While viewing a documentary recently on bio fuel, farmers, based mainly in the US, were being categorized as the future oil barons.

Now while the future for farmers may seem a prosperous one indeed, could it be at the expense of our basic foods.

The show mainly focussed on corn, which made me think, well, corn, sold in it's pure form, on the cob, has to look the part, otherwise it will be rejected.

On the other hand, if it were grown for bio fuel, one would assume that the appearance would not matter.

Of cause the risk in this is that farmers are more likely to opt for the less compliant option,that being bio fuel, so won't this place preasure on an already stressed food production chain.

Are we cutting off our nose to spite our face?

If cars could run on sausages the price paid and profits made would be the ruling factor.
Ethanol, has been used for a very long time, but to use much much more as proposed will take a balance.
Food or fuel, some vegetation is not food but can be fuel,
Even then using land once to grow food, now to grow fuel?
I doubt as of yet we have answers.

Coal seam gas and fracking is also a threat to food security.Our Govts have reduced the water to our farmers but let miners pollute and take as much as they want.

Arjay the water drawn from CSG is not the same water used by farmers.

I am not opposed to CSG, although I do think prime farm land should be exempt.

Belly, farming is also a small business and,given the crap one has to,deal with these days,as a SB owner, they will most likely take the easier option with less hassles.

This may well mean we go hungry.

i will add my thoughts

in the light of gmo corn..and its gross govt subsidies
and its uselessness as a food stuff...[as it by the 3 rd generation renders breders fed on it sterile]

also the demand for corn..
has seen the price of all corn double

bio fuel is a big scam
to suck up govt funding
noting so many have 'started then closed down'..[to rebuild the same plant..at another location..using new govts funding]

the greens are so concerned that they got 12 billion to direct action
[ie giove gifts to those wanting to acces the green slushy funding]

cause tonies 'direct action plan'..is half that cost

and thats a lot of free govt handouts
for greenie neo capitalists..exploiters to let go of

Bio fuel will come from whatever is in excess at certain times of year. Fruit peelings, sugar cain, wine grapes, a bad batch of beer, corn trash, anything with a sugar content. What ever it is it will have to be cheap. I can-not see it effecting farmers growing for a certain market. It may well be a help, ruined crops as a result of bad weather.

Dear rehctub,

The following website may be of interest:

http://www.brecorder.com/world/global-business-a-economy/35827-ethanol-culprit-of-hunger-in-disguise.html

I don't think you are going to go hungry just yet, Rehctub.

The price of wheat right now is around 200$ a tonne, then take
out freight to port, storing and handling,levies, finance charges
etc, you won't get have much more then 150$ left. I sold wheat
for that much in 1983.

Low prices are far more likely to cause food shortages, for farmers
won't grow stuff, if its not worth their while.

Energy is energy, no matter if to fuel vehicles or people. Canola
oil can drive tractors of be used in salads, take your choice.

The problem is that millions can't afford to buy food at any cost,
because they don't have any income as we know it. Their solution
is to obtain some family planning and then achieve ways of making
an income. If 200$ wheat prices don't solve it, nothing will.

Let the Vatican buy their food, for the Vatican does its utmost
to prevent them obtaining family planning and the Vatican, with
its huge land holdings etc, is not exactly poor.

its for this and many other reasons that i invented the wikiseed[wikigeld]...a unit of exchange based on a set weight of hemp seed

hem seed can be made/refined...into over 30,000 products
so my research at the time revealed..it can make fuel paper plastic
fertiliser oil fibre etc

it was inspired by my researches revealing a 7 branched type of hemp
[as depicted on the nsw police posters in the 70's[when the hippies found it growing in the hunter river..

this 7 branched hemp was described in exodus
[in the instructions of the design of the lampstand[ex 25;40]

the hunter river was once connected to the namoi river
which means in aborigonal tongue 'river of life'

the same river of life mentioned at revelation22:2
where the tre of life bare twelve MANOR of fruits
yeilding her fruit every month

and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of nations
[to wit paper money..in its traditional meaning
as a PROMISE to pay..in hemp seed
[ie eat it refine it..or grow it]

the wikinote allowed the bearor SURE payment of debt
[ie it has printed..on it
the right to grow your own pound [of hemp seed]

[the male tree belongs to mens circle
[and the femail tree remains owned in trust by the woemans circle]

the wikiseed is our combined inheritance
its assured value..allows it to repay govt debt
to buy peoples freedoms..to fed cloth the poor[man beast alike]

with it we can rebuild societies...and unwind the rainbow serphant
that allows peace to be spread through out the world

but heck...its main use after feeding all
and clothing them all

is industry/transport..debt underwriting/insurance

but heck no one cares

rehctub, of course the water used in CSG is the same as used by farmers. That's what most of the fuss over it is about. Not to mention that if the aquifers are contaminated, its not just a fight over scarce resources, but whole areas ruined for undetermined periods of time.

