Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

It's good for people to see all sides of the ethanol question, and I welcome 
anyone from Journeytoforever. Thanks for  your input.  And though it's a bit 
off topic I'd like to promote alternatives to fossil fuels - when they're 
realistic.  I have read the different studies you reference. I'll stand by 
what I said about biogas being impractical on the farm *here* for the reasons 
I gave. Your other post mentioned the Nepalese using biogas digesters. 
Considering the prohibitive cost of fossil fuels in the foothills of the 
Himalayas, it appears very practical there.

As for ethanol, I said yesterday that hydrogen and ethanol are a net energy 
loss, and that it will never produce more energy than it takes to make it. 
Maybe I shouldn't have said "never" since never is a long time ;-)   So due 
to wildly conflicting government studies on the controversy I should reserve 
judgment on whether ethanol *can* in theory furnish more energy than it takes 
to produce it. However, as it's produced currently it certainly appears to 
take more energy to produce than they can get out of it. I see some 
uninformed arguments on both sides, and I have to be suspicious of government 
studies promoting government subsidies to big cartels for energy crops.

Whether it's practical at all for small farms or farm families to produce 
their own ethanol remains pretty doubtful due to equipment startup costs. So 
while it seems more practical to use it onsite instead of trucking it around 
like gasoline trucks, there's still a snag in the plan.

Another thing I don't see answered conclusively in those studies is how much 
land would have to be devoted to energy crops (corn or sugarcane) to supply 
current or reduced levels of fossil fuels in the U.S.  And ethanol processing 
may leave a lot of protein in the finished byproduct, but do we want to eat 
that stuff? Just because something is a renewable alternative, unfortunately, 
doesn't necessarily mean it's realistic or practical on a local scale. We 
have to see how it's all going to play out.


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

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/29/2006 at 8:42 PM Keith Addison wrote:

>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/