(Thanks, Kirk!)
Not quite sure it's the same story as Rob heard on the BBC, but this
is certainly industrialised. "... he has gone into partnership with
the giant Anglo-Swiss agribusiness Syngenta..." Biotech giant,
world's largest agrochemical and seed corporation, not widely known
for their contribution to sustainable farming or sustainable
anything, including sustainable planets.
----------
Power plant: oilseed rape grown for electricity
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
24 July 2004
Wind power, wave power, solar power ... and now, oilseed rape power.
Britain's first electricity generating station powered by the yellow
crop is to be built on a Yorkshire farm.
It will mark a significant step forward in the development of
electricity from biomass, or plant material.
The man behind it, Clifford Spencer, has led the way in Britain in
the production of non-food crops: next year his company will grow
70,000 acres of plants for use in industry rather than food.
A third-generation farmer, Mr Spencer, 51, sees this as the future of
British agriculture, if it is to get back to growing things that
markets really want, rather than things that Brussels subsidies
encourage.
His oilseed rape power station is a natural extension of his non-food
crop business, which over the past decade has profitably grown
thousands of acres of several plants not usually associated with the
British countryside.
These include: crambe, a type of cabbage used in the production of
lubricants; borage, used in cosmetics; and non-narcotic hemp, used
for oils and fibres.
For his biomass power scheme he has gone into partnership with the
giant Anglo-Swiss agribusiness Syngenta, which is providing a
specially developed high-yielding rape variety which will be grown by
Mr Spencer and more than 100 local farmers under contract.
Between them they will grow 1,400 tons of rape and send the seeds to
a plant about to be built on Mr Spencer's Springdale farm near
Driffield, which will burn the rape oil. By this time next year they
hope to have an electricity output of 1 megawatt, enough to power
1,000 homes. Mr Spencer will run his farm on it and the surplus will
be sold on to the national grid.
"Agriculture needs to get back to being market-led, and producing for
real markets," said Mr Spencer, who began to diversify from
traditional crops in the 1990s when he feared commodity prices might
fall - as indeed they did.
His new generating station is significant also as a potentially
important contribution to the fight against climate change.
Biomass is a renewable energy technology like wind, wave and solar,
able to provide electricity without adding to the growing load of
carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which is causing global
warming.
Biomass is carbon neutral because, although it emits CO2 when it is
burnt, the plants providing the fuel absorb a similar amount of CO2
while they are growing. Advantages over the other renewables include
the fact that it is not intermittent in production (the wind drops;
the sun goes in).
But it has not been widely used so far because it can be expensive
and the economics are uncertain.
If Mr Spencer's plant succeeds, it will give biomass a shot in the arm.
24 July 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=544136
--------
>Hi Hakan
>
>>Keith,
>>
>>I am not sure that rape seed is industrialized monocrop in Europe, most
>>farms that I know of, grow it in a rotation scheme. I thought that the
>>rotation schemes with resting periods, was a part of maintaining soil
>>quality, but I am not an expert on this.
>
>Yes, that too, even quite often, and the same with soy in the US. It
>doesn't make much difference though. Simply rotating crops with some
>intervening fallow periods is not enough to maintain soil fertility,
>all it can do is reduce some of the strain. As you say, it's just a
>part, and since it's usually the only part (if even that), bridging
>the ever-widening gap is as usual a matter of chemicals and fossil
>fuels and dubious sustainability, if any. It's still industrialised.
>
>There are some good posts in the archives from real organic farmers
>doing this properly, with lower costs, equal or higher yields,
>better quality, and they're getting premium prices. One said they're
>laughing all the way to the bank. Sustainable methods are not less
>efficient, less productive, less profitable, or more difficult.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Keith
>
>
>>Hakan
>>
>>At 06:42 24/07/2004, you wrote:
>> >Hello Rob
>> >
>> > >I heard an interesting story on the BBC World Service "Europe Today"
>> > >program broadcast on July 23. They interviewed a spokesperson from a
>> > >British company with a patented technology to generate electrical power
>> > >from rapeseed oil and WVO.
>> > >
>> > >The process involves virgin oil and waste vegetable oil. The rapeseed
>> > >is pressed to extract the virgin oil for fuel. Then the soild remains
>> > >from the pressing is mixed with waste vegetable oil and burned in a
>> > >turbine. In this way, the entire rapeseed is used to generate
>> > >electricity.
>> >
>> >The rapeseed plant itself, not the seed but the rest of the plant, is
>> >said to contain 13% oil, which people have said goes to "waste". It's
>> >certainly not "waste" if the crop residues are ploughed back into the
>> >soil to provide fertility for the next crop to grow. That's very much
>> >a consideration for this technology as well, one that energy people
>> >often forget, though that might not stop them using the "renewable"
>> >and "sustainable" labels. It can be neither of those things if soil
>> >fertility maintenance is not attended to first. That can't be done by
>> >substituting chemicals for the crop residues and organic matter that
>> >make humus - it doesn't work for one thing, and chemicalised
>> >monocrops are heavily fossil-fuel dependant anyway, so the product
>> >would hardly be sustainable, nor renewable.
>> >
>> >That said, the last 80 years have seen a revolution in crop-waste
>> >recycling and fertility maintenance technology, and if it's done
>> >properly a little can be made to go a very long way, especially if an
>> >integrated approach is taken. But energy people often aren't very
>> >good at that either. This can be done well, the whole operation, and
>> >then this and other, similar, technologies can play a truly
>> >beneficial role. Otherwise it's too likely to be the same old story
>> >with problems concerning babies and bathwater and "unforeseen
>> >side-effects" rearing their ugly heads when it's too late.
>> >
>> > >According to the interview, the technology could produce electricity for
>> > >one thousand homes for one year using crops planted in an area of 1
>> > >square mile (2.5 sq km). Based on the rapeseed crops planted in the UK
>> > >now, there is enough to supply five percent of the UK power needs.
>> >
>> >Rapeseed is currently an industrialised monocrop. There are other,
>> >better, ways of doing this that could not only reduce the fossil-fuel
>> >inputs, potentially to zero, but also make it a truly sustainable
>> >production system, also with potentially a much broader product
>> >range, and probably with improvements to those supply figures too,
>> >especially from an eco-footprint point of view.
>> >
>> >You might find these earlier messages interesting:
>> >
>> ><http://archive.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1395/>http://archi
>>ve.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1395/
>> >How much fuel can we grow?
>> >
>> ><http://archive.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1801/>http://archi
>>ve.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1801/
>> >Re: Biofuels hold key to future of British farming
>> >
>> >Best wishes
>> >
>> >Keith
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