Integrated Environmental Biotechnology - Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Application - page 247

progressive substitution for fossil fuels, has certain clear advantages over the
sequestration-only option. Energy crop production is based on a sustainable
cycle which brings benefits to the soil as well as both local biodiversity and
the local economy. Land bound up in carbon sinks does not offer appreciable
employment; energy farmed biomass crops can support jobs, both directly
and indirectly within the region, which has evident importance to rural
diversification, itself a major countryside issue. Getting the balance right
between food and fuel production may be difficult, particularly in regions of the
world where food, water and land resources are already under pressure, but it
could clearly bring significant benefits in its wake.
Integrated Agricultural Applications
The farming industry is almost certainly about to change dramatically and the
importance of novel production crops of the future will not, it seems, be limited
to the energy sector. As Senator Tom Harkin of the Senate Agriculture Com-
mittee pointed out in June 2001, the potential exists for anything which can be
made from a barrel of oil to be manufactured from farmed produce of one kind
or another. The realisation of this is growing on a global basis and it is, therefore,
highly likely that a considerable part of the forthcoming development of agri-
cultural biotechnology will move in this direction. For reasons which should be
obvious, and follow on logically from much of the preceding discussion, there is
a natural fit between agricultural and environmental biotechnologies and hence,
a significant potential for integration both between and within them.
Some of the ways in which this can take place in respect of biowaste-derived
soil amendment products have already been described and, clearly, the advan-
tages they convey are not limited to the particular energy crop examples cited.
Before leaving this particular topic, there is another aspect of their application
which is worthy of note, not least since it illustrates both integrated produc-
tion and a potential means of obviating current dependence on a significant
environmental pollutant.
Plant disease suppression
Intensively reared crops can suffer extensive and expensive losses resulting from
plant disease infection. Until the early 1930s, crop rotation and the use of animal
manures and green mulches provided the traditional protection regime; after this
time, chemical fumigation became the favoured method to deal with soil-borne
pathogens, which can accumulate heavily in intensive monocultures. Methyl bro-
mide has been the main agent used, its popularity largely attributable to its ability
also to destroy weeds and resident insect pests. It is, however, an indiscriminate
tool, and though it has contributed directly to the commercial viability of many
growers' operations, it has been implicated in ozone depletion. Accordingly,
under the terms of the Montreal Protocol, it was universally phased out by 2005.