TheBiologySpace.BioBlog

Overall, the use of switch grass brings up the same controversial problems with the use of corn, except that wheat grass isn’t a food source, but then again there the issue of using land space for grass, where food may be planted. Concerning the crop rotation problem, I remember watching a commercial about a product called AeroGarden, which is system that uses aeroponics to grow an in home herb garden. I looked up what aeroponics was and I found out that “Aeroponics is a dirt-free growing method where plant roots are suspended in air within a100% humidity, highly-oxygenated growing chamber. Because the roots are bathed with ideal levels of nutrients, water and oxygen, plants grow significantly faster, are healthier and have a higher nutrient content than plants grown in soil.” It would be interesting to see the government create specific facilities that would be located at various parts of the United States in which switch grass would be grown using the Aeropoonic method on a large scale. Yes, the aeroponics method requires the use of light bulbs as energy source for the growing plants, but there is always a possibility of creating these facilities in large green houses so that the sun may shine through. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this method is bullet proof, but over time this method could be altered to fit our standards in creating an alternative fuel source than gasoline.

The thing is that even though corn is more widely used as a food source, switchgrass in turn requires more water. This could have an adverse affect on everyone living around the area. More of the water they need is being used on switchgrass. If the switchgrass produced more ethanol than corn per unit, then it could be feasible to use the money not used on growing the corn or used on corn to import water for the city.

Switchgrass to me is ugly. That’s all I can say. I would rather pass by a field of leafy corn than to pass by a field of weeds. Imagine what it would do to property values.

Using switchgrass would take up land that could be used to grow corn wouldn’t be very good. Instead of skimming off part of a crop to turn into food you’d just be growing grass. I don’t think switchgrass is edible, in any case.

I think that rotating the crops would be best. You could alternate between having lots of fuel and lots of food. However, I still think that corn would be a good alternative: you can produce food, feed for animals, and fuel from one crop. Switchgrass can only be used for fuel.

I believe that food should not be used to make fuels until the whole earth is being fed. About 25,000 people die every day due to hunger in third-world countries, most of which are children (and we waste so much food here). http://www.poverty.com
If the food is eaten, it goes back into the earth’s cycle as a solid (it is decomposed). However, if it is burned as fuel, it goes into the atmosphere and not only causes pollution but also disrupts biochemical cycles.
Just because it’s not corn doesn’t mean it’s okay, because it still uses up nutrients and energy from the ground.
Plus, it’s not like we’re running out of fuel anyway.

I think using swithgrass is a good alternative from what I understand from the article. Using corn would deprive people of food first hand while switchgrass would be more of a second hand depriver. Meaning that by using the grass you would not directly be taking away food from people, but the land that could be used for the food. I don’t think that we should use all nutrient rich land in order to create ethanol but I think that using the switchgrass has a more positive outcome than using corn!

As much as finding alternative sources for energy is important and this certainly is a possibility, it would simply prove to be another problem. Different methods of energy production can be found, but you can’t produce more land.

Well, the argument of using the land for food production instead could be used for any kind of potential fuel that would grow on land. With this question, there are so many factors to take into consideration anyways.

I’m so glad to have found out that corn has (almost?) been written off the list as the sacrificial lamb. The most annoying part of the usage of corn for ethanol production is that it, like the other members of the mentioned Poaceae order, is so vital as a major food source. And despite it’s importance, the entire corn was utilized, not just the husks.

I wonder now, if the full burden of replacing oil will be foisted upon this switchgrass.

using grass that grows naturally and in great abundence for fuel is a great idea! instead of using corn and other crops that could go to the hungry this won’t take away much food from animals. there are other kinds of grasses that animals can feed off of. i’m sure using this alternative to oil will give off less pollution and be at lower costs.

Concerning this oil conundrum, it seems that any alternative that is brought into the forefront for ethanol production seems to have a side effect, or – in economic jargon- an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of farming corn as a fuel source was that corn was simultaneously an essential grain used around the world. The opportunity cost, it seems, for farming switchgrass, is the loss of land that could be used to feed the hungry.

One problem that I’ve thought of regarding the continued farming of switchgrass for ethanol produciton is the detrimental effect on the grass. Given switchgrass’ affinity for water, it may be able to, with continued farming on the same piece of land, rob the soil of nutrients, and insodoing render that land useless.

