Biofuels have gone from being called the “great green hope” to being considered an ecological problem. Why? The reason is that industrialized countries are only interested in biofuels because they are cheaper, and to them it doesn’t matter where these come from. The problem is that if they are assured of buyers, and the buyers buy a lot, developing countries will use fields that were previously used to grow food to grow crops for biofuels instead.
Basically, there are less and less crops devoted to food, and as if that weren’t bad enough, in countries like Brazil, hundreds and hundreds of acres of the Amazon rainforest are being cut down in order to have more farmland reserved for growing crops of biofuels.
And even worse, since biofuel crops are so lucrative, crops are not rotated, so the land becomes less fertile, and since there are no areas used for pasture in order to not “waste” space, there are less cattle.
This is how an ecological idea is becoming dangerous for the economy and health of many countries. At the Argentine Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (INTI), the “food versus fuel” debate has taken hold as well; let’s look at the conclusions at which they have arrived.
They have seen one of the main problems brought on by biofuels, which is the abuse of fertilizers. Since there is no crop rotation, the land needs the fertilizers because it loses its natural fertility. Fertilizer abuse translates into surface and underground water pollution, since rain carries pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous to rivers and underground wells.
The proliferation of these nutrients in the water causes harmful algae to flourish on coasts and statuaries, and finally results in low water oxygen concentration, which causes a chain of problems for ecosystems, since fish can no longer live in water low in oxygen.
The recommendation for sustainable agriculture from the INTI is to support the development of perennial pastures or the cellulose ethanol industry (biofuel) based on wastes, so that biofuel production is sustainable in the long term.
These days we are not prepared to produce ethanol from materials with cellulose, such as plant wastes, corncobs, etc, which are recycled from agricultural wastes, not as replacements for agriculture.
Since this sustainable technique is not viable at this time due to lack of infrastructure, it is interesting that it has government support.
“Perennial grasses such as switch grass take two or three seasons without harvesting to establish themselves. Once established, they can grow for 20 years or more without replanting, if managed correctly,” states the INTI. However, once established, they can provide a source of income for the producer, and it is not an agricultural pollutant, since it requires less fertilizers.
We must look for a way to get out of this problem for rural developing countries.
Source: INTI
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