Food VS Fuel is a straw horse. How many of you ate boiled soybeans
for supper? How many of you have #2 yellow dent corn in your pantry?
The "food" used for fuel is animal feed and industrial ingredients,
not food. That straw horse was put up by the oil industry, and other
groups opposed to home grown fuel.
There are thousands of acres outside the cornbelt that are fallow
because there is no crop that makes economic sense. Curt mentions
Maine. All across the North, there are fields that used to grow
spuds and other crops that could grow fuel crops or food and fuel
crops. Similarly, in the south there are thousands or millions of
acres that are unused for the same reason. They used to grow sweet
potatoes, melons, cotton, oats and other crops that now don't make
economic sense.
IN the north, cops like yellowhorn, sugarbeets, and hemp make sense.
In the drier central parts, camolina and sunflowers make sense. IN
the south, castor makes sense.
Sugarbeets, hemp, sorghum, sunflower and castor all will generate
both oil and cellulosic ethanol with technologies we have available
now; and without subsidy, unlike the heavily subsidized oil industry.
The big money is foolishly chasing corn stover for cellulosic
ethanol, but that takes a toll on soil fertility and organic matter.
I know of two owners in the dakotas, one who let 20,000 acres lay
this year, another who left 15,000 acres lay, because one of the big
two "agribiz" processors would not give then a contract to grow
sunflowers. I know of thousands of acres in WI that has nothing
grown on it for 30 years. I know there are thousands and thousands
of acres in the south that have no crops to grow.
Thats only true if all the available ground is being used to grow
food for eating. If there is land sitting fallow it could be used
for fuel production.
I for instance have acreage that could be used for fuel production
which isn't. Soybeans don't get grown in northern Maine, I dunno if
the ground is unsuitable or if its just a lack of soybean growing
tradition but theres got to be another oil crop (sunflowers?) we
could grow...
-Curt
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:46:29 -0500
From: Allan Streib <str...@cs.indiana.edu>
To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Subject: Re: [MBZ] global warming
Message-ID: <m1vcptm73u....@cs.indiana.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Mike Esh <michael...@me.com> writes:
And let's not forget about the waste vegetable oil users. A small
percentage of the whole and if done correctly, a safe and effective
way reduce carbon emissions.
Any bio-fuel (biodiesel or ethanol) is pretty much carbon-neutral unless
it take more energy to produce than it yields. I have nothing against
bio-fuels per se, but think it's not a good idea to use food crops (or
land that would otherwise be growing food crops) for fuel as it just
makes food that much more expensive.
Allan
--
1983 300D
1979 300SD
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