Sacrificing food for energy

[Mr. Scott]

Just a mile from me is a large field that used to yield corn, soybeans and the like, and is converted into a solar energy farm -- a sea of electricity-generating solar panels. Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense?

 

[Lowpro]

Is it cost effective?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Yes, it makes sense. You need more renewable energy, you don't need more food.

Obesity in the United States

obesity rates in the United States are the highest in the world with 74.6% of Americans being overweight or obese.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Is it cost effective?

That's a difficult analysis. I'm not sure. Maybe it is only cost effective if solar energy is subsidized, which it very well may be in this case. I'd just rather see them on rooftops, where solar energy is now wasted, than on farmer's fields, where plants would be helping to feed people and reduce CO2.

 

[The Don]

It would make more sense if the field was incapable of growing food and was converted to solar production but these pieces of land are often a long way from places that need energy and people who can maintain the plant.

It may make more sense than turning the corn into ethanol.

 

[Travis]

Is it cost effective?

For first world nations, at present, yes. What worries me more are poor nations with unstable food supplies devoting more and more of their farming space to ethanol production.

 

[The Don]

For first world nations, at present, yes. What worries me more are poor nations with unstable food supplies devoting more and more of their farming space to ethanol production.

In this case it's not ethanol, it's solar.

 

[Dancing David]

Just a mile from me is a large field that used to yield corn, soybeans and the like, and is converted into a solar energy farm -- a sea of electricity-generating solar panels. Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense?

Yes, the food shortages are a matter of distribution. How much of that food was converted to stock feed?

There is nothing great about corn and soy, the destruction of the woods and pastures was a greater loss of diversity.

 

[Dancing David]

For first world nations, at present, yes. What worries me more are poor nations with unstable food supplies devoting more and more of their farming space to ethanol production.

Money and cash, when the US and others flood their grain markets there is no way farmers can support themselves.

 

[Dancing David]

That's a difficult analysis. I'm not sure. Maybe it is only cost effective if solar energy is subsidized, which it very well may be in this case. I'd just rather see them on rooftops, where solar energy is now wasted, than on farmer's fields, where plants would be helping to feed people and reduce CO2.

Um, yeah, maybe you should find out how much of the CO2 is really locked up before you make that assumption.

 

[excaza]

Yes, it makes sense. You need more renewable energy, you don't need more food.

Obesity in the United States

That doesn't necessarily mean there is too much food. It just means there's too much of the wrong food, and/or the available food is not being distributed properly.

 

[BushRanger]

The relative amount of field that was lost is nothing compared to the amount still farmed. It may have been a field a farmer would have had to put money into putting tile into to get drainage better, it could have been a field they just consistently had such low yeilds, they might have been having to have a lot of custom spreading done to make any money on the field at all that it just made a better business decision for them.

 

[Roboramma]

That doesn't necessarily mean there is too much food. It just means there's too much of the wrong food, and/or the available food is not being distributed properly.

If eating X amount of the wrong food makes a person obese, eating Y*X of the wrong food, for a particular value of Y, will not make the same person obese.

 

[JJM 777]

a large field that used to yield corn, soybeans and the like, and is converted into a solar energy farm
(...)
Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense?

It doesn't make much sense to cover fertile land with infertile things. There are lots of infertile lands for such infertile purposes.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Maybe it is only cost effective if solar energy is subsidized,

Why is farming subsidized in the US? Would it not be cost-effective if it wasn't subsidized?

Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense? One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people

Many solar plants are situated on land which is less cost-effective to grow crops on, with or without subsidies.

Solar Power Plants in California

That doesn't necessarily mean there is too much food. It just means there's too much of the wrong food, and/or the available food is not being distributed properly.

The wrong food would be that junk which Americans eat, and not being distributed properly would be selling it to Americans. To avoid obesity, just eat less.

Distribution isn't the main problem anyway. Droughts, wars, ignorance, high birth rates etc. contribute to lack of food in poor countries. You could send all your surplus food to the needy in other countries, and it still wouldn't solve their problems in the long term. But one thing you can do is cut down on CO2 emissions - global warming is only making the situation worse.

 

[theprestige]

It doesn't make much sense to cover fertile land with infertile things. There are lots of infertile lands for such infertile purposes.

