From cellulose talk to wood stock

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: The world over, the primacy of agriculture is set to take on more wondrous roles, extending far beyond meeting the functional needs of food, feed and fibre against a backdrop of inexorable deterioration of climate triggered by global warming, tsunamis and Arctic meltdowns. Unchecked spurts in population and the concomitant increased demand for food and other basic necessities, rampant urbanisation that is eating into agricultural heartlands and severely eroding forest reserves, rainforests and swamps, so vital for supporting sustainability, are the major issues at hand. The result is an irrevocable deepening angst between the rich and poor.

Against such a dismal background, great hope is seen in biofuels. The prospects of running automobiles on spent wash from sugarcane used to produce table sugar and of generating electricity from vegetable oils, thus reducing the use of fossil fuels, have sent ripples of excitement across the land. Farmers in poorer nations are jumping with joy at the prospect of alternative uses for their traditional crops, be it maize, sugarcane or oilseed crops, in the hope that industrial uses of farm produce would fetch more earnings, and with more money, they could go back to the market to buy more food. Unfortunately, it has not quite worked out that way. The landmass available for farming remaining stagnant, and with scant technological advances to boost farm production, less land for food farming has led to lower food production, resulting in spiralling costs and overall inflation.

Consider the emerging trends. The nascent biofuel boom has already sent food prices over the loop in several developing countries. In the US, the new surge of demand for maize for ethanol production has sent prices doubling in one year. The price of wheat has soared to its highest level in a decade. Global buffer stocks of both these grains have plummeted to alarming lows unprecedented in the last 25 years. The Mexicans are already adversely affected with their food staple tortilla prices tripling to 15 Pesos ($1.40) to a kilo—a sharp increase in cost, given their meagre average earnings of less than $5 a day.

Booming economies in China and India are set to jump on to the biofuels bandwagon soon. The moot question is whether they can afford to, and even worse, can they afford not to? On the one hand, the growing middle-class in these two nations seeks and relishes an increased variety of food and more meat, which in turn requires more farm production that translates into more land under the plough, more water for irrigation and more energy to produce fertilisers and other farm inputs. On the other, if this ravenous appetite goes unabated, the two largest producers of grains would soon turn to be importers of food which won’t do them much good either.

Already in the US, the onset of the biofuels gold rush and diversion of grains for ethanol production has doubled feed prices for farm animals, resulting in more expensive meat and poultry. Moreover, depleting reserve stocks diverted for biofuel production would mean less grains as food aid to the most needy and critically defunct nations riddled with massive hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Far worse, several farmers in the West, lured by higher prices for grains, are giving crop rotation a skip, repeating corn after a crop of corn, a decisively unhealthy farm practice that could boomerang badly in the days ahead.

Likewise, cellulosic alcohol from stalks of cereal crops would be a worthy option, as it won’t cut into the availability of grain for food although it would reduce the availability of dried fodder available for animal feed. So too ethanol from bagasse from crushed sugarcane and wood chips. But fermentation efficiency has to be improved before these options become commercially viable.

In the Indian context, cassava, a crop well acclimatised to local soil and climate, is a serious candidate for ethanol production from its starchy tubers. Unlike in Africa where it is a food staple, here its tubers are processed into starch that goes into making sago and fried foods.

It goes without saying that conservation and improvements in fuel efficiency are just as important and auto manufacturers have to be committed for making tangible savings through concerted R&D. In the meantime, targets set for the mandatory mix of biofuels will have to be reviewed and altered appropriately based on the learning curve. The bottomline, though, is that denuding rainforests and reserve lands in the quest for meeting a misplaced imperative of the now must be avoided to save ourselves from drastic repercussions in the future.