The Oil We Eat

The first part of this article that really struck me was when Manning stated "It is no accident that no matter where agriculture sprouted on the globe, it always happened near rivers. You might assumer, as many have, that this is because the plants needed the water or nutrients. Mostly this is not true. They needed the power of flooding, which scoured landscapes and stripped out competitors. Nor is it an accident" (3). All throughout elementary, middle, and even high school I was told that plants would grow near water merely because they needed water. Never was I told about the flooding situation, this rattled me. The next part that really took me by surprise was when manning stated, "Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten" (6). That is just so bad and it worries me for our future. If that is just the United States then what would happen if the rest of the world ate like we did. This reading has made me think about my senior year of high school where in science we took an "ecological footprint" quiz online to see the amount of area and land we use to sustain our consumption patterns. The results are pretty scary.