That's what you'd think, but I'll bet the farm that almost all of your "infertile" land would be aggressively defended by conservationists and eco-tards of various stripes, against any and all development for whatever purpose.

It actually might be easier to take land that's already developed, and thus way past the point of being conserved or preserved in its "natural" state, and change the nature of its use.

 

[Almo]

Currently, ethanol for transport is teh stupid. You spent a lot of fossil fuels running the tractors and making the fertilizer to do the farming.

 

[Dinwar]

It actually might be easier to take land that's already developed, and thus way past the point of being conserved or preserved in its "natural" state, and change the nature of its use.

Also, keep in mind that the term "fertile" and "infertile", when applied to farm land, is an economic term. If you're planting wheat, importing water into the heart of a desert isn't likely to be profitable, so you'd call the land infertile. For a different crop, maybe it would be--particularly one with a higher profit margin. I know of land in the Mojave Desert that was once considered fertile, but no longer is due to economic reasons.

Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense? One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people

Well, the real question is whether or not that grain went to feed people to begin with. I know of at least one plant that uses grain that's grown for animal food (like, dog and cat food filler), processes it for ethanol, then sells the processed grain to the dog and cat food companies. Enough nutrition is left over that they can still make pet food out of it. So using that process, ethanol production does precisely nothing to human food supply.

 

[wobs]

It may make more sense than turning the corn into ethanol.

Indeed, corn based ethanol can often have a higher carbon footprint than gasline (petrol).

 

[Dymanic]

Why is farming subsidized in the US? Would it not be cost-effective if it wasn't subsidized?

It gets pretty complicated.

Farming is just barely cost effective even when it is subsidized. Say you have a bumper crop. The market gets flooded, and prices drop. Some farmers are barely able to recover their costs (if at all), so next season they plant even more (because it's all they've got), which leads to a self-perpetuating cycle. Or you have a year or two in which growing conditions are so bad that many farmers go broke and head off to the city to look for work. So the original idea behind farm subsidies was to protect the security of the nation's food supply by providing farmers with some insulation against market instability.

Naturally, once a system like that is in place it's subject to being exploited for a variety of other purposes. When you can produce food so far in excess of what your country's people can consume (however heroic their effort), you can support huge humanitarian programs to feed millions of people across the globe. You can also get other countries to dance to your tune by pouring a river of grain on them. You can do the latter under the guise of the former. You can change the way land is used; you can change patterns of energy consumption; you can change people's eating habits... those subsidies represent a lot of political and economic power, and a particular policy which may look quite reasonable from a particular political and economic vantage point (or from a particular vantage point in time) may look completely foolish from another.

I think the whole issue of government subsidies (of any type) is something that is going to be receiving a lot of increased attention over the next few years.

 

[quarky]

Farm land gets 'spent' at some point in the exploitation process, unless its a rare slice of sustainably managed farm land. At some point, its not worth the costs of fertilizers, irrigation, fences, etc.

The shade created by the panels might permit some other uses...mushrooms, perhaps?
Rain water gathering and storage? Wildlife refuge? Worm husbandry? Bat roosts?

Most people, I suspect, would be rather shocked at the value of the corn that can be grown on a acre of decent land vs/ the cost of growing it.
When the depletion of the soil is taken into account, which it isn't, mostly, the equation gets worse. The apparent productivity of much of the huge farms in the U.S. is largely propaganda when all is factored in.

Of course, there is also propaganda concerning the value of the pv energy production.
It would be nice to get a clear view of all this; minus the subsidies and myopia about the future of the sustainability.

Food and energy are about to get expensive.

 

[gabeygoat]

I'm a vegetarian, so i love soy based stuff.
and i love corn and all it's spinoffs (pollenta, tortillas, cornbread, pop corn, etc)
that said, we grow plenty (if not too much) and as someone pointed out, corn production makes for more CO2 in the atmospehere. If it were any other crop, i might be concerned, but not for these two.

 

[Dymanic]

...as someone pointed out, corn production makes for more CO2 in the atmospehere.

