Many people have criticized the inneficient production of biofuels on good cropland, saying it will push up the price of food without helping the environment very much. The recent food price rises of meat, eggs and bread add to their complaints.
However, in the UK at least, high grain prices may mean that some of the biofuel production plants planned may not be built. It is just too risky to invest million in plant that may be uneconomic if grain prices remain high.
This leaves the polititions in a quandry, they need biofuels to give some small amount of fuel security in the case of a world crisis restricting the flow of oil imports, yet growing these pushes up the price of crops. It really does show that the world is becoming short of all sorts of resources in the face of a rising population hungry for more energy and better food.
One answer to this is to develop and use the Intact Harvester in a system that will produce both food and fuel from the same land at similar cost to just producing food by normal methods.
October 10th, 2007 at 4:59 am
I see this sort of argument about using straw for biofuel, but I never see any indication of what will replenish the soil’s organic matter.
What’s your solution to the problem of declining soil organic matter?
October 12th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
With the straw removed, non-inversion tillage becomes easier and work in the US and elsewhere shows that organic matter decays faster when ploghed under than if it remains on or close to the surface.
We have the problem that when straw is removed there is a loss of nutrients especially potash which must be replaced. This is of course no different to the problem we have allready where nutrients are being flushed down the sewers of big cities instead of being returned to the soil. Sometime in the future we will need to ensure that nutrients are re-cycled after the entire crop has been utilised.