Eating oil

The productivity of modern industrial agriculture is a phenomenal technological achievement. The amount of food produced per unit of arable land has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. But, this productivity comes at a cost. Current high yield methods are resource intensive and are completely dependent on substantial inputs of fossil fuel. in a 2008 article in the New York Time Magazine author and journalist Michael Pollan puts it bluntly

"When we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gasses."

Carbon is released into the atmosphere during multiple steps of the modern industrial food production process. CO2 sources include:

• Release of carbon during the clearing and tilling of land
• Production of synthetic fertilizers
• Use of petroleum based pesticides
• Energy consumed during the transformation of farm products into the highly processed products that makes up a large fraction of the modern american diet
• Long distance transportation of food from farmer to consumer
• and the fuel used by heavy farm equipment at multiple stages of the process

In fact, food production is second only to transportation for its relative impact on our carbon footprint. As a result, chainging our food consumption habits will help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Kofi Annan's missed opportunity

Here is one of the many articles this week in overseas papers covering the announcement that the new organization, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa or AGRA led by the former UN chief Kofi Annan will attempt to engineer a green revolution in Africa without the aid of genetically modified (GM) crops. This decision is very short sighted.

From the article:

Conventional methods of farming have not yet been applied to the fullest extent in Africa. Simply working with conventional breeding, we can do a lot,' said Joseph De Vries, programme director with AGRA.

Yes, but, with GM crops, even more could be done. I understand that GM crops are controversial and many people find their use disturbing. However, on a continent where so many go hungry, closing the door completely on a technology that has the potential to improve the drought and pest resistance of important crops makes no sense. One of AGRA's primary goals is to improve "crop varieties for larger, more diverse, and more reliable harvests". How can anyone suggest that in this day and age, GM crops have no role to play in this endeavor?

The genie is out of the bottle. GM crops are here to stay. They should stay. On a planet with 6 billion people and counting, the potential they offer to increase yields, reduce chemical usage and expand arable land is too great to ignore.

The big challenge with the development of GM crops (and the aspect that I am most uncomfortable with) is that too many decisions about which traits to manipulate and what risks are worth taking are made by big agribusiness. This is where Annan's new organization could have played a constructive role. AGRA is headed by a former Secretary-General of the UN and bankrolled by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to the tune of $150 million. Such an organization has the potential to be a powerful voice in the debate over the best use of GM crops for improving the quality of life and sustainability of agriculture in Africa.

By this decision, AGRA has removed itself a discussion that will occur whether they chose to participate or not.

This week at the CSA

Just back from the local CSA. Here is some of what we picked up:


Find one near you

Sustainable education

The most recent issue of the journal Nature has a review (behind a subscription barrier) of a new book: Degrees that Matter: Climate Change and the University by Ann Rappaport & Sarah Hammond Creighton. I have not read the book but some of the information is interesting.

The book documents a 15 year effort by Tufts University that began in 1991 to reduce its energy consumption. From the review:

The central observation from Degrees that Matter is that universities are in a unique position to offer leadership on climate change and carbon emissions through their educational, research and wider roles in society.

The conclusion is a bit disheartening:

The bad news is that despite the intense programme, carbon emissions at Tufts — both net and normalized — seem to have increased over time. The university as a whole has become more energy intensive, with the consequence that it will not meet its Kyoto target. This should, however, be set against other higher-education institutions, where the rate of increase over similar time periods is much greater and the reversal of trends, if at all, much slower. A large part of the increase is due to growing demands from personal equipment.

I assume the "personal equipment" are computers which consume an enormous amount of energy.

Building a better biofuel

Biofuels offer the promise of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The most widely used biofuel is ethanol made by the biological fermentation of corn. This process is not as green as many would like to believe because a substantial amount of energy (in the form of fossil fuel) is used in the production process. So ,the net gain is not great. Also, ethanol itself is not a terribly good fuel as it is very volatile, is not very energy dense and absorbs water.

A better biofuel would be one that does not rely on an important food crop, has a higher energy density and can be produced with as little energy input as possible. In todays issue of Nature, Román-Leshkov et al present a letter in which they report on a process by which the are able to produce 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) from the sugar fructose.

DMF is a better fuel than ethanol and interest in it is not new. What is new in this report is the ability to produce DMF in an industrial process requiring much less energy than previously reported methods.

The environmental impacts of this material have not been well studied and the source of fructose for the production of DMF remains an important issue but this type of innovative thinking has a place in our efforts to move away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Complete citation:
Roman-Leshkov, Y., C. J. Barrett, Z. Y. Liu, and J. A. Dumesic. 2007. Production of dimethylfuran for liquid fuels from biomass-derived carbohydrates. Nature 447:982-985.