Not exactly. It is the scale of industrialized agriculture in general which does that, primarily through its heavy reliance on fertilizers produced using natural gas as a feedstock. If corn is the worst offender, it's because it has certain properties that make it a desireable choice of crop -- particularly as a crop for export. Soybeans require less fertilizer than does corn (being a legume, the soybean is capable of nitrogen fixation), but because corn utilizes C4 carbon fixation, it requires less water. A lot less. (Efforts are under way to introduce C4 carbon fixation into soybeans; that would really be something). Soybeans contain more protein than corn, but corn has more sugar, and that counts big if you're interested in making ethanol. Even if you're able to see the futility in that exercise, corn still generally comes out on top due to its greater versatility for use in processed foods.

It's entirely possible to grow either crop without the use of chemical fertilizers, and you can even eliminate the petroleum used in the combines and all that, making them completely carbon neutral. You just can't do it at the same scale.

 

[quarky]

Not exactly. It is the scale of industrialized agriculture in general which does that, primarily through its heavy reliance on fertilizers produced using natural gas as a feedstock. If corn is the worst offender, it's because it has certain properties that make it a desireable choice of crop -- particularly as a crop for export. Soybeans require less fertilizer than does corn (being a legume, the soybean is capable of nitrogen fixation), but because corn utilizes C4 carbon fixation, it requires less water. A lot less. (Efforts are under way to introduce C4 carbon fixation into soybeans; that would really be something). Soybeans contain more protein than corn, but corn has more sugar, and that counts big if you're interested in making ethanol. Even if you're able to see the futility in that exercise, corn still generally comes out on top due to its greater versatility for use in processed foods.

It's entirely possible to grow either crop without the use of chemical fertilizers, and you can even eliminate the petroleum used in the combines and all that, making them completely carbon neutral. You just can't do it at the same scale.

The c4 photosynthesizers, such as corn, are also able to be productive at higher temperatures. Beyond around 87F, most plants go into cooling themselves rather than growing, as I understand it.

Kudzu is likely a better crop than corn or soybeans, even though it is well hated and poorly understood.

 

[!Kaggen]

The latest research by the FAO indicates 1/3 of all food is wasted worldwide.
That is 1,3 billion tons per year.
The average per capita loss in Europe and the USA is 95-115kg/year and in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia it is 6-11kg/year.

Purple Non-Sulphur Bacteria (PNSB) can convert organic matter to hydrogen through photo-fermentation.
Facultative anaerobes such as yeast and lactic acid bacteria first convert the organic matter to organic acids and alcohols through dark-fermentation then the PNSB convert this to hydrogen using nitrogenase enzymes. Unlike methanogenesis there is little residue waste and the PNSB can be used as an excellent single cell protein(SCP) for animal feed or as fertilizer.
This process actually happens naturally in waste water ponds as can be witnessed by the purple/pink/red colour that is often visible on the surface. This is the colour photosynthetic pigments found in PNSB.

Researchers are investigating this process for the Mars Design Reference Mission(DRM) mission in order to recycle inedible biomass and waste into hydrogen and then recover the energy and specifically the water. Thus reducing launch mass.


Hydrogen has an energy value of 122KJ/g about 2,75 times higher than hydrocarbons.
Assuming that hydrogen makes up only 10% of all the food waste that is 130 million tons of hydrogen a year, equivalent to 2,5 billion barrels of oil per year.

 

[Mr. Scott]

The latest research by the FAO indicates 1/3 of all food is wasted worldwide.

That may depend on how you measure waste. Is that direct waste, like food discarded because it's spoiled? Returned on plates in restaurants? Re-purposed for other uses? Some consider food fed to livestock to be largely wasted, compared to the yield of meat, milk, or egg.

I'm reminded of this award-winning heart-breaking short film about what happens with uneaten food in KFC restaurants in the Philippines.

 

[!Kaggen]

That may depend on how you measure waste. Is that direct waste, like food discarded because it's spoiled? Returned on plates in restaurants? Re-purposed for other uses? Some consider food fed to livestock to be largely wasted, compared to the yield of meat, milk, or egg.

I'm reminded of this award-winning heart-breaking short film about what happens with uneaten food in KFC restaurants in the Philippines.

