Food or Fuel?
Posted on April 25, 2008 by David McNamee
This short segment from Reuters discusses the impact of rising food prices on standards of living around the world. This is a terrific snapshot overview of the dynamics at play in the current world food crisis.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Printer-friendly version
Comments
FOOD OR FUEL
One of the fundamental guidelines of the Human Existence is building a society based on knowledge, information and human rights. These are three basic instruments for global society and the determinants of progress. There is no doubt that the accepted assumptions have contributed to the development of the whole world and its particular nation-states. The development of science and more and more modern methods of transportation and exploitation of natural resources not only provide profits on a global scale but also generate various dangers for individuals and their existence. The practically unlimited exploitation of natural and agricultural resources and using them and transforming the same for personal use very often violates or significantly limits human rights. Also the development of science, especially of new technologies, gives rise to questions about the limits of agricultural scientific research.
The right to food as a basis for civil society has been a parennial pursuit of entire humanity since its inception on this beautiful planet. Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. The degree of a Nation’s civilization is marked by its disregard for the necessities of existence. Therefore, civilization goes beyond the regimes of geo-political entities and one of the unpardonable sins in the eyes of civilization is to leave any segment thereof deprived, demonized and dehumanized. No demonization is deviant to divinity on this planet can sustain without being claimed by every adherent of every civilization. Humans are not a herd of animals whom we compassion; they are also the creatures of emotions, equality, dignity, needs and wants etc. If the concept of civilization has any sanctity, validity and certainty or relevance it can only make us larger, freer and more loving. If civilization can not do this, let’s get rid of it. Epistemologically speaking, Human rights of transforming economies and globalization go together in terms of their visibility and divinity but in terms of sociology of economics they are supremely suffering from the sense of alienation and are subjected to economic extravasations, obtuse opportunities and gawky globalization at national and supranational levels.
The theology of globalization is being executed in such a fashion which has, unfortunately, decorticated, denuded and desquamated the right to food and got it brawled in a state of terra-incognita wherein economic evolution, political participation and cozy co-existence among the comity of nation-states has, rightly, become the priority of the Human Rights Movements in a Unipolar World Order. However, right to food is morphed into challenges for others in South-Asia,Asia and Africa and elsewhere and people of these regions are, unfortunately, addressed as perennial parasites, contumate communities and existential atrophy. On the other hand, they are riding on the ebbs and tides of deprivation, dehumanization and demonization crowned with xenophobia in every geo-political entity across the globe devoid of equality, liberty and fraternity sanctified by the desideratum of human rights and same is celestially ordained in the Holy Scriptures of every major civilization. Therefore, these challenges should be churned into advantages, offers and opportunities by the US in tandem with the mandate of Human Rights Movements while ensuring the participation of the International Financial Institutions through the gospel of globalization as it has basically originated from civilizational delineations and have been expounded in the US policy injunctions and further re-affirmed, reiterated and re-oriented by the human rights movements which has made entire process congruent to the gestation of globalization which has, ultimately, indoctrinated the US policies, priorities and programs into ecclesiastical edifices.
Hydropnics and biofuels
I concur wholeheartedly with the argument against biofuels in agriculture, but would like to flag one option that I never see discussed.
Using synergistic combinations of Hydroponics, Solar PhotoVoltaic, Solar Thermal, Wind Turbines and nutrient recycling, from wastewaters and sewage, it is technically feasible to use biofuel crops grown in towers to boost a Country's mix of fuels.
It would ideally work like this:
1) build a tower that is essentially a giant "racking system", using the most appropriate and sustainable materials, type of structure and construction techniques a given location.
(e.g. bamboo, wood, steel, clay fired bricks and mortar etc...)
2) Install on it (a) wind turbine(s), solar PhotoVoltaic panels to generate power and solar thermal to heat water
3) redirect sewage and wastewater into holding tanks, undeground, and settle
4) use the renewable electricity generated in 2) to pump the liquid portion of the sewage/wastewater mix to the top of the tower, through a network of pipes and tubes
5) trickle-feed the liquid to arrays of hydroponic growing trays, seeded with energy crops, which will then feed on waste and photosynthesise using a combination of natural sunlight and electric lamps, for optimal growth - correct acidity/alkalinity and nutrients, as required
6) in parallel, extract biogas from the remaining, solid fraction of the waste, by pumping the output water into the solar heating pipework, and using the heat to produce biogas
Thus the crops are fed on human and animal slurries, the biogas extracted, the remaining PASTEURISED waste used for fertiliser and biofuels then extracted from the energy crops, with solid wastes returned to the system, as compost for the biogas plant.
I have seen systems in Odense, Denmark, that do exactly that - though they were two separate systems: one the hydroponic tower (actually, a glass pyramid in the common garden area of a ordinary block, where seedlings for a commercial nursery grew in trays irrigated with the wastewater from the surrounding homes), and one of many biogas plants in Denmark, receiving animal slurry from local farms, extracting the biogas by raising the slurry's temperature to around 40 Centigrades (I seem to recall) and then returning the slurry to the farmers as fertiliser, duly pasteurised and so safe to use even on food crops The biogas was used to run a turbine and produce electricity, circulating the wastewater to local homes, for Combined Heat and power (aka District Heating).
The whole thing should turn out to be a nett exporter of energy from a number of sources, as well as requiring little space and resources - mostly capital expenditure and seed) to return clean water as an output, much as a reed bed would, only using APPROPRIATE* energy crops.
Crops could be harvest by moving the growing trays, in sections, along tracking and lowering them to the ground, using a "dumbwaiter" type arrangement, perhaps using spare electricity, or just gravity and counterbalance systems.
I am not an agronomist, but it should be possible to produce some significant volumes of biofuels in this way, providing much thought is given to the issue of seeding and pollination on the wind... a tower would broadcast the seed and pollen far and wide.
*Therefore extreme care should go into the choice of crop FOR EACH AND EVERY LOCATION, resisting the temptation to go for a standard energy crop that is an imported exotic and alien to an ecosystem, and selecting instead a suitable, local substitute.
In colder climates, the tower might need to be enclosed, but in good light and temperature conditions, this would not be necessary.
Post new comment