Energy For Agriculture: A Computerized Information Retrieval System

Excerpts from the report Foreword: Energy may come from the sun or the earth or be the product of plant materials or agricultural wastes. Whatever its source, energy is indispensable to our way of life, beginning with the production, processing, and distribution of abundant, high quality food and fiber supplies. This specialized bibliography on the subject of energy for agriculture contains 2,613 citations to the literature for 1973 through May 1979. Originally issued by Michigan State University (MSU), it is being reprinted and distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a companion piece to the Department's recently published volume: Solar Energy and Non-Fossil Fuel Research: A Directory of Projects Related to Agriculture, 1976-79. Miscellaneous Publication 1378. In addition, these literature citations will be incorporated into AGRICOLA (Agricultural On-Line Access), the comprehensive bibliographic data base maintained by Technical Information Systems (TIS), a component of USDA's Science and Education Administration (SEA). The citations and the listing of research projects will be combined with other relevant references to provide a continuously updated source of information on energy programs in the agricultural field. The MSU bibliography is being reproduced by agreement between compilers B. A. Stout and C. A. Myers of the university's Engineering Department and SEA/TIS, the same unit responsible for USDA's Solar Energy Research Directory. The appearance of these two documents together illustrates the type of Federal-State cooperation essential to the building of a national energy data base for agriculture and related fields.