The book Farmers of Forty Centuries, written in 1911, is about an american's experience surveying the agricultural techniques of eastern countries: primarily Japan and China. He found that their density made it so that they had extremely limited amounts of land and fuel per capita, but they had LOTS of manpower. So things were done in ways that used the manpower (intensive composting, using twigs for fuel) and made a sustainable system that preserved healthy land and healthy people for thousands of years. He contrasted that to US agriculture which (even then) was wearing out the land despite huge use of expensive [petrochemical] fertilizers, and provided remarkably less food or fuel value per acre.

This was of course severely damaged by the advent of cheap fuel, and probably receives the coup de grace from imported western ideologies.

But so ok, my point: we've got this crazy thing against work, so we don't think human work as a usable energy input. (Unless maybe it's the work of Mexican migrant workers...)

I find this terribly frustrating.