Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Dave
Any biofuel that competes for agricultural resources (arable land and fresh water) is ultimately a bad idea.
Biofuels have to grow in deserts and use salt water. Otherwise they cause the price of food to go up.
It has to rock to be a corn farmer these days. Corn has tripled in price since the ethanol subsidies were enacted. I've seen it over $10/bu on the CBoT. But that means the price of corn flour has also tripled. Tough times in Mexico where corn flour is a staple.
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In my area I would guess that agricultural production could be increased by 100% easliy if it made economic sense to do it. Myself and 4 neighbors have 250 acres of unused fields and no one is knocking on our doors asking to rent them, and I'm nt pricing out a tractor to do it myself. This land is not prime farmland but it all was farmed in the recent past. Because modern industrial agriculture is so fuel dependent that I don't think farmers are coming out much ahead than they were before ethanol, especially on less than ideal land. Government subsidies had artificially lowered the price of corn to where it made sense to convert it to ethanol, now ethanol subsidies still promote corn being used even with a tripling in value.
Corn ethanol seems to be a disaster as a biofuel, corn is hard on the land, takes a huge amount of fertillizer, and is energy intensive to harvest and process. I do think that a process to utilize cellulouse could be implemented well with crops that produce well without so many energy inputs.
The final solution is just use a fraction of the energy we use now, then the demand for any fuel is less and biofuels can play a significant role without affecting food prices. Our consumption based society will finally be seen as unsustainable and we can work on being carbon neutral and nutrient neutral(sustainable agriculture, not industrial agriculture).
I imagine north america will be alot more like western europe which isn't so bad. Integrated public transportation and all that. The average family won't own 2 cars and won't need to.
Ian