Biotechnology Can Help Produce Both Food and Fuel
Current fluctuations in food prices due to increased demand for corn to produce ethanol do not represent a permanent or irreconcilable competition between fuel and food, a claim that has apparently influenced New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's support for alternative fuels. Technological progress - particularly in biotechnology - can and will help meet both the energy and food needs of growing populations throughout the world.
Biotechnology is already helping to increase production of both food and biofuel. It is doing so by boosting agricultural yields and by increasing the efficiency of biofuel production from all feedstocks. Biotechnology also enables production of fuel from non-food feedstocks - switch grass, agricultural residues or trees - which are abundantly available throughout the United States and the world.
On a worldwide scale, an analysis by McKinsey & Co. shows that there is enough available cellulose feedstock to replace 50 percent of transportation fuels - 360 billion gallons - by the middle of this century without impacting availability of food. Meeting just 10 percent of world transportation fuel demand would replace the annual oil production for fuel of Saudi Arabia.
Companies across the United States are right now beginning construction of modern biorefineries to produce biofuels from cellulose. This technology is ready today. Within the next few years, ethanol made from a variety of cellulose feedstocks collected in different parts of the United States - from sawdust and wood chips in New York, to corn stover and wheat straw in the Midwest, to sugar cane and bagasse in Louisiana - will enter the marketplace.
These first few plants will help find ways to make ethanol from cellulose more efficiently and cheaply, allowing the industry to continue to expand and to meet the growing consumer demand for cleaner alternative fuels. In the meantime, biotech-based improvements in producing ethanol from corn can help to meet the current rapid growth in demand for biofuel. Through advances in industrial biotechnology, ethanol yields per bushel of corn have increased 20 percent since 2000, rising from 2.5 gallons per bushel to nearly 3.0 gallons per bushel today. And biotechnology is at the same time helping to increase production of grains.
In the United States, agricultural productivity has grown steadily at an annual rate of 1.8 percent over the past 35 years, thanks in large part to biotechnology. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 80 percent of the increase in crop productivity has comes from higher per acre crop yields.
Further, this increase has been achieved in environmentally conscious ways, including no-till crop cultivation. A recent report from the Biotechnology Industry Organization shows no-till cropping can help farmers harvest not only the grain, but also the grain residues, providing both food and biofuel feedstocks from the same crop while at the same time maintaining their soil quality and preventing erosion. Biotech improvements to crop seeds enable farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices while reducing water, fertilizer, and pesticide use.
Biotech enhancements to seeds promise continued improvements in crop yields. Average corn yields are expected to reach 162 bushels per acre by 2010 and 173 bushels per acre by 2015; up from 148 bushels per acre in 2005. The record yield for corn in 2006 was 347 bushels per acre, showing that these increases in crop yields can continue in the future. And consider this - an increase of just two bushels per acre produces an additional 150 million bushels of corn, which can be used to produce 420 million gallons of ethanol.
Ethanol's critics argue that America cannot produce enough biofuel from agricultural commodities to break our addiction to oil without impacting the availability of food. The facts suggest we can and that we can do it in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner.
Increased production of biofuels can bring many long-term benefits, including lower greenhouse gas emissions, less reliance on petroleum, and higher income for farmers in rural areas. And large-scale production of biofuels can be achieved in conjunction with secure food supplies.
