good biofuel

SOYMB has often been critical about the growth of the biofuel industry, which has had the effect of reducing food production for people but now researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have found that biofuel crops cultivated on land unsuitable for food crops could produce as much as half the world’s current fuel consumption without adverse impact on food crops or pasture-land.

The study identifies land around the world that is unsuitable for food production but could be used to raise biofuel crops like switchgrass. According to the researchers, many studies examining biofuel crop viability focus on yield — how productive the crop can be. They wanted to examine land availability to determine whether it is possible to produce sufficient biofuel to meet demand without sacrificing food production.

They only considered so-called “marginal” land that has low inherent productivity, has been abandoned or is otherwise unsuitable for food production. They also assumed biofuel crops would be watered only by rainfall. They considered several scenarios . First, they considered only idle land or land with marginal productivity. In the second, the also considered degraded or low-quality cropland. In that case, they estimated 702 million hectares [7.02 million square kilometers, 1.7 billion acres or 2.71 million square miles] of land available for biofuel crops like switchgrass or miscanthus. That’s nearly the area of Australia, or more than twice the area of India.

From there they considered marginal grassland, where a variety of plants called low-impact high-diversity perennial grasses could be raised. Although such crops have lower yield than more common feedstocks like switchgrass, they have less environmental impact. Including such lands and crops nearly doubled the available land. That, they say, is enough to meet as much as 56 percent of the world’s current liquid-fuel consumption.