Barack notices Pollan's NYT article on food and ag policy, that's great.  But the connections between food, ag, and energy must be better transmitted up the political food chain.

From Pollan's NYT article:

"...the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food."

That chemical fertiler made from natural fas emits nitrous oxide, a 300+ yimes worse GHG than CO2.  The GHG emitted is equal to 2/3rds of the CO2 absorbed through the photosynthesis in the crop.

How can this be stopped?  With organic farming that recycles fertilizer.  As Pollan says by  composting organic waste.  Manure, food waste, crop waste, forest waste, even sewage.

The problem with this is that during the first stages of composting, the hot anaerobic phase, nitrous oxide is released.

By subjecting that waste to biodigestion this potent GHG, along with methane, a GHG 20+ times worse than CO2, is captured and can then be used for energy production to backup a renewable power grid.

The product that comes out of the digestor is a safe organic fertilizer free of pathogens.  

Every bit of organic waste processed this way produces an extra income source for farms, money saving organic fertilizer, and huge GHG offset.

Please, those of you who do have the next president's ear, explain why farm biogas can make organic farms the key to our GHG saving, renewable energy, oil independent future.  Let's pay farmers for our power, instead of big coal, big oil, and big nuclear corporate empire.