Study criticizes converting cleared farmland to biofuel
Posted on Saturday, February 9, 2008
A study released Thursday said converting land to biofuel crops worsens global warming by increasing carbon emissions.
Biofuel industry officials and an Arkansas producer reacted to the study by saying the industry is shifting away from food-stock fuel sources like soybeans toward algae and animal fats.
“Nothing drives innovation like need,” said Jenna Higgins, spokesman for the National Biodiesel Board in Columbia, Mo.
New technology and alternate sources of biofuel — such as algae and animal fats — could be the industry’s future, she said.
Speculation and farmers switching crops from soybeans to corn in other parts of the country have sharply increased soybean prices, she said, making it less preferable as a biofuel.
The study, funded by the Nature Conservancy and posted online by Science magazine, concludes that cutting down rain forests or tilling grasslands to grow crops to be used for biofuels releases carbon into the atmosphere.
The carbon is released from clearing the land: Some of it from the burning of brush and trees; the rest through the tilling of soil or as organic waste from the cleared land slowly decays.
Carbon released into the atmosphere — believed by many scientists to become greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming — outweighs any savings that occur when vehicles use biofuels in place of fossil fuels, the study concludes.
While Arkansas’ biofuel crops, mostly soybeans, are grown on land cleared long ago, the study’s lead scientist, Joe Fargione, said the state still plays a role in carbon emissions.
As more of the state’s soybeans are earmarked for biofuel instead of food, an incentive is created for virgin land to be cleared in other parts of the world, like the Brazilian rain forest, Fargione said.
“Globally, farmers are doing a great job meeting the food needs of 6 billion people. To tell farmers of the world also to meet the thirst for energy and they’ll use up the last of the remaining [uncultivated ] lands,” Fargione said.
He said it would take 30 years to replace the carbon lost if U. S. farmlands left fallow from being enrolled in conservation programs were brought back into production with savings generated by less polluting fuel, he said.
Rich Byers, biofuels manager for Future Fuel Chemical Co., near Batesville, said soybean prices and concerns about sustainable feedstock is prompting a switch from soybeans to animal fats. Currently, the plant is running at about half its 24 million gallon annual capacity.
“We are very much aware of food versus fuel situation,” Byers said. “We are searching for feedstocks that are not necessarily pulled out of the food sector.”
Algae and low-grade canola are possibilities, he said.
A recent federal energy law, passed late in 2007 by Congress, mandated biofuel quotas for the first time and implements sustainability safeguards, Higgins said.
The Biodiesel Board, an industry trade association, has appointed a sustainability task force expected to report back this year with industry recommendations, she said.
Nationally, about 80 percent of biofuel is made from soybeans. In Arkansas, soybeans are the No. 1 crop by acreage — nearly $ 700 million worth were harvested on 2. 8 million acres in 2007. The state ranks 10 th nationally in soybean production.
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