Thought for Food Blog

Food Vs. Fuel

Food vs. Fuel | IFIS Publishing

There is ongoing debate in many scientific circles, as well as mainstream media, over how to avoid problems of food security associated with growing crops for biofuels instead of food.

David Tilman, University of Minnesota Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology, has highlighted that expanding the production of food-based biofuels, such as maize, inevitably will either take away land from food crops or require new land.

There is growing interest in the development of ‘second-generation’ biofuel feedstocks, which will have improved characteristics for biofuel production and are not used in food production, such as perennial grasses and woody species, cellulosic waste, and algae.

In a report, Forecasting Agriculturally Driven Global Environmental Change, published in the journal Science, Tilman et al have argued that expanding the production of food-based biofuel crops to newly cleared land would release large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which would negate their use to offset carbon emissions.

Instead, they outline the possibility of using land abandoned by agriculture to plant high-diversity mixtures of native grasses and legumes, which have the potential for use as biofuels as well as creating net stores of carbon to combat climate change.

For example, the United States has nearly 37 million acres of retired agricultural land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, under which farmers are paid to retire highly erodible and other environmentally sensitive cropland and pasture. Growing maize or other food crops in monoculture, i.e. producing or growing a single crop or plant species over a wide area and for a large number of consecutive years, for biofuels could compromise goals of conserving and improving the soil, water, and wildlife resources on these reserve lands.

By contrast, the use of diverse mixtures of native grasses and legumes on land already degraded by agriculture might have conservation and wildlife benefits as well as benefits for carbon storage and biofuels production, and importantly, would not require the clearing of additional land and the accompanying loss of biodiversity and massive release of greenhouse gases.

It is clear then that proponents of biofuels need to work closely with plant scientists, ecologists, and conservation biologists to ensure that growing plants for biofuels does not create as many problems as it solves.

(Image Credit: http://www.gratisography.com/#nature)



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