Is the World going barmy, switching arable land over to biofuel crops?

Question

The world has a finite amount of land available for food production do we really want to lose some of it in order to power our cars etc, are we bloody mad?

Answer 1

oh we are mental all right, loopy loo.

Answer 2

Peak Oil will be a reality soon and that is what is 'fuelling' this rush to biofuel crops. The vast majority of oil producing nations are experiencing a decline, despite using every technological device at their disposal. Even Saudi Arabia had a decline of 8% in production last year. We have, or are about to have, used half the total oil reserves in the world, a finite and irreplacable resource. Some of that oil is used in the production of fertilisers and pesticides which make more land available for agriculture that would otherwise be unusable. It has supported a massive increase in population, an increase that is not sustainable without it. In these circumstances, it would be madness to let people starve to fill a petrol tank, but let's face it, that is probably what's going to happen.

Another thing that disheartens me is the suppression of a technology that could slash global warming emissions, save millions of people from respiratory illnesses, and stop us trashing the Middle East to seize its oil. There is an electric car, that has a battery that can run up to 300 miles at 70mph on a single charge, with no exhaust fumes and no carbon emissions. You simply plugged it in at night, like a mobile phone, and drove off in the morning. The eletricity costs the equivalent of 30p for a gallon's worth of travel. General Motors even had a prototype of the car and despite a huge demand for them, called in all their cars and sent them to the scrapheap. Why? Well, an electric car has no combustion engine and car companies make a lot of money replacing and maintaining those engines. A battery needs very little maintainance, a disaster for the balance sheets. Perhaps that's why General Motors co-operated with the big oil companies and sold them the technology. It hasn't been seen since.

Meanwhile, in smogged out LA County, one quarter of all 18-25 year olds have severe lung lesions or chronic respiratory diseases caused by air pollution. Madness, eh?

Answer 3

if you equate 'mad' with the practice of agricultural corporations who are interested only in returning an investment - as quickly as possible - to their shareholders, then yeah. real mad!

everyone seems to think this will be great for the mom & pop farmers hollywood and agribusiness likes you to think are all there is to agriculure but that vision began to disappear in the American dustbowls of the 1920s and was pretty much played out by the end of the 1980s. Small farms that produce corn for food or ethanol of whatever cannot compete against the economies of the big scale operations.

that said, the "farmer" now has two markets to sell in - food and fuel - and will go to the market with the highest prices at that time. shareholders, remember?

what this leads to is some 800 million global car drivers competing with some 2 billion starving and another 3 billion hungry global, human being, citizens in places almost completely outside the industrial countries life the US and Europe.

What will be the result? Ethanol may not be the transportation energy savior a lot of folks want you to think it is - corporations, remember?, but as Bob Marley sang, "A hungry mob is an angry mob".

Answer 4

Yahoo! recently posted a story containing an estimate that it would take 16 acres of arable land to fuel one car for one year. I would get fat if I ate 16 acres worth of potatoes in one year.

Answer 5

Isn't is just incredible? It's the same problem again..we don't look at the issue from the right angle. We shouldn't replace oil with biofuel....we should consume less, slow down our economies and realise that economies of growth are not viable....

Answer 6

We aren't bloody mad but we certainly are over-populated. We do, however, need to perhaps use a different raw material for making fuel. What making fuel from plant material does is eliminate the problem of dealing with those who own the oil.

Answer 7

So one tank of bio-ethanol uses the same amount of corn that could feed a person for a year. Bio fuels sound like a good idea until you do that sort of arithmetic.

Answer 8

Not long ago, the U.S. government was paying some farmers not to grow anything because there was a surplus of food crops. If some of that extra farmland can be used to produce fuel, that benefits everyone. It gives the farmers a new source of income, makes it unnecessary for the government to subsidize them, and reduces dependence on fossil fuels. That sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.

Answer 9

In answer to the first part of yr question.... Yes , and has been for some time. Actually it's not the world's fault it's the twits we put in charge.

Answer 10

i say,go back to the horse and cart/(seriously)
it will not stop war games or make the free world less free.
keep technology but at home,"lets go back to basics"?

Answer 11

You are right. It's scary what's going on.