[pf] ethanol fuel, derived from 70% sugar beet and 30% wheat

· I wonder at the priorities here, and what fraction of food crops is going
into propping up combustion-engined transportation.

· My present guess is that crops for feed production (for grain-fed beef,
pork and poultry), take a hundred times the food-crop space that
ethanol-crop production does. At least in countries other than Brasil.

· There /is/ a biofuel that can be used in Otto (spark ignition, i.e. most
cars) engines, and that is methyl alcohol, methanol. It's produced, but not
as easily as ethanol, from cellulose and other crop fibre, such as corn-
and sugar-cane-stems. One of the best fuel choices for combustion engines
is bio-diesel. Diesel engines get more energy from the same weight of fuel
than petrol or ethanol engines.

· The following comes from my in-progress:
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/GrNZ-RegionalRept-000915.html

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8166
  has:

 "The oil crisis now is a very good time to reveal to our governments that
crude oil can be very expensive and the development of bio-fuels can reduce
the dependency on crude oil," said Alain Jeanroy, Director General of the
Sugar Beet Growers Association in France.

 "In France that was one of the main reasons why our government decided to
do something definite about bio-fuels," Jeanroy told Reuters later.

 Ethanol is a flammable alcohol that is produced from the fermentation of
sugar in fruit or cereals, and is used as a fuel as well as in alcoholic
beverages. As a fuel additive, it is cost-effective and cuts down on the
levels of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide emissions.

 France, the world's number four ethanol producer after Brazil, the United
States and Canada, will double production of ethanol by 2003 from its
present 1.2 million hectolitres [= 120 million litres], which was derived
from 70% sugar beet and 30% wheat.

 "We will reduce our wheat exports to produce more ethanol," Jeanroy said.
He declined to say how much wheat would be targeted.

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sent on by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html
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