UN rapporteur calls for biofuel moratorium

Originally posted by BitRaiser
Yeah, I was thinking about labor issues. The "cheaper" part is the key. Right now, while we have inexpensive oil to use for making fertilizer, it's simply not cost effective to even bother to pursue other methods. We know the cheap oil (and thus cheap fertilizer) is becoming a problem, tho. Have you noticed price increases yet? I'm sure you will...

We can't call fertilizer "cheap", let's just say the process is not cost effective. The cost of fertilizer has gone what we thought was sky high, but next year it is going to be a lot higher. This year I think I paid about $180/ton for nitrogen fertilizer, which I thought was outrageous, but we are hearing that it will be $300 next year. Last year I paid about $140/ton. It's going up fast, but the price of our crops are NOT going up that fast.

So with cost in mind, what about on-site mulching?

There is a mulching device that you can put on some combines. They cause the combine to use more fuel and you have to run the machine slower which is not an option if you are facing bad weather. They also have problems keeping them running so the take them off. We just don't have the money to keep an extra piece of machinery running that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to repair.

Or

Feeding it to livestock while keeping them on the field?
that would give you an added bonus... if there's livestock that can process that nasty stuff.

Hehe, ya got me going now... presenting me with a problem is usually a good way to do that.

Well,sometimes that will work if you have a fence around the field(they are expensive to put up) and if you have some other place to keep them the rest of the year You can only go so far with that though......that's a lot of hamburgers to eat.

I saw an article this morning about using corn cobs for bio-fuel.

The piles of corn cobs sitting on Darrin Ihnen's family farm that not too long ago would have been considered field waste represent energy potential to ethanol producer Poet.

Farmers typically leave cobs and stalks behind in the fields, but cobs - which are the densest part of corn - can be removed without causing soil erosion or stealing soil nutrients.

Poet will need about 275,000 acres of cobs to supply its redesigned Emmetsburg plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2011.

Reed Mayberry, Poet's biomass manager, said it's too early to determine what Poet will pay farmers for their cobs, but the company estimates it will be somewhere between $30 and $60 a ton.

source

Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what you guys think.

Originally posted by BitRaiser
Growing crops for fuel production consumes more oil than just using the oil! We're not talking a little bit... we're talking a rate of 2000 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of crop thanks to oil based fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized production.

Could you please send detailed links with such calculations? You are talking of a factor of 2000 inefficiency, after all. I don't believe it.