Darrin Qualman is a writer and researcher – with extensive farming experience – and who has been doing some long-term thinking about agriculture, climate change and energy system. Given the large-scale and costly use of nitrogen fertilizer, fossil fuels and other inputs in agriculture, he has determined that it takes about 13.3 calories to make every calorie we eat. For Qualman, the solutions to climate change and the farm income crisis is to shift away from high-input, high-energy agriculture.