It’s Corn vs. Soybeans in a Biofuels Debate (NY Times)
Original article here.
The study cited on this story affirms that the fuel vs. food debate is something we should be concerned about. Indeed, as we previously saw here, most of the current generation of biofuels under production in the US is based on transforming corn grain in ethanol, or soybean in biodiesel. Always good to mention that the sugarcane ethanol made in Brazil makes an exception to this rule, where currently 0,5% of its culturable land fuels 40% of its cars. (Strategic Affairs Office’s Biocombustíveis, October 2004, and FAO’s “Bioenergy, food security and susteinability – towards an international framework“, June 2008.)
In fact, I just ran into this study from the Brazilian government. Although it was published 4 years ago, it has interesting data on Brazilian effort to produce ethanol and biodiesel. I will publish something in the next few days, since it suits neatly the food vs. fuel debate.
My final comment will be a quote from this text:
David Morris, vice president of the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which promotes local generation and ownership of energy sources, does not dispute the report’s major findings but questions their significance. “Its primary findings are neither new nor controversial,” Morris says. “The net energy of soybean-derived diesel is much better than corn-derived ethanol, and cellulosic material promises to be better than both.”
All parties consulted agree that the future for biofuels lies in the ability to convert largely nonfood-based cellulosic materials to fuel. In a follow-up study published in the 8 December 2006 issue of Science, Tilman, Hill, and fellow University of Minnesota researcher Clarence Lehman continued the search for such a crop, identifying low-input high-diversity mixtures of native grasses that provide more usable energy, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and less agrichemical pollution per hectare than either corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel. This study contends that these low-input high-diversity biofuels can be produced on agriculturally degraded lands and thus will not displace food production or cause loss of biodiversity via habitat destruction.
“Producing biofuel for transportation is a fledgling industry,” says Tilman. “Corn ethanol and soybean diesel are successful first-generation biofuels. The next step is a biofuel crop that requires low chemical and energy inputs and can give us greater energy and environmental returns.”
(Bold parts by me.)
