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Food security: crops for people not for cars - PubMed

Food security: crops for people not for cars

Sven Kullander. Ambio. 2010 May.

Abstract

Humankind is currently faced with the huge challenge of securing a sustainable energy supply and biofuels constitute one of the major options. However, the commercially traded edible crops are barely sufficient to meet food demand of the present world population. Certain regions, for example EU-27, do not even have a sufficient indigenous crop production. Of this follows that motor biofuels based on edible crops should be avoided. To replace more than some percent of the fossil motor fuels, non-edible biomass-rest products and wastes-should instead be considered for conversion to biofuels. In this way, about 10% of the current fossil fuels can be replaced. Feeding a world population expected to grow by some 50% during the next 50 years will be a major challenge. For environmental reasons it seems that agricultural land cannot be expanded very much, maybe not at all. The solution to the increasing food demand seems therefore to be using the present crop production more efficiently and increasing output from present agricultural land, maintaining biodiversity and climate stability within reasonable limits. In the future, agriculture will need more energy and more water irrigation. Food production is, however, already very energy demanding, requiring several times more externally provided energy than the energy content of the food itself. A sufficient energy supply will be a key issue for the future farming!

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1

The energy content in megajoule (MJ) per kilogram (kg) of some fuels for cars and human beings

Fig. 2
Fig. 2

Energy expended in producing and delivering one food calorie according to Ref. Heinberg and Bomford (2009). Approximately, 7.3 calories are used by the US food system to deliver each calorie of food energy. Farming accounts for less than 20% of this expenditure, but still consumes more energy than it delivers

Fig. 3
Fig. 3

Energy from biomass. Methods for transforming various raw materials into energy carriers which can be used as liquid fuels or for production of heat and electricity. From Ref. Fredga et al. (2008)

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