At the end of the day, farmers will first grow what their land is capable of, then what makes them the most money. If they have to deal with consumers fussy over appearance, they will do it if they make more out of it. There are not big enough margins in farming to be too precious about it.

Country girl, your view on CSG seems to be like that of many who protest that don't actually know the facts.

The water from the aquifers that the farmers use comes from the water table, whereas the water produced from extracting CSG is from much further below the ground. It is generally very salty and apart from a very minute number of wells, is unusable even for watering stock.

I hope this clears it up for you.

Yabby, you and I both know farming is a mugs game and has a very limited lifespan, unless of cause our governments find a way of subbserdizing farming for food production.

Let's face it, if one grows food, sure, the potential rewards are higher, however, if you have a bumper crop, chances are you're not the only one and prices plummet.

This is why I fear many farmers will opt for the low risk, low return option of bio fuel.

No wages, not rip off agents etc.

Farming, like many businesses today are fighting decreasing margins, which means you either become a huge business, or you don't bother.

Either way, this won't fix our looming food shortage.

Rehctub, there is no looming food shortage, for alot more could
be produced, if it was worthwhile doing so.

I've always maintained that farming is a great lifestyle, as long
as you don't depend on it for a living :) Thats why I got myself
into a position of subsidising myself with off farm investments,
so the farming is essentially a hobby and a passion.

But the traders in grain, Govt buying institutions etc, are very
good at pushing prices down at the slightest sign of a surplus.

So we need a shortage of food to bring prices to reasonable levels,
or there won't be any investment in food production.

As it stands right now, Australian farmers owe something like
59 billion $ and banks are getting nervous, they want some of their
money back. Perhaps Super funds will start buying up farmland, for
long term its bound to be a good investment. Not so in the short
term.

Where do you get this stuff 579?

Brewing ethanol is an industrial process, which requires complete control. You can't throw in a few grapes, & some apple peal, & get an end product, except at a home still level , & even they, you'll get back less than your inputs if you muck with it that way.

I can see it now, the hippies of Nimbin, waiting for their olive harvest to press out some oil, to power the old ute to town. It would improve the town, many less hippies around while they waited.

Our smart Qld government spent a fortune building a sugar cane residue power plant, at the Rocky Point sugar mill. Almost worked too, when the mill collected the combustible matter for free. But you can't run a power house 5 months of the year, those pesky public servants want to be paid all year.

Transporting fuel material cost more than the power produced by any other material. If only they'd had a rail line to a coal mine, they would not have had to sell the thing off at a loss of hundreds of millions.

You can't even carry something as energy dense as coal by truck economically. The power produced is too expensive, & you kill too many innocent car drivers.

Farming! Anyone noticed the cropping land going back to grazing. This of course means grazing land turning into useless scrub. It doesn't go back to forest, that the wallabies might be able to use, just useless black wattle scrub.

Farmers sons aren't as stupid as their fathers were, & won't cop all that labor for stuff all return.

My place was a crop farm, a dairy, a Vealer farm, a lucerne farm, & grew chop chop for a feed lot. As a last resort they tried turf, but even that was not worth the effort, & is now a horse paddock.

I made some money, growing advanced shrubs for the landscape industry, but it would be easier, & probably more profitable, holding a stop/go sign at a road works sight.

Yes yabby, how times have changed.

Even cattle farming is non profitable unless you are one who has inherited a large farm, as costs have put an end to small time farmers with less than 200 breeders or so.

The problems with farmimg today are costs. Wage costs, IR restrictions, compliance costs, consumables costs, they are all out of hand and, it is for this reason that I feel many farmers will turn away from the highly regulated food farming and move to the less demanding option of bio fuel farming.

As for enjoying farm life, I am now doing just that.

I have closed my shop, just to hard now. I now cut timber on my land, make more than I can in the shop, have no landlord, no IR laws to consider, living the dream.

The reason we are becoming a net importer of food is not because we don't have the land, rather,, it's become unaffordable to be a viable business.

One thing about bio fuel is that the demand will always be there, so farmers can plant knowing that the market will be there in the end.

It is a real worry in my opinion.

Hasbeen There will always be cartage involved, some industries pay to get rid of what could be fermentable material. You can mix grapes and corn trash, once it is pressed you would not know what it started out being. You need to think a bit deeper, You can't have a processing plant in the middle of a crop, you will always be looking for more.

