december 2004
- Australian Farmers Brand
GM Canola A Failure
ABC News Online - Australia
11-25-4 - A farming group says Australia's first commercial genetically engineered (GE) canola crop is not only a failure, it also threatens the viability of the organic produce industry.
- The Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF) says aerial photographs show most of the nine hectares of plantings at Lucindale and Naracoorte, in south-eastern South Australia, have died because of water logging.
- NCF spokesman Geoffery Carracher says his concern is that flooding has carried GE seeds into the surrounding area.
- He says contamination would destroy the local organic industry which must be 100 per cent GE-free.
- "Pierre Aprisol, who owns land at Minemae, Frances and Lucindale, is converting 10,000 hectares to organic...he feels very strongly against the release of GE crops because it can ruin what he's trying to do and any other organic grower in Australia," he said.
- © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
- EVALUATION OF CANOLA USE:
Two seed oil derivatives, mustard oil derivative and canola oil derivative were extracted and processed for evaluation. The two most promising biodiesel additives, canola methyl ester and canola oil derivative were used for a detailed survey of blends below 1vol%. At the lowest 0.1vol% (1000 ppm) concentration, both exceeded the M-ROCLE minimum acceptable value of 1.0. The canola methyl ester at 0.1vol% had a Lubricity Number of 1.047, while the canola oil derivative at 0.1vol% yielded a better Lubricity Number of 1.095. Further bench and engine tests are recommended before widely applying biodiesel lubricity additives in commercial diesel fuels. Research Dr. Saskatoon Saskatchewan,Canada S7N 3R2 Saskatchewan Canola DevelopmentCommission
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Biodiesel is the fastest growing alternative fuel in the U.S. For the proponents of biodiesel, it promises to deliver us into an age of clean and renewable fuel. But if present trends continue, biodiesel is more likely to escalate human misery around the world for years to come.
Biofuels have a long history. The first diesel engine was powered by vegetable oil. In the World War II era, more than a million cars in Europe were running on methanol, a fuel that can be made from any kind of cellulose. The auto-makers of the time installed brackets on the frames of cars assuming that people would install methanol converters in their cars. People were running their cars on corn cobs, wood chips, and other woody debris. Anyone who has purchased gasoline in middle America has seen ethanol for sale. The ?ethanol? sold at the pump is usually a of gasoline and ethanol, the latter made from corn and other grains. In the 1970s, Brazil converted 70
percent of their transportation fleet to ethanol made from sugar cane. Their experience is perhaps most instructive as regards the development of biodiesel.
Brazilian cars in the1970s ran more cleanly with alcohol fuel, and with less dependency on Middle Eastern oil. As a result of the increased demand for sugar cane, big cane producers pushed out smaller farmers, and many acres previously dedicated to growing beans to feed people were converted to sugar cane production to feed the cars of the rich. Given the superior market power of car drivers, sugar cane took precedence, and the price of beans and other staples went up. The poor went hungry, and the rich fed their cars well. As to whether this increased social distress helped facilitate the overthrow of the military government of that time is anyone's guess.
It is important to put biodiesel in the larger ecological context. Anyone familiar with the principles of biological systems knows that ecosystems form a pyramid. At the bottom of that pyramid are the plants who first convert sunlight to bio-energy. Plants make up the largest volume of organic matter in any ecosystem. Just above the plants come insects, small animals, and animals that eat plants. Further up the pyramid are animals that eat animals, and at the top of the pyramid are the large carnivores. This pyramid is relevant to biofuels because different biofuels tap the pyramid at different points. Methanol can be produced from any form of cellulose, and thus uses feedstock from the very bottom of the pyramid. Ethanol can be made from any kind of starch or sugar, and thus takes its feedstock from the middle of the pyramid. Biodiesel takes as its feedstock vegetable oil, which is near the top of the pyramid.
