Looks like it's becomming "the" thing to do, this year! Anik & Nigel just started vermicomposting, Pierre-Hugue and Thieu-Thuy as well... and now you...
I wonder something though. If we calculate the energy provided to the worms through the leftovers and scraps, and the energy used by the worms to reproduce, and then we calculate the energy equivalency of the high-end proteins provided by dried worm powder, and used that powder to provide us with caloric energy, how much of an energy loss would our end-to-end food process have?
I mean... it takes 1 unit of energy to extract 30 units of energy in traditional oil extraction. Then a ratio I don't know to transport and raffine that energy into usable forms of oil relative to the agricultural industry (pesticides, gaz for the pesticide planes, for the tractors, for the fertelizer, for powering the water irrigation system, for the plastic to wrap the food products, gaz to transport it to the supermarket, etc). The ratio between food and it's production is that there's 10 units of energy consumed for every unit of energy (in the form of food) brought to your local supermarket. Then there's another ratio between raw and cooked food, and yet another ratio of the % of the food we actually eat, and the rest we throw away - or vermicompost. Hence my initial question.
bleh. too complicated for the early sunday afternoon.
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Date: 2007-01-21 05:20 pm (UTC)I wonder something though. If we calculate the energy provided to the worms through the leftovers and scraps, and the energy used by the worms to reproduce, and then we calculate the energy equivalency of the high-end proteins provided by dried worm powder, and used that powder to provide us with caloric energy, how much of an energy loss would our end-to-end food process have?
I mean... it takes 1 unit of energy to extract 30 units of energy in traditional oil extraction. Then a ratio I don't know to transport and raffine that energy into usable forms of oil relative to the agricultural industry (pesticides, gaz for the pesticide planes, for the tractors, for the fertelizer, for powering the water irrigation system, for the plastic to wrap the food products, gaz to transport it to the supermarket, etc). The ratio between food and it's production is that there's 10 units of energy consumed for every unit of energy (in the form of food) brought to your local supermarket. Then there's another ratio between raw and cooked food, and yet another ratio of the % of the food we actually eat, and the rest we throw away - or vermicompost. Hence my initial question.
bleh. too complicated for the early sunday afternoon.