Energy Intensity

The most energy-intensive components of modern industrial agriculture are the production of nitrogen fertiliser, farm machinery and pumped irrigation. They account for more than 90 percent of the total direct and indirect energy used in agriculture and they are all essential to it.
 
Emissions of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels for agricultural purposes in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per hectare while they are only 0.007 tonnes, i.e. roughly seven times lower, in non-mechanized agricultural systems.

This ties in with the estimate made by Pretty and Ball that to produce a ton of cereals or vegetables by means of modern agriculture requires 6 to 10 times more energy than it does by using sustainable agricultural methods.[i] 

Energy consumption varies widely between different practices and farming systems. Generally, more modern systems use the bulk of total energy input on the production of feed. Apart from fertilizer, this includes seed, pesticides, machinery and electricity (water supply, heating, drying). The on-farm energy consumption of intensive systems can exceed the carbon dioxide emissions of the N fertilizer production. On the other hand, processing of the agricultural product may often be less efficient at a smaller scale, so  that intensive systems may conserve energy (Barrett et al., 2001). Generally, the dairy sector is one of the highest energy-consuming sectors due to pasteurization, cheese making and dried milk. Furthermore, the required refrigerated transport is energy intensive and vehicles are often not loaded to full capacity (Steinfeld et al., 2006).
 

In global Agricultural equipment market, India contributes 10 percent which is $6.6 billion. The total number of advanced agricultural equipments in India in 2006 was 22.4 million and this number is likely to increase up to 24.3 million in 2010.

33 percent of the tractors manufactured all around the world are used in India. The total number of equipments in India in 2006 was as follows.

The number of tractors per million hectares of gross cropped area in 2003 was 13,480 and this number is likely to increase up to 15,833 till 2010.[ii]

Another essential change required in our present agricultural system involves the phasing out of modern perennial irrigation methods. Modern irrigation is one of the most energy intensive components of industrial agriculture. Pimentel considers that when it is based on the use of water extracted from a depth of more than 30 metres, pumped irrigation requires three times more fossil fuel energy for corn production than it does for the rain-fed cultivation of the same amount of corn. [iii]