Biolfuels. According to nationalgeographic.com, Henry Ford, maker of the Ford model T, originally planned for the Model Ts to run on ethanol, a biofuel. Then cheap gasoline and diesel showed up and put an end to that. What is a biofuel you ask? A biofuel is a fuel made from plants. "But aren't fossil fuels also plants that have decomposed and fossilized," you say? Biofuels refer to plants grown more recently, such as within the last few years or so. They absorb CO2 as they grow, and emit less CO2 when used as fuels, and they're a renewable source, so they should be miracle cure to the global warming problem, right? Yes. They will help with global warming. But in the most countries where they are developed, they come from food. In the U.S., they come from food crops. More often than not, these are corn and soybeans, and growing, processing, and transporting these for biofuels puts a lot more CO2 into the environment than the biolfuels take out as well. (http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/biofuel-profile/) Alternatives are not well known or tested enough, therefore there is no way for the bioful industry to not impact the food industry at the current level.
One reason for this is that crops used formerly for food have been converted to biofuels. According to David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, as of 2008, "the demand for biofuels ... has contributed to a rise in global food prices," but Tilman also says growing populations (like those in China or India) are also responsible. In the same year, the now-former U.N. Rapporteur Jean Ziegler called biofuels a "crime against humanity" for taking food out of the reach of the hungry (Popular Science, 2008). But more hungry people may be inevitable, biofuels or none. According to the NOVA documentary The People Paradox, the world's population can be expeced to almost double in the next 50 years (NOVA), when, if a report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization s correct, farmers will have to produce 70% more food. An article from the U.N. newspaper The Guardian also states that almost all available farmland is being cultivated, and in ways that degrade the land, leading to erosion and waste of water. With these factors already contributing to rising food prices, the production of biofuels places even more stress on the food industry to feed a rapidly growing populaton of 7 billion people (guardian.co.uk)
Another way that biofuels are affecting the food industry is that croplands that are being used for biofuels were formerly used for food crops. As stated above, all available cropland is being used, and biofuels are taking land that could be used for crops (guardian.co.uk). Clearing more land for more cropland is not an option, because, as a 2008 study shows, land clearing releases more CO2 into the air than the biofuels make up for. The carbon debt (the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere when an action is done and the number of years it takes to get said carbon out of atmosphere) for varying biofuels ranges from 17 years to over 400. (guardian.co.uk and National Geographic) This, in turn affects crop pollination through heat waves that reduce fertility rates for varying crops. These cause less crops to harvest, leading to higher food prices. In a heat wave in the summer of this year, 4.1 billion bushels of corn were lost and 575 million bushels of soybeans (the two main biofuel and food crops) (NBCnews.com)
While the problems with biofuels are well documented, the solutions are either unknown, untested, or expensive. For instance, according to a National Geographic article about switchgrass biofuels (switchgrass is a grass native to North America), "key criticism of the biofuel is that large amounts of fossil fuels are required to farm and refine it." Switchgrass ethanol is a better source than corn or soybeans because it:
- Has a lower net energy calculation (how much energy it takes to farm and process the fuel minus the energy the fuel provides)
- Can grow on infertile land, with minimal water and no fertilizers, and
- Has a higher energy output than other biofuels.
Switchgrass ethanol also has lower input levels then other biofuel crops. The main problem with swtichgrass ethanol (aside from virtual anonymity) is that it is expensive. (National Geographic). David Tilman and his colleagues have found that the best energy yields come from prarie grasses that are multicultural (they are grown with a number of other species of plants), whereas most large-scale farmers have monoculture crops (where a plant species is grown with just that species). (Popular Science, 2008) At the time these articles were published, these methods were still in the testing phase.
While biofuels are potentially a fuel that may reduce the human impact on the environment, and while they are definitely more effective than fossil fuels, there are still significant obstacles to overcome so that world food sources are not negatively impacted.
A graph showing what biofuels were most commonly used in 2010, from greentechmedia.com
