The efficient use of labour,land and energy in agriculture

Fossil energy-using agricultural systems may be defined as systems transferring tradeable energy resources in tradeable agricultural products by means of untradeable labour and untradeable land. The substitution of tradeable energy and untradeable labour is considered and it is shown that the energy efficiency of agricultural production systems increases with increasing control of production and increasing yields.The main conclusion is that agriculture may contribute to a more sensible use of energy by developing in a direction where as high yields as possible per hectare are obtained from as small an area as possible.