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by jkhdigital 331 days ago
Except that industrial-scale agriculture in general requires quite a bit of exogenous petrochemical inputs—not just the fuel to power the machines that do the work, but also the fertilizer.
2 comments

The energy for fertilizer is mostly in the nitrogen fertilizer. The energy input here is to make hydrogen for the Haber-Bosch process. This hydrogen can come from renewable sources ("green hydrogen"), and this would be an excellent way to counter long term variability in renewable output.

That the hydrogen currently comes from natural gas is no argument it must come from natural gas, any more than cars currently using petroleum derived fuels would imply they must use petroleum derived fuels.

Still far less carbon than used for gasoline