A weed, you say? Something very hardy?
Ironically, agribusiness itself may have supplied the answer for this one. GM Canola is now appearing as a weed. It is resistant to certain herbicides (it was designed that way, after all), it is now known to be capable of having "gene stacking" occur, and being a brassica in origin in the first place, does quite well out there in the world on its own. Given a few more years, you'll likely be able to gather your oilseed fuel from the very roadside ditches you travel past, along with those cattails, unless there is a lot of control done. Since a lot of many buyers are rejecting the GM crops, and since there is difficulty in keeping the stuff out of non-GM fields, there may be lots more around, too... more than we'd like, perhaps. For those buyers it would be "of little food use".Of course, it you want to, you extract the oil and feed the meal anyway, so you can sort of have it both ways. See: www.percyschmeiser.com http://www.rense.com/general11/weed.htm http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=360 Or maybe there is no problem, eh?....here is the other side of the story... http://www.nationalpost.com/features/junkscience/response2a.html Time will tell, now that it is most definitely "in the environment". Regards, Edward Beggs, BES, MSc www.biofuels.ca on 5/21/02 10:45 AM, Harmon Seaver at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 11:27:27AM -0700, Ken Provost wrote: >> Economics get all counter-intuitive when a resource is widely/thinly >> distributed -- sunlight is another great example. What's interesting >> about vegoil is that it starts out very concentrated and expensive, and >> ends up widely distributed but of poor quality. Wouldn't it be nice if >> there was a widely distributed oil crop that was of little food use, so >> that good quality oil could be had in small quantities anywhere. >> Something like acorns, pinenuts, gopher plant, or perhaps a weed we're >> not paying attention to. And I don't mean jatropha, or jojoba, or cuphea, >> or anything you have to PLANT -- then it just becomes another agribusiness. >> I mean an already existing weed. Any ideas? > > Not for oil, but cattails for ethanol certainly fits that bill. In fact, > locally I'm currently half-heartedly investigating a couple of different > cattail > control programs -- really big areas, hundreds, maybe thousands of acres, that > the DNR and other people are looking at to restore to a more diverse > habitat. Their plan is to drain the areas and try to burn the cattails. I'd > think if they drain it enough, going in with big 4WD tractors w/double tires > pulling a potato digger it might both serve their purposes and create a > fantastic harvest of ethanol feedstock, plus biomass (the tops) for > gasification. > I say half-heartedly only because I'm just in no position financially to do > anything with it, although with the new ethanol plant being built within a few > miles of one huge cattail marsh they want to clear, it would seem an easy > market. > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Stock for $4 and no minimums. FREE Money 2002. http://us.click.yahoo.com/orkH0C/n97DAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
