Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Keith Addison <gha@journeytoforever.org>]

Hello again Paul

> It's good for people to see all sides of the ethanol question, and I 
> welcome anyone from Journeytoforever.

Thankyou.

> 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.

Yet many small farmers and homesteaders in the US are using biogas right now.

> 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.

They don't compare it with the cost of fossil fuels. Smallscale 
biogas units are in use all over the world.

> 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

They're not wildly conflicting and they're not all government 
studies. Eight studies over the last 10 years show a net gain of 
between 15,000 and 30,000, only Pimentel shows a 33,500 loss - 45 
btu's less than he claimed 10 years previously, despite considerable 
changes in farm practice in the meanrtime, as shown. Anyway, who 
cares about Pimentel and ADM? It's just irrelevant to a real soil 
farmer.

> 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.

As I said. Would you say that government studies promoting government 
subsidies to big cartels for food crops is the only thing going on in 
food production? It's not the only thing going on in fuel production 
either.

> 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.

$200 to build a 5 gal per hour still with a 55-gal oildrum boiler? 
Hardly. People are doing this right now on US farms. This is nothing 
new, go back 25 years to when Pimentel's figures might have had a 
little more reality:

The Butterfield Still -- Farm-scale ethanol fuel production plant
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library.html#butterfield

Farmers in the US were doing that then and a lot more of them are doing it 
now.

> 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.

Wrong question. Please see:
"How much fuel can we grow? How much land will it take?"
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#howmuch

> And ethanol processing may leave a lot of protein in the finished 
> byproduct, but do we want to eat that stuff?

No, livestock do though, and that's what's done with most of the corn anyway

> 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.

It's not just theory. Most people are only starting to think about 
this now, when it's beginning to hurt. We've been watching it playing 
out in the real world for six years and it's been going on much 
longer than that.

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
>
> *********** 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/