What produces more sugar that can be used to power cars in this country? Sugar cane or sugar beets?

Question

Brazil has pulled away from foreign oil by growing sugar cane and they use it to power their cars. I know we can grow sugar cane in this country. I live in California and several years ago we grew some sugar cane in our yard and it grew very well. I used to live in the Yakima Valley in Washington State and they grew sugar beets. So why can't this country do the same thing as Brazil and pull away from foreign oil? American car companies are selling flex cars in Brazil that use alcohol. Why can't we do the same? We have a number of alcohol producing plants in this country as well as beer and wine companies that could also be used for the processing of alcohol for cars. Hawaii and Puerto Rico have grown sugar cane. Corn is difinitely not the solution. The use of corn for fuel is affecting food prices in this country as well and it has proved to be very inefficient for the production of fuel for cars. Sugar cane produces 7 times more alcohol than corn.

Answer 1

corn is the worst source of bio fuel as the energy ratio is only 1.3 to 1, meaning 1 until energy goes in and we only get 1.3 units back. NOT WORTH IT!!!!

Sugarcane, although better and more efficienct is still a source of tangible food product (sugar). I think our best option for bio fuel is micro-algae and/or cellulosic based ethanol. Then of course the home brewed used vegi oil bio-diesel will help too, but not on a major scale.

Answer 2

sugar cane is the only bio fuel good enough to cut emissions. but if all cars will be powered by sugar cane, demand will increase and more lands will be converted to sugar cane and fewer lands for staple crops. if this happens, food crisis will happen and more problems will occur.

so, stop believing in bio fuels, they are not doing anything good.

Answer 3

First, Brazil is independent of foreign oil, but it is not independent of oil (uses about 2.4 mbpd).  Only about 15% of Brazil's fuel comes from ethanol.  Unlike Brazil, the United States has severely restricted domestic oil production (importing about 13.5 mbpd of its 20 mbpd usage).  Currently, the US uses about as much ethanol as Brazil does (about 5 billion gallons per year), but to totally ween off of the foreign oil we would need to use about 200 billion gallons per year, or 40 times what we currently use. If we used all of our 300 million acres of agricultural lands for sugar cane (something we can't do), we would barely be able to produce the 200 billion gallons of ethanol to shake off US oil imports.

Second, I don't know where you get this "sugar cane produces 7 times more alcohol than corn" from.  Sugarcane produces about 640 gallons per acre per year, while corn produces about 380 gallons per acre per year.  If you consider that sugarcane grows year round but corn is only grown for 6 months, then you see that corn would actually be better if it were grown year round.  If cellulose could be used for ethanol production, then corn would produce about 570 gallons per acre per year.

And to answer the question; Beets or Cane?

They both produce about the same sugar (and ethanol) yield per acre per year.  However, cane can be grown continuously, while beets can only be grown 3/4 of the time due to necessary crop cycling.  Also, this compares cane and beets in similar temperate environments (i.e. cane in Brazil or Louisiana vs beets in Idaho).  In tropical environments like Hawaii, the annual cane yield can be 3 to 4 times greater.  

For most of the farm lands in the US, corn is the definitive winner for ethanol production.  But to reiterate, we would need to use ALL of the farm land in the US to make enough ethanol to end oil imports.  Not only that, but our fuel would be 100% ethanol (compared to Brazil's 15%).  The simple truth is that we do not produce enough oil domestically, and we use too much oil overall.

And one other benefit about corn.  With sugarcane, ethanol is the only fuel it can produce (plus the husks of the cane).  Corn not only makes ethanol, but biodiesel as well (and still has husks).  Compared to the ethanol, the biodiesel production is low, but it's still another 20 gallons of fuel per acre.

Answer 4

So, you want to clear land, usually by burning (wildlife be damned), plow it, manufacture chemicals to fertilize it, divert water to irrigate it, spray it with herbacides and insecticides, and process the harvest--to run your car.

Can you explain to the class how this would be good for the environment??????????????