Sep

Iowa State: how sustainable is the bioeconomy?

Posted by admin Published in Vegetable Oil, Biodiesel, Ethanol

It is too early to know for certain what affect the growing of plants for biofuels will have on the agricultural industry. While the short-term monetary gains may well be appealing, questions abound as to what will happen with soil quality and its energy needs. Researchers at Iowa State are looking into that conundrum, and are analyzing different crops, farming and biofuel production techniques in an effort to gather the essential goods. It appears that one option would be the rotation of crops. See below:

To help farmers start to understand how collecting biomass from their fields may affect soil fertility, erosion, energy needs,

labor and the bottom line, Anex and a team of Iowa State researchers have added bioeconomy elements to I-FARM, a Web tool that helps farmers simulate and plan various changes to their operations.

I-FARM is free and can be found at http://i-farmtools.org. Its focus is on the upper Midwest but weather and soils info from 28 states are accessible from its database.

Inquiring minds want to know: how sustainable is our bioeconomy?

[Source: Iowa State]

Original post by Jeremy Korzeniewski