Science Forums 2

[HydrogenBond]

If one is looking for a plant to make bio-fuel, don't use food plants. The logic behind this is, with food crops and farmland shifting toward fuel production, the price of food will go up. This happened in Mexico, where corn land was being shifted to bio-fuel causing the price of corn based food products to rise. The poorest people took a hit. If Mexico entered a drought, flooding or had the 20 year locust, whatever, then the total crop is reduced. With supply and demand, the food prices would sky rocket. Or if ethanol became important, then fuel prices also increase. The food crop based bio-fuels also causes farmers to divert valuable crop land into crops that make the most fuel money. This means other food crops to get less land. This lowers their supply, causing these prices to go up.

If we could use a non-food crop, there is not the same intertwining of food and fuel, where the supply and demand cause a price competition. The ideal would be something that can grow on land not suitable for growing food. Some type of weed that can grow well in crappy soil would be ideal. Weeds are a problem in most cases, due to their selective advantage of growing fast and in almost any type of condition. Maybe all this evolution has produced a type of weed that is very fuel friendly, requiring no care. Maybe these can give the pesky weed, some respect in civilization.