From jmoersc@gwdg.de Thu Jan 15 13:40:03 1998 Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 11:45:11 +0000 From: Johannes Moerschner To: "Sustainable Agriculture List, SUSTAG" , "London, Lawrence F. Jr., VENAURA FARM, U.S." Subject: energy accounting in livestock farming [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] dear adressees and "sust. agr. list" members, doing an extended internet research on energy accounting, energy balances, energy inputs in livestock farming etc. I stumbled into some exchanges of information about "energy and agricultural activities", done in the early 1995 by most of you as contributors giving the one or other hint within this topic or doing a request on it. Out of this reason I am going to ask you and all the other members of the sust. agr. mailing lists (SANET and SUSTAG) for your kind help in this matters, though your postings have been done nearly three years ago. Never the less I expect, some of you will be still involved in researches on this field?! Let me introduce myself with some words: Working already for about two years on energy accounting and energy balances in arable farming I am now actualy doing a study for the German KTBL (Kuratorium für Technik und Bauwesen in der Landwirtschaft) on available literature, projects and data bases in connection to energy accounting and energy balances in livestock farming. The idea is to compose a list of current/still actual studies, activities, data bases and publications connected to energy inputs in livestock farming, as extended as possible. For the KTBL this will be the starting point to develope own approaches towards a methodology of energetical calculations in livestock farming for application on all kinds of animal production systems (cattle, swine, poultry etc.) I know about some "classic" publications on energy aspects of agriculture in the U.S., some of them often quoted also in German studies: Pimentel 1980: Handbook of Energy Utilization in Agriculture Fluck and Baird, 1980: Agricultural Energetics Fluck, 1992: Energy in Farm Production Helsel, 1987: Energy in Plant Nutrition and Pest Control Pimentel and Hall, 1984: Food and Energy Resources Stout, 1990: Handbook of Energy for World Agriculture So I think I got a rather good overview on background and general principles of energy calculations in the U.S. related to agricultural production. But I am looking now for some more detailed - and perhaps more actual - studies or articles including explanations/discussions on methods of energetical valuation of single input factors (buildings, machinery, animal food etc.) in livestock farming. Also descriptions of the methods of energetical calculations for different kinds of livestock farming in total (system borders, which inputs are included/excluded, how are they calculated, how is the complete calculation processed? etc.) are highly appreciated. Maybe that you know about such studies or that there are working students of your University or some scientists of your Department in this field of research? I just tried already to get in touch with the mentioned U.S. experts on energy accounting in agriculture, too, but usualy this is always somehow difficult because of their time limits! Please share your knowledge on this topic with me! Kind regards Johannes Moerschner ________________________________________________________ Dipl.-Ing.agr. Johannes Moerschner Forschungs- und Studienzentrum Landwirtschaft und Umwelt (Research Center Agriculture and the Environment) UNIVERSITY OF GOETTINGEN, Germany Am Vogelsang 6, D - 37075 Göttingen, Germany e-mail: jmoersc.gwdg.de Tel: +49-551-39 93 41 Fax: +49-551-39 22 95 More about my interests on internet: Institute-homepage Agrartechnik: http://gwdu19.gwdg.de/~uaat/ Project description in German on: http://gwdu19.gwdg.de/~uaat/energ.htm Project description in English on: "sorry, still under construction" =========================================================