>>Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 23:30:09 -0000 >>From: "jeff_kerzner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>To: Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>Subject: Re: Biofuels hold key to future of British farming >> >>I was having a discussion last night with a leading scientist in >>the renewable energy field about using oil-bearing crops to produce >>bio-diesel, and a question he raised was "what size area would be >>required to plant a sufficient amount of crops to offset the energy >>required for the whole growing & production process?". Could somebody >>please comment on this. Thanks and GO BIO-DIESEL! > >The answer: none. > >Keith Addison >Journey to Forever >Handmade Projects >Osaka, Japan >http://journeytoforever.org/ >
I guess the leading scientist wouldn't have thought much of that answer. Ask him this: how much fossil-energy, in fuel, fertilizers and pesticides, would be required to produce enough food to feed 900 million people? Answer: none. According to the FAO, no less. More than 15% of the world's food supply is produced by city farms (in 1993, expected to grow to 33% by 2005), with virtually no inputs other than wastes (thus vastly decreasing city sanitation problems as well), and with the use of no farming land at all. Quite easy to apply such an approach to biofuels production. For one thing, only 10% of the WVO in the industrialized countries is collected, and it will stay at that level until there are such *local* initiatives. Large amounts of fuel ethanol can be produced by micro-operations from city wastes. Large amounts of biogas can be produced for heating and cooking from wastes, and the sludge used as fertilizer in the city farm. That's just one such niche. Britain and Europe are supposed to be moving towards sustainable agriculture. They'll try input substitution first - "organic" weedkillers, LOL! Substitution doesn't work too well anyway - high inputs, average to low outputs, lower externalizations. Less than 5% of the organic farmers in the US use any pesticides at all, of whatever origin, according to the USDA - they don't need them. Organics by management (rather than by substitution or by neglect) is low-input high-output. http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?view=12561&list=BIOFUEL It's integrated, and on any integrated farm it's possible to arrange a constant varying supply of by-products to produce biofuels and bioenergy sufficient to run the farm, plus. Even a half-baked organics by substitution farm that hasn't discovered grazing yet (buys in livestock feed) can achieve 40% energy self-sufficiency. http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/03/28/3accb0712? in_archive=1 Done properly using by-products and "wastes", how would you ascribe a land-use figure to it? You wouldn't be using any land at all, not exclusively. Hence my answer: none. More accurately perhaps, none and up. I suppose the scientist wanted to calculate a national-scale program for fossil-fuel replacement. For one thing, rather more than mere replacement is required, it also needs large reductions in energy use and large improvements in energy efficiency, whatever the fuel source. Anyway, such centralized, top-down schemes also don't work very well, especially not when it comes to land use. Hence, perhaps, the sorry recent record of British agriculture, and, too, the huge waste and very high costs of the CAP, of commodity farming in the US of soy and maize etc, and the massive externalizations inherent in this approach. Jules Pretty at Essex conservatively calculates the true costs of British farming to be higher than it's income. Biofuels should be produced by more of the same? Maybe it's this approach that sees the British government thundering expensively down the biomass-energy path, throwing away multi-millions on coppice gasification projects. Think small, think local. Best Keith Addison Journey to Forever >>--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > Martin Steele sent me this: >> > >> > >> > á WESTERN MORNING NEWS ~ WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 4 2002 >> > >> > Biofuels hold key to future of British farming Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
