Entries from The Big Biofuels Blog tagged with 'farming'
Not farming is better for carbon emissions than corn-ethanol
Tree Hugger has one of those articles which show that doing nothing produces fewer carbon emissions than growing corn for ethanol. Well Duh.Let's turn this on its head. If we stopped using oil-powered vehicles then we would not need to use...
Changing land management could shrink carbon payback time
Changing land management could shrink carbon payback time when farmers convert grassland to biofuel production, say researchers in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology.If this is right, and its been peer reviewed, I guess, then it could make biofuels...
Biofuels: is the cure worse than the disease?
Biofuels: is the cure worse than the disease? That is the question posed by Ron Steenblick, and Richard Doornbosch in a recent online publication....
Credit crunch may make it harder for farmers next year
The credit crunch may make it harder for US corn farmers to maintain overdrafts, raise loans and fund farming next year according to to this report from Bloomberg. ...
Distillers grains and cattle.
OK this is slightly off beam, but a lot of people are very keen of feeding distillers grains to cattle. For some ethanol plants it is the most profitable part of the business. Animal husbandry is not an area that...
How to grow more corn: Plant it closer together
You might have noticed that there are a couple of conversations chuntering on in earlier posts. Mostly these deal with the ability to plant enough corn to sustain the US ethanol business and keep people fed at a reasonable price....
A biofuels polemic from Huffington Post
If you are interested in the environmental impact of biofuels in the US check this polemic on the Huffington Post. Makes some good points about the end to end efficiency of biofuels in the automotive sector. You can't comment on...
1000 entries and what have we learned?
Put out the flags. I've reached the 1000 post mark. I started this in October 2006 with an open if sceptical mind. Its been a lot of fun so far. I've met a whole bunch of people who have commented...
Ethanol subsidies could be safe for a while
Ethanol subsidies could be safe for a while.There's a really nice explanation of why subsidies are hard to abolish in Price of Oil: Hidden Oil Subsidies from Tree Hugger.com and on Huffington Post. I couldn't put it any more clearly...
Biofuels and the whole of non-meat farming
Andy Posner, over on the Huffington Post raises some good questions about land use in a world where we're increasingly using biofuels. I suggest in a comment that perhaps a little high-fructose corn syrup should be fermented to ease the...
Is the price of corn related to the price of crude?
Is the price of corn related to the price of crude? Many in the US ethanol business say that it isn't this chap isn't so sure... ...
Will biofuels marginalise women?
Will biofuels marginalise women in the developing world? The FAO thinks that it might. In a rather negative report it concludes that biofuels will be farmed on marginal land, which is currently used by women to farm subsistence crops, it...
This doesn't quite ring true to me
There's a long and thorough going piece over on Farm Futures about the Biofuel Smear Campaign. I'm not sure that I agree with it entirely. It is based on the US experience, and that as far as it goes is...
Worries about biofuels move into different areas
One area of human experience that I can't be bothered to get to grips with is Massively Multiplayer Role-playing Online Games. (If I can't see the whites of their eyes across the Monopoly board, I can't know how they are...
Paul Temple talks at ICIS Bioresources Summit
Looking at the biofuel challenge to the agricultural supply chain.Here are some soundbites from Paul's presentation that caught my attention As a farmer we harness the environment we produce the only truly renewable raw materials. Biofuels are "one of the...
20% of US corn makes ethanol this year
20% of the US corn crop has been used to make ethanol this year, according to a report on WJFW, and around 4m acres of the US were planted with corn....
Farmers want non-farmers to get ethanol loans too
US farmers in Iowa are asking their senators to try and change the way that the US Farm Credit system operates to allow it to loan money to ethanol plants that are not majority owned by farmers. According to Domestic...
US small farmers think biofuels won't hit the world's poor
Ethanol production has had a profound impact on U.S. agriculture in recent years. Now that more than two billion bushels of U.S. corn are used for ethanol production, a legitimate question is continually being asked—are people going hungry due to...
What are biofuels doing to UK farming?
What are biofuels doing to UK farming? If you are interested in this question then there's a paper in Environ. Sci. Tech a learned journal which is available by subscription. Here's the abstract though The United States and the European...
Biofuels are changing agricultural economics
Biofuels are changing agricultural economics according to the OECD and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in a report on ICIS News. (Disclosure: I work for ICIS: About ICIS) This is...
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