579 you didn't answer the question.

Where do you get this rubbish, some some greenie propaganda mag, or a fertile imagination?

If the real world was as fertile as greenie imagination, we could scatter a few seeds, & live in milk & honey for ever.

Rectub - weren't you the same person who signed in a couple of weeks ago saying you had the drillers starting for CSG exploration on your property - weren't you saying help you did not know anything about it? Well your comment that the water CSG drillers were extracting was not the water the farmers were using is correct - instead by extracting this artesian water the drillers are creating a drawdown effect on the potable water aquifers - QLD figures talk of 80-90m drawdown, recharge may take up to 125 years but never mind the gas companies will make good if it can be proven they created the drawdown! So how about doing your research - because CSG will impact upon amount of arable land available for food or ethanol production.

Bio fuel: right thinking, wrong methodology. there are hundreds of production waste products to make BF other than what we eat. Victoria has dedicated rail to coal face & power plants. Right now 40,000 gas wells are being drilled and capped [ not fraking ]. Oz can [used to] produce 3 times the food OUR population can eat from 2% of the land resource. We have enough generating power to supply us and New Guinea, what we DON'T have is the transmisssion infrastructure. The coal we sell to china is NOT used for electricty because it's too high a grade - it's used in steel production, china burns it's own crap coal. It takes 2 years for water to travel from New Guinea to Oz aquifers. There is enough water under Oz to turn the desert into a tropical paradise [ eg: Israel ]Coal seam fraking will destroy this water. If we don't stop the Labor Gov insain solutions, we will become another Greece and people will have to do an Egypt demo on them. Oz ows twice the money / head of Population as the USA so technically were insolvent. We owe 189 billion which will take 42 years to pay off with a yearly surplus of 2.8 billion [ pigs fly ]
or 189 years to pay interest only at just 1%. Labor is borrowing since instalation 1.2 billion a week - look out, world government is coming to us by STEALTH! There ARE solutions but no one is listening.

Hasbeen ethanol is made from fermented sugar and water. Then distilled. They grow crop for its sugar content. First you get a beer then distill it to get ethanol.

Yabby said;
Energy is energy.
Well it isn't necessarily so !

Almost all biofuels such as those from corn, wheat etc have a very low
energy return on energy invested. The best figures are around 8 to 1.
Most are more like 5 to 1 which is not sustainable.
To compare the best oil wells are 100:1 and many these days are 10:1
which is about the point when they cap them.
Then on top of that the ethanol has about 66% of the BTUs of petrol.
So you get less milage.

There is no plant yet which will take any scrap wood, grass, stubble
etc. There are many organisations trying to get one to be economic but
so far not very encouraging. The last figures I saw was 0.7:1 which
means of course you have to put more energy in than you get out.

I have read that fracking is seldom used in coal seam gas wells.
It is always used in shale gas wells. The reason is that coal seams
are already fractured. Can anyone else confirm that ?

RE farming, I tried hard to buy Australian Glazed cherries yesterday
even walking to the other supermarket but could only buy Thai.

*Yabby said;
Energy is energy.
Well it isn't necessarily so !*

Ah but it is Bazz, and it all comes down to price.
If you take a look at the US price for gas, its been
dropping dramatically in the last few years, as supplies
increase dramatically from shale gas.

So if you can convert one form of energy into another,
it all comes down to price and what people are willing
to pay. As they are prepared to pay a premium for
liquid fuels over gas, it makes sense to convert it.

The thing is, if its used to drive cars or people, in
the end its all energy.

Yabby one We are not into cost conversion, just the feasibility.

579, it must be nice to be a greenie & all pie in the sky.

You can believe what ever you like, without having to bother with facts.

Still someone has to.

There is no point in gathering stuff to make a transport fuel, if it costs more transport fuel to gather it, than it produces.

I do note the extreme worry about CO2 production does appear to be diminishing. Otherwise you would have to be against ethanol, as it produces more CO2 in production, than it saves. Of course that's no longer part of feasibility is it.

What ever planet it is your living on, how about an invite, if only for a holiday. It would be really nice to be able to drop rationality for a while, & only wear our rose colored glasses.

No Yabby, you have to remember even if you are getting a small energy
gain it is not enough, you have to cover all the costs as well and
the small energy gain is just not enough.
Even if you are doing it in your backyard at such low gain you are
better off just putting the energy straight into your car.

Thats why they cap wells that are still well above 1:1.

Pepper said:
We owe 189 billion which

Sorry, the government recently had to increase the authorisation for
borrowing from $225 Billion to $250 Billion as they were getting close.

