Is biofuel the solution?

Question

A country like Africa is able to produce huge amounts of maize to generate biofuel from.

On the other hand the demand for maize will drive the prize up. Maize is the main food product.

The general people won't be able to provide for themselves and their families anymore and hunger will strike.

It will affect millions of people.

Answer 1

No its not, as you rightly say the land used to grow bio fuels was previously used to grow crops for eating.   The rising costs of food will affect millions, so much more than rising fuels costs.

Bio fuels have good intentions, but its not the answer.

Answer 2

You just put vegetable oil in your car and it runs, (After you get it converted, of course.) Why buy it from Africa?

Answer 3

No, the real solution is 'People management', stop growing population and working on decreasing the number of people on this globe.

Answer 4

We're into BIG trouble, aren't we? ...

Answer 5

There are some very good biofuels which can improve the environment.  Land can be reclaimed with trees such as Jatropha and the seeds of the trees used as a source of oil.  There are plenty of bio-fuels which produced from waste products as well. Chicken poo for example.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...

http://www.jatrophatech.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha#Ve...

Biofuel can only ever be part of the solution, but it shouldn't be rejected because of bad practice.  It would be like rejecting all wind turbines, because it would be bad to stick a wind farm in prime farm land.

Most countries will have good source of bio-fuel, which will help reduce transport costs and violent conflicts.

Answer 6

I believe it is part of the solution, but it is currently being done inefficiently. It is not necessary to use food products to develop bio-fuel. More research and development needs to be done to produce it from other plants, such as switchgrass.



Reducing oil dependency means a switch to various alternative fuels, of which bio-fuel is one but, also includes solar, wind, hydrogen, natural gas, and even nuclear.

Answer 7

No, the amount of land needed is too much.

We need the land to produce crops to eat.