Stephen says that there has been some valid arguements with some good pros and cons given, but just wanted to say a few things regarding alternative energy. i think we are all in agreement that we need to find an alternative energy source and i think that this is a great opportunity to take a step in the right direction. There are third world countries that rely on us as a source of food and also a consumer. switch grass should be planted in more of an abundance to compensate for the lose of other energy sources. i believe that we should as america follow in the footsteps of Nebraska and the Dakotas in planting more switchgrass. and although the root system of switchgrass requires a fairly steady supply of water i think it is worth trying to risk a drought and just see what happens becuase i am a big believer in trial and error i think is one of the best ways to learn and if you don’t believe me ask Thomas Edison or Georgia Rupert Stephen out.

Stephen says that his girl Kamene has got a good point so what if the swithgrass does take over. well i say let it take over isn’t that the point of growing it in the first place. I also think that you can control its population very easily if it does indeed get out of hand. we may have some eutophication in the area but i think in the long run we could benefit from it. good comment Kamene stephen out

Now hang on a sec and let me get in on some of this economic jargon action. Using corn in ethanol production jacks up the demand for corn, and we get some demand-pull inflation going on, so that all corn-based products also go up in price. This is at least as problematic as the reduction of the amount of corn itself available for human consumption. So switchgrass would definitely be better than corn for ethanol in that respect.

Now I have an interesting “what if” scenario that occurred to me whilst musing over this article. Say we get switchgrass (or some other similar ethanol-producing cellulose source) to provide optimum yield, and we convert ourselves to a biofuel nation. Now we don’t need oil, so the justification of protecting our oil source in the middle east becomes moot. Now say, that our Saudi Oil princes, shortchanged by this turn of events, elect to start growing switchgrass hardcore over there to compete. Then, they pull a wild card and employ agent orange to sabotage all of our switchgrass and force us to buy from them. And voila, the energy independence platform of the 08 election is axed. What do you guys think? Bestseller material?

About the morallity of the situation, I think that it is alright that we plant switchgrass on our lands. This should not affect growing food for the hungry people because if we concentrate more on switchgrass for energy, then there will be more corn available for other uses. So lets say America uses 50% of its corn supply for ethanol, with switch grass, it might use only about 20% of corn. And eventually, when there is enough switchgrass, it may become 100% of the US organic fuel source. However, I don’t exactly know how this would affect the farmers. Would it raise business? Or, would it create problems because it is a new grass and it would time to get used to it and fluorish it.

well it is a problem however it could be a good source if we use the proper farming techniques. i think that the idea is a sound one. i will admit it does have it’s ups and downs but then again all plans have the good and the bad right?

as i understand it all of the land that we could use for farming isn’t exactly being used. some farmers get paid to do nothing on the land they were given. becuase of the overproducion of food would make the prices go down and such but i think that making food isn’t as much as a problem getting the food to the people that live there. so i personally think that the production of the grass as a source of ethonol is a good idea.

no matter what we do we going to have negative issues. in the issue of corn iit became a moral question that we can use that feed world hunger. but we not really doin anything right to solve the world hunger. In my opnion people just use that as an excuse
the switchgrass idea sounds good but we dont have that much water to loose. we started to save water already. but if doesnt use that much water it will be a good alternative for fuel in the future

As far-fetched as the end of Marcos’ analogy is, I agree with him in the sense that perhaps the use of switchgrass, instead of corn or oil, may not be a bad idea. For all the people arguing that it may erode soil or cause over-consumption of nutrients, what about all the other crops grown in our country-over even the factories that kill our environment? I think that problem is miniscule compared to other environmental problems. I think switchgrass may be a good solution.

Unfortunately, this issue has many pros and cons to it. It is environmentally responsible to plant a grass that can be converted into clean burning fuel but irresponsible morally to plant a grass for fuel instead of grass for…food. Personally, I don’t know much about crop rotation but I’m pretty sure the field’s crop would be rotated with something else and then a field that the something else was grown in could be rotated with the original field crop. The drought adds to the issue of dependance on any fuel source. We need enough alternatives to offset the dependences. If we have those, then we switch to those in drought. If we don’t…burn oil.

