Biofuel News - Biofuel Race,
For millennia, civilization’s main event, the harvest, has focused our attention upon the fruit of our agricultural efforts — the kernel, the grain, busheled and bagged. The vogue for corn ethanol has driven up the price of corn around the world, putting the poor in jeopardy. In 2007, significant steps were taken toward a potentially great second harvest, some of it coming from the byproducts of animals, some of it from municipal waste and garbage but the bulk of it coming from plant biomass, which is really about breaking down cellulose, the key structural component of all plant cell walls and the most abundant of all naturally occurring organic compounds on earth. A recent Department of Energy study found the United States can produce a billion tons of plant biomass annually, yet 400 million years of evolution has made cellulose resistant — the term of art is “recalcitrant” — to manipulation. Until now — at least if you believe Vinod Khosla, one of the best-known venture capitalists in America, who was a founder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in Google, and who has in recent years invested hundreds of millions of dollars into a dozen different biofuel companies using new and potentially revolutionary techniques. According to Khosla, within the next two decades, petroleum, which accounts for 40 percent of the current total energy use in the United States, can be entirely replaced by biofuels.
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Research needed to cut risks to biofuel farmers
Whenever the world experiences prolonged high petroleum prices there is a search for alternatives, and in the last two years price rises have focused attention on biofuels. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), an international agricultural research institute that works to improve agricultural productivity in the drylands of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, is focusing on helping poor dryland farmers join the biofuel revolution. And in villages that have large tracts of wasteland, ICRISAT has been helping the poor and the landless grow jatropha,and sell the seeds to a company that produces biodiesel. The yield from the food crop provides livelihood and economic sustainability, especially in the initial years before the jatropha crop matures fully and generates maximum income from biodiesel. But the Centre of Excellence for Jatropha Biodiesel Promotion in Rajasthan, India, gives a much higher estimate for intensively managed plantations, of around 10 tons of seed yield per hectare or 3,400 litres of oil. Dr William D Dar is director general of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and chair of the Committee on Science and Technology of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
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Expect the country’s microfinance and biofuel industries to further flourish once the various Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) signed recently between the Philippines and Spain take effect, according to Press Secretary and Presidential Spokesperson Ignacio R. In his weekly column “The View From the Palace” which comes out tomorrow (Monday), Bunye said the new agreements are expected to “open new windows of cooperation between Manila and Madrid. Bunye said the MOAs involve the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture represented by Secretary Arthur Yap and Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Fundacion Codespa, a Spanish non-governmental organization (NGO); and Spanish-based biodiesel leader Bionor Transformacion S. Bunye pointed out that the MOA signed between the Philippines and the Fundacion Codespa concerns the “implementation of agricultural projects on microfinance, training and technology transfer. Once implemented, hundreds of thousands of Filipino farmers and fishermen stand to benefit from the MOA that provides for “cooperation in the areas of microfinance for farmers and fisherfolk and transfer of Spanish agricultural technologies, among other projects.
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