2.4.4 Agricultural products for energy and fuels
Due to a rapidly growing interest in developing alternate fuels for transportation, expectations are high for agriculture to produce liquid biofuels. The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for the use of 7.5 billion gallons per year (equivalent to 2% of the US gasoline consumption) of biofuel (primarily ethanol) to be mixed into the US fuel supply by 2012. The European Union biofuels directive of 2003 sets a reference value of 5.75% for the market share of biofuels in 2010.
In the US, ethanol production capacity has increased from 1.6 billion gallons per year in 2000 to about 5 billion gallons per year in 2006, with an additional 6 billion gallon capacity under construction (Renewable Fuels Association, 2006). Biodiesel production (primarily using soybean as a feedstock) is currently much lower than ethanol, but rapidly expanding. As of 2005, there were 53 biodiesel plants with a capacity of 354 million gallons per year. Biodiesel capacity is expected to reach 1.2 billion gallons per year.
As in North America, production of biofuels is increasing in some parts of Europe. Little was produced prior to 2000 but by 2004 biofuel production had reached 2.4 million tonnes and the aim is to produce 18 million tonnes by 2010. Unlike the USA, most biofuel in Europe is biodiesel from oilseed rape and in 2004 2 million tonnes were produced. Assuming an average yield of 2.5 tonnes ha-1 this amount of biodiesel would have been produced by about 300,000 ha of oilseed rape. The remainder of the biofuel production was bioethanol, much of it derived from excess wine production in the EU.
Increased biofuel production can increase the price for the crops at the farm gate and provide more price stability. In addition, the biofuel industry can provide off-farm, rural employment opportunities while the byproducts of biofuel production (distilled grains and residue after oil is recovered) are considered quality feed supplements.
However, there are clearly limits as to how much biofuel can be produced, at least with current and foreseeable technologies. For example, in 2005, 14% of the US corn crop was used to produce the equivalent of 2% of gasoline use in the US (by energy content). By comparison, the US exports about 16% of its corn production. Using the same corn use to ethanol ratio, utilization of 100% of the US corn crop for ethanol would produce fuel to replace only about 14% of the US (2005) gasoline use.
While at least at a modest scale, biofuels production should benefit the NAE agricultural community, questions remain whether greatly increased production and use of biofuels will have detrimental environmental effects, or even meet the projected environmental benefits. To the extent that mandates to meet certain biofuel use targets cannot be met by domestic production, biofuels will need to be imported. This may negate some of the savings expected from import of petroleum products. Further, it may prompt increases in agricultural production elsewhere at detriment to the environment (e.g., Pearce, 2005).
One incentive for the use of biofuels is their replacement for fossil fuels. There are some estimates that the current production of biofuels is actually carbon negative in that it takes more fossil fuel to produce biofuel than the petroleum it is intended to replace (e.g., Pimentel and Patzek, 2005) though others point to a positive net carbon balance in the |
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production and use of biofuels (e.g., Farrell et al., 2006; Worldwatch, 2006). Biofuels could be used to replace the fossil fuels in the agricultural practices to produce biofuels.
Other agricultural-related energy sources
Agricultural lands may make a contribution to energy in ways other than through production agriculture. For example, in the US the richest wind energy resource, available in wide areas, stretches from the upper Midwestern plains states to Texas (Elliot et al., 1986). Farmers have leased the land for turbines, or have invested directly in their ownership. The potential of the Midwest wind resource has been recognized and the number of installed wind turbines and overall electricity production capacity is expanding (c.f. American Wind Energy Association, n.d.; US Dep. Energy, 2007).
Forestry and other sources of plant material (e.g., biomass crops) are being increasingly used in Europe as a source of heat and energy, driven by the rising price of oil. In 2004 52.4 million tonnes (oil equivalent) were produced from these sources. A huge proportion of this was from forestry waste, especially in the well forested EU states, such as those in Scandinavia. However, the EU proposes to greatly increase the 2% of energy from biomass crops such as coppice willow and Miscanthus grass, so that it makes an appreciable contribution to the EU energy budget in the future (EC, 2005, 2007). As in the USA there are also considerable developments in the utilization of wind power. In 2004 the EU contributed 73% of the world's total capacity of 48 thousand MW. There is much debate as to the location of these wind farms and of their environmental impact, but they do offer an alternative source of income to farmers and other land owners.
2.4.5 Organic cropping systems
Largely unidentified as organic before the advent of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, organic agriculture has been one response to public concern over the environmental and health impacts of industrialized agriculture. Since the beginning of the 1990s, organic farming has rapidly developed in almost all European countries. Growth has slowed recently. In 2004 in Europe, 6.5 million hectares were managed organically on about 167,000 farms. In the European Union more than 5.8 million hectares are under organic management and there are almost 140,000 organic farms. The country with the highest number of farms and the largest organic area is Italy. In most countries of Europe and particularly the European Union organic farming is supported with legislation and direct payments. In terms of the share of organic farmland to total agricultural area, Austria, Switzerland and Scandinavian countries lead the way. In Switzerland, for example, more than 10% of the agricultural land is managed organically (Willer and Yussefi, 2007). In fact the land under the organic certification has been largely increasing since 1994, i.e., when financial support was first introduced by the EU-Regulation 92/2078.
The support for organic production granted by the reform of the CAP, i.e., enforcement of the EU Regulation 2078/92 (mis.A3+A4), constituted a fundamental step in this evolution and largely promoted the conversion to organic farming in the Southern regions of the EU, even though the pioneers of organic agriculture were in North and in Central |