*you have to remember even if you are getting a small energy
gain it is not enough, you have to cover all the costs as well and
the small energy gain is just not enough.*

Bazz, of course you have to take costs into account. But also total
returns and the cost of your original input. Not all energy costs
are the same per unit. Then with ethanol we have a waste which makes
great stockfeed, which one can sell.

That is why we have a market which establishes values and its up
to every business to work out their own costs and benefits.

The point is, there is no good reason to treat energy going to feed
people any differently then energy going to transport etc.
The moment it becomes more profitable to use canola oil to drive
machinery then to sell it for food, so let it power tractors and
trucks. There is no good reason to limits its use to just human
consumption.

Fuel for thought.
Ethanol will increase toxic exhaust emissions such as Acetaldehyde , Formaldehyde and Peroxyacetyl nitrates to name a few and introduce a few new ones. Battery power has a problem with disposal of used batteries (lead and cadmium). Bio-Diesel (or simply Diesel) there is a huge problem with particulates but could be easily overcome.
Hydrogen seems a reasonable answer but is extremely volatile. It seems the world (US) will eventually go down the path of hydrogen/electric propulsion for casual domestic use.

The amount of food grown world wide is currently far greater than is needed. The problem is purely one of distribution. For example where I live food grown in the region has to be sent 1200 kilometres to the distribution point and then shipped back 1200 kilometres for us in this region to consume. By the time it goes from the grower to the table, in this region, the time is counted in weeks. Spoilage is huge. Farmers under there contracts can’t even have a road side stall or they will be in breach. This system may have worked for Neolithic man but today? Really!
There are solutions to the food for fuel debate. Industrial hemp (no drug value) seed has one of the highest oil contents for seed of its size and is prolithic. It’s basically a weed that will grow in any soil and planting density is many times greater than wheat. It doesn’t need good water and if conditions are right you can get 3 of 4 harvests a year. By-products are stock feed, paper, textiles, petrochemicals (from seed oil) and manufactured building products. You could say the Americans won the WWII on it. Problems?

Whatever our eventual source of fuel. It will not be what is good for the environment or the population. It will simply be what ever will keep the current economic status quo in the world. It’s all about GDP.
I won’t insult your intelligence by quoting references, there are hundreds of reputable sources. I’m sure your all capable of using an internet search engine.

The facts here they are;
You said;
Battery power has a problem with disposal of used batteries (lead and cadmium).

Neither of those battery types are used in electric cars.

You also said:
It seems the world (US) will eventually go down the path of hydrogen/electric propulsion for casual domestic use.

No it won't, hydrogen has been given up on, possible exception, busses.
Hydrogen is very inefficient in energy trail.
Has to be exctracted from natural gas or by electrolysis and the
distribution is very inefficient.
It would require about eight times the number of tanker trucks.
Very expensive service station refit.
Cannot park cars in underground car parks.
It leaks continuously. Special ventilation car parking needed.
Last of all large energy loss from mine or well to wheels.

nocsg, I am sorry if I gave you the opinion that I didn't know much about CSG.

I have been told that the water that holds the gas down is not the same as the farmers use and, that ther is a large layer of bedrock serparating both water deposits.

What I can say is that what I have witnessed is extreem environmental awareness from the company I am involved with.

JustGiveMeALLTheFacts
The amount of food we can grow is not th issue.

The issues are, will we pay the price required to provide farmers with a decent living.

Currently, they are at the lap of the gods to some extent, as they really don't know what thier sell price will be once thier cops have hit the market.

Furthermore, many crops are simply left to rot as the costs required to harvest, wash, pack and freight often out weigh the gains.

This is less likely to happen with bio fuel, and it is for this reason that I feel farmers may go down this path.

They are already paying up to $35 per hour for tractor drivers, often with no income coming in for months, if at all.

Any business is about risks V gains and as gains fall, the players will go

Unless they can figure out a way to produce hydrogen more efficiently, (like mining the stuff from outta space), it's a complete waist of time. Hydrogen is like pushing a billy cart 500 meters uphill to roll down to the shop 250 meters down hill from where you started, why bother? It's like one of those old Irish jokes about the Irish space program and flying to the sun when it's dark!

It's the same for solar panels just quietly, but don't tell all the nongs that have put them on their roof!

Rawmustard & Gimme facts;
There was one really import fact that I missed.
My son's father-in-law was managing director of a UK bus company and
was on a British Govt committee that looked into just this matter.
He said the whole hydrogen scheme, apart from any other considerations,
falls over because the fuel cells do not have a sufficient lifetime.
They just cost too much to replace.