Agriculture is the world's third largest consumer of energy. With the Green Revolution following the Second World War, mankind discovered how to synthetically produce nitrogenous fertilizer and consequently dramatically increase volumes of food production. Nitrogen is perhaps the single most important plant nutrient essential for the synthesis of protein - the most important building block of life.

Unfortunately the synthesis of these nitrogen fertilizers requires massive amounts of natural gas. Around 90% of the variable cost of fertilizer comes from the natural gas consumed in this industrial process. To put that into visual perspective, it takes around 1 litre of crude oil to make 1 kilogram of nitrogen fertilizer (urea).

Somewhere along the line, man forgot to consider that it could be dangerous to develop a global model of food production that was intrinsically linked to the non renewable resources of oil and natural gas. Even more recklessly, our plant breeders proceeded to breed crops with the assumption that cheap oil would always be around. Crops have been programmed to focus more on yielding food and less on competing with pests and diseases. The advent of fossil fuel based pesticides cleared away biological impediments to production such as insects and diseases. To use an analogy, commonly bred and grown crops are now effectively naked in nature. They simply could not survive without oil based inputs and man. And whats more, most commonly grown crops only live for one year and require replanting again the following year by big machines that burn thousands of litres of diesel.

So the question has always been how can farmers adapt to significantly reduce this unsustainable dependence going forward? In 2003 Aaron Edmonds was lucky enough to receive endorsement from the Australian Nuffield Farming Scholars Association in the form of a bursary to travel, study and answer this broad question in very specific ways. Aaron travelled to New Zealand, India, Scandinavia, the UK and North America. Whilst many countries are certainly looking to reduce energy use on farms, none are quite so lucky as Australia in having the means to do so. Australia is home to a unique tree with special adaptations to survive and thrive in the often harsh environment.