractor. It uses diesel fuel. I sit on a tractor seat to operate it, and it feels like driving a truck.
The work with small equipment is a very different experience. Melons are planted in spaced "hills" about 30 inches apart, positioned in rows. The solid-looking rows in the June photos below are plants that have grown together.
I switch from using a large tractor to a small tiller to get in between the plants to control weeds and keep the soil loose. Melons grow fast. There is a lot of change in a short time. Notice the size of the plants and the color of the adjacent barley field in less than a month.
The machine in the photo below is just like mine, except that it is new and shiny. Mine is well-used. Notice the tilling attachment at the back. Eighteen tines rotate rapidly when the gear is engaged, clearing a 20 inch path. The tiller grinds the ground, making it easy for the shallow and delicate melon roots to spread out. Melons are not good competitors against weeds, so the farmer needs to control weeds. The tiller does a faster and better job than hand hoeing. The Honda motor starts on the second or third pull at the beginning of the year and the first pull thereafter. I don't baby the tiller, but I only use ethanol-free gasoline. Ethanol gums up carburetors in small engines.
The machine teaches me something. It sends an unmistakable, wordless message that gasoline is very, very concentrated energy. The power imbedded in gasoline is normally invisible in the everyday life of Americans. Gasoline flows unseen from filling station underground tank to the pump through the hose into one's car tank. Our attention is on the transaction; less on the reality that we are putting chemical energy into a machine. The power it takes to move a two-ton vehicle 70 miles an hour is reduced to a simple awareness that the car uses gasoline and it travels a certain number of miles per gallon. When driving, our minds are on the destination and traffic, not on the fact that thousands of explosions are happening in the engine compartment.
Operating this tiller is entirely different. One sees the gasoline one puts into the half-gallon tank as one pours it. The machine is loud. One hears the cylinders firing: rata-rata-rata-rata, faster than one can say it. When one engages the gears for the tilling blades, one sees grinding right at one's feet. The handlebars vibrate. The rear of the machine bounces if one hits a rock. One imagines fury when the throttle is turned up and the blades turn and relentlessly grind. It kicks up dust if the top of the soil is dry. Sometimes dirt clods fly off to the sides. One sees, feels, and hears work being done, work that would be so hard and tedious to do with a spade or hoe. Gasoline made all that happen. So much work for so little gasoline.
There is a political point to this. I respect gasoline. I respect fossil fuels. I see up close and firsthand what they can do. Long term, I understand they fit into a bigger narrative. They are changing the earth's atmosphere, which is a huge big-picture problem. Another narrative is that fossil fuels are being phased out as people look for new energy sources. I participate in that. I have converted my chain saw and leaf blower to battery power. I drive a hybrid car. I put in a reservation for an electric Ford pickup truck.
There is another narrative in the here-and-now that I want to share: Diesel and gasoline will be around a long time because they are really useful.
People I generally agree with on politics criticize fossil fuels and the companies that sell it. I have an unpopular point of view on this. I decided that it will take four blog posts to make my point.
This post is the first of the four: If people are going to eat healthy food then they ought to know what makes it possible--fossil fuels.
Tomorrow: Who is more guilty? Me for wanting Chevron's ethanol-free gasoline or them for selling it?
The day after: I discuss the investment merit of owning fossil fuel companies, both for income and as an inflation hedge.
The day after that: Socially responsible investing. Let's identify some good-conscience investments.