7. Results
7.1 Environmental Dimension
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7. Results
7.1 Environmental Dimension
7.1.1 Energy
Taiwan has a clear deficit in this area and must import most of its energy
requirements (97.84%) while only one forty-fifth of energy (2.16%) is domestically produced. Industry 395.464 PJ is the sector that consumes the most of its primary energy while agriculture sector account for a very low participation in energy usage with 0.91 % of total with 10.496 PJ. However, this number only considers the direct consumption of the agrarian sector that is fuel, electricity, processing of agriculture food, etc.
Consideration of the energy used in pesticide and fertilizer production are often overlooked in assessing the energy efficiency of agriculture. It is interesting to note that manufacturing and applying of pesticides and fertilizers consumes around 84.61% of the energy use in agriculture production stage and fertilizers consumes around 11% of overall energy consumption in agriculture. After incorporating consumption derived from the use of fertilizers and pesticides, the production stage energy consumption increase to 22.117 PJ (15.7%).
If we also add indirect consumption during the whole life cycle according to this research calculations, the total consumption during life cycle more than thirteen times increases and became 140.737 JP, or energy equivalent to 26.9% of the total
consumption in Taiwan. However, the energy contained in the food consumed
accounts only 10.813 PJ (7.683%). In other words, for each unit of energy in output of
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agriculture sector, 13 units of energy are consumed during its production, preparation, transportation and distribution. Taking all activities related to agriculture life cycle into consideration, the agriculture sector represents over a quarter of the total energy consumption in Taiwan.
Just a few decades ago, agriculture in general provided more output energy than input, but currently it is dependent on external output. In other words, Taiwanese modern agricultural model has been turned into high energy dependent system. One of the fundamental element in industrial agriculture system in developed countries are artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Especially, the nitrogen contained in most of the fertilizers in Taiwan requires high levels of pressure and high temperatures to produce it in artificial way. It represents around 40% of the total energy expenditure for
agricultural production in certain developing countries and almost 70% of the total energy consumption in developed countries. The Taiwan is not an exception since according to calculations above the nitrogen’s production energy represents 63.83%
in the agriculture production stage.
One of the main problems of any agriculture system is the energy cost of transportation. Thought, this stage is the second the most energy consuming in Taiwan and it is two simple reasons that Taiwanese import and export is mainly conducted by the sea transportation which is one of the most efficient options with consuming significantly less energy compared to the road transportation and also because Taiwanese area is not so large resulting in less agriculture products
transportation requirements within Taiwan. But still, due to large distances and huge amounts of imports, transportation energy cost is around one quarter (24.51%) of the life cycle energy expenditure.
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During long distances travelled and long duration of the distribution process, food must be kept in a good state of conservation and maintain an attractive appearance which requires processing and packaging stages. According calculations in this research, the processing activities’ energy share is 8.75% of the total agriculture sector which is quite common among developed countries.
On the other hand, there are not doubts that there is an excess of plastics used in agriculture sector in Taiwan. The packaging is even more energy consuming
(43.56%) then transportation. In order to maximize shelf life and protect food against high humidity typical in Taiwan, the mass use of packing is engaged, especially plastic packing. For example, instead of a one plastic bag used in Europe, three plastic bags are used in Taiwan. Before, Taiwan used to be a kingdom of plastic production and even when the production decreased, the habit of people preserved. The western green propaganda telling us that “each plastic bag is on average used for 20 minutes but in nature remains for 200 years” probably missed Taiwan and this kind of thinking is not in Taiwanese consciousness.
The least consuming stage in life cycle of Taiwanese agriculture production system is retail with only 0.67% of the total agriculture energy expenditure. In comparison, cooking and preserving or storing food require quite a lot of energy, but still it still remain less energy consuming stage compared to others. Therefore, households consume the second least (6,8%) of energy among other stages in the life cycle.
In short, the result reveals an overall picture of agriculture production system energy consumption in Taiwan. Where are nitrogen production, huge of import and excess use of plastics constituting the most serious issues which should be focused on in terms of energy use.
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7.1.2 Contamination of Soil and Water
The abundant energy required to produce plastics for packaging process is not the only issue concerning plastics. The environmental impacts of the using plastics, which are often highly contaminant, and their inappropriate throwing away to the nature results in many plastics on the lands and further cause a serious pollution of nature all over the Taiwan. This has negative influence on animals and natural environment. For instance, a plastic bag consumed by animal can cause serious health problems to animals’ organism.
Nevertheless, the most serious issues connected to soil and water contamination are usage of fertilizers and pesticides. This problem as one has three part. The first part is a problem of own producing of these substances, producing of both creates
considerable waste which has to be released somewhere. The second part, more serious one, is the usage (or overuse) itself when fertilizers and pesticides enter the plants, soil and surrounding. This results in contamination of surface, erosion, loss of biodiversity, etc. The last part is leaking of chemical and artificial substances to the underground water as well as remains of these in agriculture product (food), which has negative impact on entire environment. Namely on humans’ drinking water, animals’ drinking water, irrigation of agriculture area (even organic), which all have very negative effect on life in nature and in some cases is very hard to remove certain kinds of contamination. The contamination caused by overuse of artificial fertilizers can be overcome over some time with using organic fertilizers; however, the
contamination by chemical pesticides can remain in soil for at least few decades, as we could see with certain later prohibited pesticides.
The fertilizers’ problem is excess of waste during production, its overall overuse
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during agriculture production resulting in soil contamination and leaking to the underground water, and, consequently, losing its full effect. In comparison, pesticides cause even more alarming problems connected to negative affecting health of living entities. Pesticides represent a first a health issue during application to the person applying it as well as to people living near that place. The second problem is
following contamination of environment, especially soil and finally its leaking to the underground water.
And what is worse, the later kind of contamination has a devastating effect (not only) on human health causing diseases as cancer, genetic degeneration and infertility. The part of contamination problem is also contamination of food itself which has direct effect on human health mentioned above. There is no economic revenue which could possibly overreach these kind of negative influence on human health. At least with a health moral thinking and sense for humanity.