Supermarkets and Gas Stations Now Competing for Grain

[skids]

Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United States, leaving only 6 million tons to satisfy the world's growing food needs.

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people.

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http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=45441

Article is a bit overblown IMO, but I think we should not ignore this point.

As far as solutions, at one extreme we have crops farmed specifically for energy. At the other we have the idea of only using waste from agriculatural crops, rather than the food product, sort of like how biodiesel started out.

The former threatens environmental destruction from excessive monoculture (and no doubt someone will inject GM crops into the fray.) The latter, failure of future biofuels to make a meaningful dent in our collective carbon footprint.

The best solution for biofuels is likely in the middle of those two extremes, IMO: we should be taking another look at crops that produce food, but we haven't farmed much because the amount of food produced per acre is low. This might allow the fuel product to subsidize a greater variety of foodstuffs. Which would be good, because almost everything we eat today is made from corn, and most of that which is not, wheat, and that's not healthy. In addition soil-friendly crops not normally farmed for food could help cut down on agriculture's impact.

In either case cellulosic technologies need to ramp up fast for ethanol, and other alternatives pursued both biodiesel and otherwise.

[Strelnikov_]

1. 80% Of The Food Value Of Soy Remains After Biodiesel Production

Most of the food value of corn remains following ethanol production (dry milling yields livestock feed, wet milling yields food 'byproducts' more suited to human consumption).

The issues for me are:

1) Where the process energy comes from.

2) If all the soy and corn crop were run through biofuel plants, it would only satisfy a fraction (20% as I recall) of current US liquid fuels demand.

Feasible if we convert to 100 mpg+ PHEV's, fully develop the high plains wind potential for process energy, expand mass transit, and move transportation from the current truck centric to a train centric system.

Not feasible if we continue at a 20.8 mpg fleet average to provide mobility in an ever expanding suburbia.

On edit: An alternative crop to corn is milo. Similar ethanol yield as corn, and more tolerant of hotter/dryer conditions. Problem is that it needs about as much nitrogen as corn. Then again, any crop that is removed from the field will require nutrient management. There is no free lunch, even for plants.

[kestrel91316]

2. Don't we get too many carbs in our diet anyway? Think of how this

will help us solve our nation's obesity epidemic.

Could help long-term with the overpopulation problem, too.