Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Keith Addison <gha@journeytoforever.org>]

Hello Paul

> Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion 
> into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. 
> One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 
> 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the 
> energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of 
> ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs. . .
>
> http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

Yes, David Pimental, sic. Pimentel uses data that's 20 years out of 
date, he knows it but he keeps on doing it. All other studies show an 
increasing positive energy gain, there's no net energy loss and 
hasn't been for quite a long time. The data is analysed here, six 
charts, you can get the picture in a glance:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/PimentelComments4_5_05.pdf

There's more detail here:

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html
Is ethanol energy-efficient?

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_food.html
Biofuels - Food or Fuel?

(They're worth a read on their own account, IMHO.)

I'm not flying anybody's flag with this energy balance of ethanol 
issue. Pimentel gets it wrong and should be asked why. But the people 
he's attacking are not exactly defensible either - Big Ethanol, Big 
Corn in the US, ie Archer Daniels Midland and the other usual 
suspects. For one thing, they're so sharp that they treat the oil in 
the corn as a waste-product instead of making biodiesel out of it in 
the same refinery, which could be used to power most of the ethanol 
process.

One has to ask how it is that someone in Pimentel's position doesn't 
seem to be aware that there are organic farmers all over the US 
growing corn without any fossil-fuel based fertilisers and getting 
the same yields. Some of those farmers are getting it figured out 
about on-farm fuel too, so that energy input also disappears. In fact 
the whole issue disappears because corn is not exactly the ideal 
energy crop anyway (neither is soy). With ethanol, you get the 
ethanol, and you're left with less carbohydrate and more protein. 
That's a good deal, on a farm.

We think a small, well-integrated mixed farm can produce much of its 
own fuel from an ever-changing succession of by-products, with little 
extra input, and no dedicated land. That's not just ethanol though, 
that's a whole range of fuels.

We're sort of proving it at the moment at our place here in Japan, 
though that's not really how I'd describe what we're doing here, 
hence the "sort of".

David Pimentel makes all the biofuelers cross whenever he does this 
(every two years). I don't think they need to take much notice 
though, he doesn't do them any harm. They're burgeoning, making and 
using millions of gallons of biofuels a year, nobody knows how many 
millions, with millions of dollars not being spent on fossil fuels, 
and it all goes right under the radar.

You might say it's just a drop in the bucket, though it's impossible 
to know, but it has one major advantage: it's made and used on the 
spot. Why waste energy trucking energy crops to a distant large-scale 
central processing unit and then waste even more energy trucking the 
finished fuel all the way back again, instead of processing it and 
using it right there where it was grown? It's the same as the food 
miles issue. A lot of local biofuel is made from wastes rather than 
crops, but the same principles apply to wastes.

Best wishes

Keith Addison
Journey to Forever
KYOTO Pref., Japan
http://journeytoforever.org/


> paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
> ---------------
> The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after 
> all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it 
> and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
>   - Wendell Berry