Energy and food.

Abstract

The Tsembaga are a New Guinea tribe who produce about 25 joules of metabolizable energy for each joule of input energy (1,2). The Americans are a highly sophisticated people using advanced technology, occupying about the same agricultural land area per caput as the Tsembaga, but who produce about 0.15 joules of metabolizable energy per joule of energy input (3). That is to say, the Tsembaga produce 166 times as much food per unit of input as do the Americans.