Is agriculture using more and more energy? A French case study

Abstract

It has been discovered that over time, the quantity of energy required to obtain a certain volume of product (i.e. the energy intensity) has decreased for many different economies and many products. This paper attempts to analyse the energy intensity trend in French agriculture as a whole between 1959 and 1989, and for one of its main crops, wheat, between 1958 and 1990. Between 1959 and 1977, in French agriculture as a whole, an increasing amount of direct energy was needed to obtain a given volume of product; since 1977, however, this amount has been decreasing. In the case of wheat, the product's whole energy content has also fallen over the period in question. Agriculture thus seems to have become more efficient in its use of energy, at least during the past fifteen years. The author then discusses these results, which at first sight would seem to contradict the findings of other studies, and outlines some possible future developments due to the technical evolution of agriculture.