Biofuels are Here To Stay: What To Do About Food Supply?
Editor’s Note: I’m in Houston, TX, this week, celebrating the International Year of the Planet by posting on topics covered at the first ever joint meeting between the American societies of Soil Science, Geology, Crop Science and Agronomy. With a significant focus on biofuels, this conference should be rife with interesting materials.
In a wide-ranging session on Tuesday dealing with global biofuel, food security and poverty issues, there was plenty for the presenters to disagree about — but the one thing they could all concur on was that the biofuel genie is out of the bottle and he’s here to stay.
Several times during the session the presenters highlighted the fact that biofuels have finally brought an inherent value to agriculture that was previously missing. This, more than anything else, is why biofuels are not going to go away. Up to now, the lack of agricultural value has caused a deep deficiency in the level of funding and investment that governments worldwide have provided for their agricultural security and infrastructure.
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As pointed out by Dr. Kenneth Cassman, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, energy and food consumption are linked to human wealth. As a society’s wealth increases, its energy consumption rises far more quickly than its food consumption - in fact, food consumption eventually plateaus because people can only fit so much into their stomachs. This very fact is leading to a revolution — the result of which will be that, in the future, we will view fuel as a more important outcome from growing crops than food.
So, if biofuels are here to stay, how can the global community prevent millions of people from falling into famine due to competition of food land with biofuel land when biofuel land turns out to be more profitable? Several ideas were floated, but the most agreed upon solution was that crop yields need to be drastically improved to pack more food value into the same amount of land — otherwise, the amount of crop land needed to feed the world will lead to an environmental catastrophe of its own.
The argument came down to a major difference between those that think the only answer is to genetically engineer our way out of the problem and those that think the simpler and better solution would be to provide farmers with the education, equipment and strategies to bring their currently low yields up to the maximum yield possible without spending huge amounts of resources on research into genetic modification.
It was a clear and stark difference: those in the genetic engineering corner think that the panacea of GMOs can provide all of the above: higher yields, drought resistance, pest resistance, and crop nutrient use improvements. But those in the non-GMO corner are skeptical of these claims, and feel that the money currently sunk into genetic engineering research might be being wasted.
The trick, the non-GMO group says, will be to simultaneously increase yield and reduce the environmental impact of farming. It’s very easy to increase one at the expense of the other, but turns out to be very hard to find ways to do both together — and without a huge diversion of money from the current glut the biotech industry is receiving to more traditional sorts of agricultural research, that goal may be damn near impossible to reach.
Dr. Cassman’s closing points sum it up rather perfectly:
“For those of you that do think that genetic engineering is going to deliver on many of these promises — quantum leaps in yield, drought tolerance, nutrient use efficiency — I feel it’s a lot like the problems we face in the world financial system today. There’s no transparency.”
“If [the genetic engineering boom] had happened 30 years ago, much of the information underpinning those claims would be in the public domain. We’d be able to look at it, and challenge it and see if it’s real.”
“We’re in a very dangerous system now where the policy makers believe [what the biotech companies say] and then change what they fund and how they invest research dollars nationally and globally [to divert money to the biotech industry]. The end result is that these [biotech] companies are telling them what they have in the pipeline and the policy makers don’t realize that what [these companies] are selling is seed, and they have no responsibility to publish the underpinning science.”
“We’ve got to be very careful here as a global community. We have such a great potential now to harness the value that biofuels have brought to agriculture. All of our careers we have fought because agriculture has no value, and countries were not investing in it because there was no value in it. The world bank told you to build a road to a resort on a beach, don’t build a road to an agricultural market inland because our financial analysis tells us it’s not worth it.
“We finally have a chance for true agricultural value, we have got to get it right this time.”
Regardless of how we get there, we must plan to meet the needs of 9 billion people who are much wealthier and have a much higher demand for energy than food.
The final point that all participants agreed on was that our current funding portfolio will not get us there. There has got to be a global concerted effort by all economic superpowers to increase yield and reduce competition between biofuels and food by funding research that has, for a long time, been virtually ignored.
Panelists participating in the discussions were: Dr. Kenneth Cassman, Dr. Adam Liska, Dr. Martin Bohn, Dr. Hernán Ceballos, Dr. Peter Hazell, Dr. David Zilberman, Dr. Wilfred Vermerris, and Dr. Mark Winslow.
Other Posts From the Joint Meeting in Houston:
- How Much Oil is Actually Left On This Planet? Should We Care?
- Pro-Poor Biofuel Crops: Sweet Sorghum and Cassava
- Biofuels And Security: Shedding My Western-Centric Worldview (Opinion)
Image Credit: existentist’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons license.
This is only a problem for people who have nothing important to do or think about. Have you heard of Salicornia? If not, you need to put your brain to work and google. What about ocean grown biomass?
Do you understand pyrolysis and gasification? Gasification is already being done in rural Indian villages using biomass agricultural waste. You can run a boiler for combined CHP or gas turbine generator combined cycle power generation from the syngas.
