Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
a means of absorbing surplus grain. Biofuels have already attracted from environmentalists
and social justice campaigners the same criticisms that have been levelled against meat -
that they divert food from the plates of hungry people into uses that are, by comparison,
extravagant. The rise in grain prices of 2008 was partially attributable to demand for bio-
fuels; and it is clear that there is no need for two major world commodities to take on the
comparatively modest role of grain buffer.
The main problem with biofuels is that, because they take food out of the food chain,
they are even less efficient at using grain than meat animals. A tonne of wheat produces
about 350 litres of bioethanol, which is the equivalent of about 230 litres of diesel.
However very roughly 60 per cent of this energy is required to manufacture the ethanol, so
cient feed buffer for each person would therefore supply about a gallon of diesel - enough
to drive 50 or 60 miles in a small car - compared to 10 to 15 kilos of meat. Most people
would plump for the meat, although another option that would appeal to some would be
eight bottles of whisky.
In fact, this comparison is unfair because the manufacture of ethanol from grain also res-
ults in a byproduct known as distillers' grains, which are normally used as animal feed and
are equivalent to roughly a third of the feed value of the whole grain before it is distilled.
According to a study by Jerry Murphy of University College Cork, the distillers' grains
from a given quantity of grain could be anaerobically digested to produce gas equivalent
to the amount of ethanol derived from same amount. In other words, with your 50 kilos
of grain you could drive not just 60 but 120 miles, in lieu of your 10 to 15 kilos of meat.
That's less than two per cent of the distance the average person in the UK travels a year,
against around 20 per cent of the meat they eat.
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The other matter to bear in mind is that distillation for biofuels is normally carried out
in centralized facilities, and although it probably could be operated at a local scale it would
require considerable investment. Feeding animals grain, on the other hand, is a task that
can be done anywhere, that requires nothing more than a sack and a bucket, and that in a
default livestock economy ensures that nutrients cascade back to the land.
The other way in which food security could be ensured in a vegan world is by banking
food in state controlled granaries which maintain sufficient surpluses to guide the economy
through periods of dearth and glut. This, until the 19th century, was the approach taken
by China, which has never placed great reliance upon an animal feed buffer as a defence
against famine. Unlike the inhabitants of India, the Chinese do not consume milk (though
they are developing a taste for it), and in 1949 animal produce, mainly pork and duck fed to
a large degree on waste produce, supplied just five per cent of the total protein consumed.
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China maintained a population at the brink of the carrying capacity of the land - much as