If biodiesel is more ecologically expensive, then why is it becoming so popular? Because factors other than ecology are driving the biodiesel revolution. Environmental laws such as they exist in this country have been easier to enact when the impacts fall closer to home. Thus global warming is exceedingly difficult to influence through legislation because its victims are distant in time and space. The strongest environmental regulations in the country concern urban air quality. Not coincidentally, a lot of Americans live in cities which are very much affected by air pollution. Biodiesel burns cleaner than fossil fuel, as does ethanol. As a result, some cities are converting their bus fleets to biodiesel to help clean up urban air. Methanol, like gasoline, is toxic and burns dirty. Even though its feedstock is cheaper and more available, it has fallen out of favor because it puts people in its immediate vicinity at risk. Biodiesel could claim many thousands of human lives, but like the casualties of global warming, these people are sufficiently removed in time and space that they remain voiceless.
Another factor favoring the development of biodiesel is the ease with which it is converted to automotive fuel. Methanol and ethanol are both somewhat complicated to manufacturer. Under some circumstances, vegetable oil can be used as fuel with no conversion at all. Even when biodiesel is modified, the conversion is a relatively simple process. This has made it a favorite of urban environmentalists and rural homesteaders alike. This in combination with the clean burn has brought biodiesel to the forefront of biofuels.
Anther great charm of biodiesel is the fact that it is made from discarded cooking oil. But is that oil really waste? Why is it sitting there behind that restaurant anyway? That barrel of oil is there because it was put there by a oil reclamation company. Used vegetable oil is reprocessed into a wide variety of products. Being a long-chain hydrocarbon, vegetable oil, like its fossil cousin, is a highly flexible commodity that can be used to produce an enormous variety of products.
In my hometown, the barrels behind fast food restaurants have ?Valley Proteins? written on them. That turns out to be one of the four largest rendering and used cooking oil collectors in the country, currently serving 17 states. They reprocess dead animals, inedible animal remains from slaughterhouses, and used cooking oil into a wide variety of products. From a report from American Capital (who recently invested $10 million in Valley Proteins) we learn that ? Valley Proteins turns the raw materials it collects into commodity goods which are sold to over 170 customers that include producers of livestock feed ("feed mills"), pet food and refiners of fatty chemicals. The company's finished products are quoted on established commodity markets or priced relative to substitute commodities. The primary finished goods include fat and protein products, which are used in hundreds of commercial applications. Fat products are sold predominately to commercial animal feed manufacturers and to manufacturers of pet foods, fatty acids, chemicals and lubricants. The products are also used as an ingredient in bio-diesel (a blend of petroleum fuel and methyl esters derived from animal fats or vegetable oils), a cleaner burning substitute for diesel fuel. The company in fact has modified its own boiler equipment to use the lower priced fats it produces in its rendering plants and thereby minimize boiler fuel expense.?
http://www.americancapital.com/news/press_releases/pr/pr.cfm... About 80% of the reprocessed fats from rendering companies are used in livestock feed. The rest is used by ?splitters,? companies that process oils into fatty acids and glycerine, as well as other companies that produce industrial lubricants, as well as cosmetics and soap.
The key phrase in the previous paragraph is "products are quoted on established commodity markets or priced relative to substitute commodities." Used cooking oil is not a waste or discarded product. It is reprocessed and put on the market to vie with ?substitute commodities.? Any of the many companies using products from Valley Proteins is likely to simply purchase the cheapest adequate product regardless of its source. If the companies and consumers should run short of products that were originally made with used vegetable oil, they simply turn to products made from virgin oil.
If biodiesel consumption remained within the supply of used vegetable oil, that would all be fine. But the consumption of fossil diesel radically exceeds the supply of used oil. If Americans are convinced that biodiesel is a "green" fuel, and we drive up the consumption of vegetable oil, we simply shift the weight of demand onto the virgin vegetable oil market. Americans use about a billion gallons of petroleum a day. The entire output of all of the rendering/ used cooking oil collection companies in the U.S. is about a billion and a half gallons per year. If all of the used oil presently used for all other purposes were divered into the fossil fuel market, it would last us a day and half. If you look solely at the consumption of diesel, the entire output of used vegetable oil in the US represents about 3% of how much diesel we use. And that simply begs the question of where industry would turn to for all that cattle feed.
Is biodiesel renewable? Any resource is renewable only if it is extracted at a rate no greater than it is replenished. Overcutting a forest or overfishing a fishery renders a renewable resource non- renewable. Given that biodiesel potentially involves taking human food from the top of the ecological pyramid and feeding to automobiles, the renewability issue is paramount. author: Alexis e-mail: lexus51@bnsi.net