Although related to “jet science” it is not rocket science. (but you should know that Rocketdyne is working with Exxon to make better gasifiers)
Logar said on October 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
@web, it isnt about cutting down *trees*, its crops that grow annualy.
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Nice one Logar, and what I have also mentioned in a few other threads, Annually is where the problem begins.
Are people going to wait until the crop rioens before they drive their motor’s, the black stuff is almost on tap, it onlyhas to be refined in order to use it, which is a dam sight fast than a crop ripening.
And the plot thickens
Yes there is plenty of land to grow lots of food fuels as I call them, but we will need an awful lot of them to make it work, a tank full of gas say 25 gallons would need enough materials to make that gas which could alsofeed one person for a year, also the fertiliser to nourish those crops on the poorer soils that have been mentioned comes in the form of amonias which 70% of it comes from OIL.
As 800 High Tech said, I too believe bio fuels have no future and we should be looking at the sun for our energy needs, one days rays is equivalent to 20 times the planets energy for one day.
One @ Larry here, do yourself some reserch to see how your crops are nourished and does he remember the dust bolwls in the Lower states way back last century
if one simply keeps taking out and putting nothing back you end up with a mall nourished baby who quickly dies when he needs to fight of the famine.
The experts already know the maths, bio fuels are a very tiny snippet at what we would need for just our cars alone.
China are estimated to need an extra 300 million new cars in the next 10-20 years, its simply never going to work after oil has gone.
As a family here we are a long way set to live without the oil and why I advise people in their comunity to learn at least some the necessary skills which is going to feed and cloth your family in the comming furure, and how to protect yourselves and what you have got because your gonna need too, many times more than you need to today, history has a nasty habbitt of repeating itself.
Do you honesty think that the very rich are going to give back which they took from us, the very ritches that the lord gave us all when we have nothing left, I think you will find them trying to slot back into the society from which they stole from, call me what you like but don’t call me stupid, that I am not.
An Amish like mentality might get you an awfully long way down the road, especially when your pick up truck is out of gas.
I forgot to mention
Lets take the scenario that bio fuels from plant material takes off and it needs to balance out and come up to the same kinds of output per head of population for when the black stuff runs out, does one actually know how much crop would need to be grown in order to feed one of those massive tractors for a day, and the list goes on, these are the types of answers we all need, not what we can do,but how we do it.
The oil as it starts to get rarer is going to start costing many times more, if we leave things too late like a lot of experts are saying we are fast approaching that cut off point, does one know how many men and animals is it going to take to plant these huge areas and how long would it be before the crops are ready, taking into account that all these are seasonal collections, what of the off peak times.
Is growing more food than you could possibly do anything with worth all the energy wasted in doing so.
Will there be enough fuel left for next season, where are we going to take over in the world in order of making those countries grow food for our fuel while they starve, I’m sorry for all the questions here,but they are feasable ones don’t you think.
The bigger picture is very frightening don’t you think all constructive critisism welcome here.
I hope I don’t get into too much trouble raising some of the question that I have, so I will help the thread along a little more here.
Take you average farm fuel bill, it could be any typical farm,lets godown the wheat contractor route where the boys follow the harvest down through the wheal belt of North America, ask them how much fuel they use, not cost just quantity.
Now here’s a clue to how much labour it would take to come close to just one barrell of Brent crude, how does 12 men working for a whole year grab you, that’s what it would take to make up the difference for the energy we get from one barrell of oil 42 gallons of best crude, doesn’t seem real does it, but its official.
If we don’t feed the garen of eden with a replacement that oil brings, you end up with a smaller and smaller crop, in the end the land dies and the food with it.
My last for no honest, please don’t ban me off,there are still a few more question I would like some ideas returned.
Take the drought resistant crop or plant, these are genetically modified to survive in the harsher climbs not the harshest but harder areas where other crops would nor manage to survive.
What happens if there is no water that season to germanate the seeds or enough water to get the crop to a deent seed head in time before the real drought hits, will that crop be lost or can it survive until next season and carry on where it left off.
How many people are intrested in the GM crop for fuel versus food, will there be any choice as to what we had as long as it was food and fuel from GM.
Did you know that our deserts grow every year and have always done so, is this an indication to the planet warming up over the last few thousand years, how much have they grow in that time, I would ask some of theses question if there waere the threads but there are not so please forgive me,because they are all headed towards the food thing.
The driest areas of the planet are always the largest no viable ones, if we continue to develope crops for these types of land, then we better start with more research,because many African countries are dieing off fast, there has already been ugly scenes and compatition for vuable land and food, try telling thesespeople that they must grow fuel crops and the list goes on and on.
I really think Doctor Cassman is spot on,when he says we will hold fuel more important than food, but he is only a professor, and a car is a car, nuff said I think.
Incredible info,, Will definitely come back again
Grow the energy in the ocean if you can tame it.
Grow what you like instead of food and we will all die.
Bio anything is costing us very dearly, at 25 acres of corn for one tank of fuel for every vehicle on the planet and we would all die,
Bio fuel anything is destined to die out any time soon.
WAKE UP PEOPLE because you will soon be walking to your place of work to grow the fuel you would want to use in your SUV.