The fundamental fact is that we have an inescapable choice in our food system: use small amounts of energy, or vast amounts of land. By spending not much energy to make fertilizer and run machinery — and trivial amounts of energy to ship the stuff we grow from the places it grows best — we have spared and conserved hundreds of millions of acres of land that otherwise would have had to be brought into agricultural production.

Liberal Curmudgeon: Energy or land: pick one

Hell. Yeah.