To answer the question in the paragraph: If the region suffered a drought like the one the Southeast is trapped in, the gas prices would rise yet again and we would be in the same predictament as before. It is better that people are actually taking a step forward in a long ignored issue of unnecessary pollution. Although I think that biologists need to thoroughly investigate switchgrass in experiments first, I think any step in the process of burning cleaning air for our transportation is a good step.

My question about using corn for an ethanol source for fuel, if it is so bad of an idea to use a crop that is used for food how come Brazil has been able to successfully use sugar as a fuel source. Is it because they have more viable land than the United States or is it because corn is used more than sugar? However I am not sure that is true. I just do not understand how Brazil has been so successful for so long yet we have been struggling for a while now. I guess through trial and error biologists will be able to determine a better source for our region.

This advancement with switchgrass could be very much something that is very useful to the economy we live in because of the prices with oil and the hunger issue that many countries are facing today and then the corn that we would normally use to make ethanol could be used to make food sources such as flour or other formss to help contain the hunger issue and the switchgrass would take care of the ethanol issue that we are still continute to face!

the question now with the switch of from corn to switchgrass for oil, is how many will actually do this? this requires a constant supply of water which due to droughts is sometimes unavilable, and also some farmers might have grown corn for several years and then make the change to switchgrass is a risk that some might not want to actually chance especially if their income is riding on it.

Using corn or food as a fuel source doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, because we feed our animals that are raised for meat that, even if we don’t consume it directly. So if every one is after corn, the price of beef and other meat will go up, and i don’t think that will make people any happier than the high gas prices do.

So make one thing less expensive, but raise the price of another isn’t a great scheme in my mind.

I believe food should much rather fuel our bodies than our cars.

I think it sounds much better to use a grass that isn’t readily eaten instead of corn for a fuel source. The implications of using “excess” corn for fuel in the United States while other countries are in terrible famine was probably give us a bad rep as not caring for others. However, even if we are not using a potential food source to make fuel, are we taking away from the growth of other crops by planting all of this grass in bulk? Is there anyway to plant the grass in a somewhat undesirable region where corn can’t grow, but the grass can. We don’t have unlimited flat, fertile land, but it seems to me that grass grows most anywhere, assuming the conditions are right. I say we begin planting this grass on mountains where there is plenty of sunlight and water. Only problem- winter freezes. Maybe the mountains in a country below the equator? I’m sure the grass guru’s can figure something out, make a compromise so that we can all sleep at night.

it makes sense that they find all these differnt subsitutes in the same species of grass, but i suppose its good that we can turn something as simple like grass into fuel, but perhaps in stead of only looking at plant fuel sources and the sources from the ground, oil and gas, why hasn’t there been fuel sources of air, its all around us and i know that oxygen can be pretty combustive, couldnt the oxygen in the air be used to fuel the combustion chambers in car? I know i’m not any bit car savvy but idealy it makes sense that the possiblity of a car run on air could be possible. And what about water, the steam car, it was once used in the past why not look at what we can do with it now?

where ethics is concerned people are always going to be naive about where things come from and what is sacraficed for what we use. If you look at it at a survival aspect food is more important than fuel source, we need the fuel for our bodies not our cars. However economicaly we also need fuel to travel and make livings and to be connected. So then the delemia arises. I mean its been stated before that if everyone went vegetarian that it could possibly end world hungar, but on the other hand the likelyhood of everyone jumping on the bandwagon to be vegetarian is slim to none. It seems there will always be a delima, when one thing is made or found or whatever else there will always be a seconed use and the choice is up to the people.

I think that there would be issues with any new fuel source and that this might be the most safe and economical substitute so far. Because of this, I believe that we should give it a try, but only in small insignificant amounts until we can test any unknown consequences.

Using switch grass is a much better fuel alternative than corn, the price of corn based foods, and like Prashi said food is better used to fuel ourselves rather than cars. And growing switch grass, most probably won’t have that much of a negative effect on feeding the hungry, though the lands would be better used to grow food for the hungry there are alternate ways to feed the hungry, and right now we need all the help we can get to stop polluting the planet, and keep the resources on Earth going as long as possible.