Cost of Production

Photon to plate: A holistic view of photosynthetic and anthropogenic energy fluxes

“…Energy supplements added during cultivation include the requirements for fertilizers, chemical treatments, electricity to pump water, gasoline, and hand labor. We quantified the annual energy demand of these supplements from farm survey data from 2018 (Eborn, 2019). When these field-applied energy supplements are summed, including the energy costs for fertilizers, chemical inputs, irrigation, fuel, and hand labor, the result totaled 95,500 MJ ha −1 year −1 , or 0.3% of the original solar energy incident on the field (Figures 1 and 2).…”

“…The counties within the main potato growing regions were Bannock, Bingham, and Power in the Southeast growing region, Bonneville and Madison to the Northeast, Elmore in the Southwest, and Minidoka in the Southcentral region. This was done to sum county-level data into growing regions that correspond to the farm survey data used to estimate energy farm use below (Eborn, 2019).…”

“…and h ha −1 year −1 (Eborn, 2019). To get the units into MJ ha −1 year −1, we multiplied the input value by the embedded energy, the total amount of energy necessary for a product's entire life cycle, content of its source as outlined below.…”

“…Chemical inputs including herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides averaged by yield over the four growing regions required 160 kg ha −1 year −1 , 2 kg ha −1 year −1 , and 6 kg ha −1 year −1 , respectively (Eborn, 2019). Relative to other crops, potato production requires more of one herbicide, sodium methyldithiocarbonate (Trade name Metam CLR 42%), which is designed to suppress weeds, nematodes, and diseases that affect the potato plant.…”

“…Quantity column describes the amount of energy supplement used during cultivation (Eborn, 2019). Embedded Energy column describes the energy required to create the energy supplement listed per kilogram of energy supplement used (Administration, 2019(Administration, , 2021Audsley et al, 2009;Eborn, 2018).…”