Energy footprint of food: The case of corn production in Delaware

Food production is an energy-intensive process, especially for crops and meat. However, the link between food and the energy consumed to produce it is less transparent to customers and there is a lack of energy footprint information for food production in the market. This study develops a geospatial approach for estimating the direct energy use for food production, that is, the Energy Footprint of Food (EFF), and tests it for one crop in one U.S. state, that is, field corn in Delaware. Delaware was chosen because it is a relatively small state (with only three counties) with publicly available high-resolution geospatial datasets and with corn as the dominant crop type. We find that the energy use for field operation is the largest energy component for corn production on small farms while the drying process requires the highest energy on medium and large farms. Our results also indicate that producing corn on large and medium farms is more energy-efficient than on small farms, although small farms consume less electricity and less groundwater for irrigation per unit corn product. Of the three counties in Delaware, Sussex has the highest energy consumption for corn production while Kent has the lowest. On average in Delaware, the corn production requires 42,789 MINI of electricity, 4.2 million gallons of diesel, 1.4 million gallons of gasoline, and 3.1 million gallons of LPG, giving an EFF of 38,171 Btu per corn bushel or 682 Btu/lb. The EFF assessment can inform consumers about the energy inputs of food and provide useful insights for stakeholders and policy makers to develop more sustainable strategies for the food industry. The novelty of this study is to develop a geospatial inventory of EFFs for corn production. Moreover, the proposed methodology is based entirely on public data and is likely generalizable to most other states and crops.