Do you think fuel is more needed than food? (Biofuels)?

Question

Do you think that extracting fuel from sugarcane be more prioritized than using it as food?

Answer 1

From a cynical western viewpoint fuel is needed far more than food. The western world has had a food surplus for many years and most of it has gone to feeding needy people in less affluent nations. If the west converts food surpluses to bio-fuel, there will be less available for foreign aid, less fuel needed to transport it, more people will die of starvation related disease so there will be fewer people who need it, and so everything will balance out and the good people in fortress USA will be able to carry on as before without having to worry about where their next barrel of oil is coming from.

Answer 2

Nope.  The only fuel I need is the food to put in my body.

Answer 3

there is a surplus of sugar cane in the world. that is why sugar is so cheap. producing ethanol from sugar cane will increase the price of sugar, and probably encourage growers to use sugar cane types that have better yield, i.e. bio engineered sugar cane.

it is possible of course to increase the land used for growing sugar cane, but that will cause reduction of the rain forests in central and south America, Africa and south east Asia.

Answer 4

Biofuels are not necessary produced from food.  The news below will make oil companies disappointed.

Switchgrass holds promise as next source of biofuel



The Associated Press

John Fike, a Virginia Tech researcher, combs through switchgrass at the school's agricultural center in Orange, Va., Aug. 15, 2007. Signs that the crop might be able to replace corn as a major source of ethanol are evident at the center -- the drought has stunted the corn there, but the switchgrass is healthy .

A recent controlled, on-farm study completed by researchers at the University of Nebraska holds great promise for the use of switchgrass as a biomass fuel source.

The results of the five-year study reveal that switchgrass grown as a biofuel feedstock produced 540 percent more energy than was needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol. This high net energy efficiency far exceeds that of corn grain ethanol, which is processed using a different conversion technology

Answer 5

i think food is more needed than fuel. however, if you can convert the stuff we can't eat into fuel, that would be a good option C. agricultural waste is abundant, and some types of land may not be very suited for farming crops or for grazing, but may be suited to grow fuel - like for growing jatropha, for example.

making fuel from food crops is to me not a good idea and maybe unethical, in light of the food shortages in the world. we need to be investing in other options that do not create this conflict.

Answer 6

No, people fed themselves long before fuel was ever used to transport food.  The environment would be much better off if people went back to growing locally and sustainably.

Answer 7

People cannot live on the waste products of sugar....however you can rot these wastes to make bio fuel. which might be a good idea except that you can also burn hydrogen and oxygen....otherwise known as water...lots of people have done it...search youtube for hho gas.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oia4z_kpg...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pzam1wku...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpqhio2kw...

Answer 8

Only Bush and some of his friends want fuel so bad that they do not care how many people they fill