From the report

2.1 Definition of food losses and food waste
Food losses refer to the decrease in edible food mass throughout the part of the supply chain that
specifically leads to edible food for human consumption. Food losses take place at production, postharvest
and processing stages in the food supply chain (Parfitt et al., 2010). Food losses occuring at the end
of the food chain (retail and final consumption) are rather called “food waste”, which relates to retailers’
and consumers’ behavior. (Parfitt et al., 2010).
“Food” waste or loss is measured only for products that are directed to human consumption, excluding
feed and parts of products which are not edible. Per definition, food losses or waste are the masses of
food lost or wasted in the part of food chains leading to “edible products going to human consumption”.
Therefore food that was originally meant to human consumption but which fortuity gets out the
human food chain is considered as food loss or waste even if it is then directed to a non-food use (feed,
bioenergy…). This approach distinguishes “planned” non-food uses to “unplanned” non-food uses,
which are hereby accounted under losses.

www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ags/publications/GFL_web.pdf

 

[!Kaggen]

I'm reminded of this award-winning heart-breaking short film about what happens with uneaten food in KFC restaurants in the Philippines.

Thanks for that, most distressing.

The university in my local town producers 4 tons of food waste from the hostels per week.

At least this is now being recycled back into fertilizer for the university experimental farm.

One of the projects I am busy with is getting the food waste from the richer areas(shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, office canteens) recycled back into the soil to grow vegetables in the townships of South Africa.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Pics of the OT!

I wanted to catch some pics of the former food, now solar farm near me in the morning light:

Hundreds of them are flooded! The ice this winter is really going to have it's way with them:

Their work in progress: installed panels on the right, frames waiting for installation on the left.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Largest Solar Energy Site of its Kind in the Western Hemisphere

I just learned that the site in the OT and my pics is world class. Costing $60 million to build, expected to generate 14.1 megawatts and 18 million kWh annually.

Here's their Press Release

 

[bikerdruid]

Just a mile from me is a large field that used to yield corn, soybeans and the like, and is converted into a solar energy farm -- a sea of electricity-generating solar panels. Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense?

as much sense as turning grain into fuel.

btw...there is lots of unproductive lamd that would be better suited.

 

[quarky]

I just learned that the site in the OT and my pics is world class. Costing $60 million to build, expected to generate 14.1 megawatts and 18 million kWh annually.

Here's their Press Release

Yikes. I wrote a book for McGraw Hill, long ago, which has been pirated.
I wrote to them 2 months ago and have heard nothing. Suddenly, I like pv less.

 

[shadron]

as much sense as turning grain into fuel.

btw...there is lots of unproductive lamd that would be better suited.

From the pictures, I think you probably got your wish. it doesn't look to me like corn would prosper any better than silicon will in that place. I would guess that the farmer was farming poor, undrained land marginally, and a better use for it may have been found. 50 acres? Three city blocks.

 

[Dancing David]

50 acres?

So what kind of crop yields was it getting?

What was it 100 years ago?

In my county that is a very very very small plot.

"NJRCEV will invest $60 million to develop and install the state-of-the-art, ground mount solar array on a 50-acre parcel on McGraw-Hill's property adjacent to the Corporation's two office buildings, including the Corporation's 180,000 square foot data center. "

So it could just be parking lots and blue grass or artificial landscape.

 

[Lamuella]

because what solar cells need is basically surface area, would it make any sense to have the solar array acting as the roof for a building or variety of buildings in the same location?

 

[bikerdruid]

because what solar cells need is basically surface area, would it make any sense to have the solar array acting as the roof for a building or variety of buildings in the same location?

no.
panels are only efficient if they track, and remain perpindicular to the sun.

 

[Lamuella]

no.
panels are only efficient if they track, and remain perpindicular to the sun.

and how would having them on the roof of a building stop this from happening?

 

[bikerdruid]

and how would having them on the roof of a building stop this from happening?

as long as they do not form the roof, and are allowed to follow the sun, nothing.
people often talk about photovoltaic roofing panels for buildings, but they would be grossly inefficient.

 

[Dinwar]

panels are only efficient if they track, and remain perpindicular to the sun.

Depends on the technology--parabolic mirrors, focusing light on a solar boiler, cannot be perpendicular to the Sun and still work.

 

[fishbait]

Does this food-for-energy trade-off make sense?

It makes sense to the farmer who could not make a living growing food and now leases the land at a profit. All politics is local.