However for developing countries where annual income of a farm of 1 ha could be less than 50 dollars due to rainfed conditions growing local plants could be an answer to findout biofuel. Growing biofuel plants can only protect total destruction of forests as for India a population of 100 million out of which at least 50 million cook their food on firewood purchased or stolen from forests legally or illegally would lose its forest cover in less than 30 years if no biofuel crops like local crops or plants replace forest plants for fuel.

Independence and Security Act calls for 144 billion liters of ethanol per year in the U.S. transportation fuel pool by 2022. That equals 25 percent of U.S. gasoline consumption today. No more than about 40 percent is to be produced with maize, an important food and export crop. Non-grain feedstock is supposed to supply the rest,” he added.

In Professor Sinclair’s view there are no means by which humans could bypass the limits of crop production, arguing that “such advances may not be as simple as some predict. Plants and their evolutionary ancestors had hundreds of millions of years to optimize their biological machinery. If further improvements were easy, they would probably already exist.”

He insists that no matter what techniques are developed to expand biofuel feedstock, some basic physical and physiological limitations will still apply.

“Plants cannot be grown without three crucial resource inputs: light, water and nitrogen. Each of those inputs will be needed in substantial quantities, yet their availability in the field is limited. As important, so far plants make use of those resources only at established rates,” he says.

He further states that no matter what techniques are developed to expand biofuel feedstock, plants cannot be grown without three crucial resource inputs: light, water and nitrogen. Each of those inputs will be needed in substantial quantities, yet their availability in the field is limited. As important, so far plants make use of those resources only at established rates. In fact, the close relationship between the available amounts of these resources and the amount of plant mass they can produce—not human demand—will determine how much biofuel the world can produce.

Citing the US as an example he writes, “light, water and nitrogen will be essential for growing biofuel feedstocks. The availability of these resources will be critical to achieving ethanol production goals set by the U.S. Energy and Security Act. Even if the current increase in maize yield can be sustained at 0.1 tonne per hectare per year, the equivalent of 40 percent of today’s U.S. maize crop will be required for ethanol production while other domestic and export demands for maize also must be met.”

Professor Sinclair is emphatic that identifying land area for cellulosic plant production will be even more challenging. Depending on the efficiency of ethanol production from cellulosic feedstock, somewhere between 25 and 50 million hectares of new land must be brought into high and sustainable agricultural production to achieve the required yields.

“Since this land-use conversion would need to take place roughly over a decade, it would be the most extensive and rapid land transformation in U.S. history,” he says.

To complicate matters, land used for cellulosic feedstock must be in regions with sufficient rainfall to achieve needed yields. The amount of water transpired by those crops could be large enough to influence the hydrologic balance of farming regions. An unanswered question is whether stream and aquifer flows from these areas would also remain adequate to meet all local freshwater needs, he writes.

Professor Sinclair’s arguments obviously are worth looking at by biofuel advocates. Besides, it also calls for a critical and objective look in view of the fact that biofuels are competing for scarce land for food cultivation in the face of a global food crisis.

Source: Scientist warns against global rush into biofuel cultivation, by Emmanuel K. Dogbevi, Ghana Business News, August 18, 2009

However for developing countries where annual income of a farm of 1 ha could be less than 50 dollars due to rainfed conditions growing local plants could be an answer to findout biofuel. Growing biofuel plants can only protect total destruction of forests as for India a population of 100 million out of which at least 50 million cook their food on firewood purchased or stolen from forests legally or illegally would lose its forest cover in less than 30 years if no biofuel crops like local crops or plants replace forest plants for fuel.