Hidden land sources: ask the cannabis growers… if you can find them!

Reports of the media and science dictate that land is running out, meaning that soon there will not be enough space to grow enough food to feed everyone, let alone grow biofuels; and yet, land always seems to be abundant for this type of agriculture: growing illegal substances.

There was enough land to produce enough cannabis for the 3.3-4.4% of the global population consuming it in 2007, for example. This meant that 134,000 ha were utilized for its growth in Morocco alone in 2003-2004 (Decorte et al., 2010). You can view a comprehensive summary of the global trends of cannabis growth in time and space in the book by Decorte et al. (2010), but don’t forget about the other illegal drugs that are cultivated simultaneously. This land is seen as ‘agricultural’ and thus not available for biofuel growth, so what we get is biofuel being seen as the villain that caused hunger and poverty in the Third World and the illegal drug industry remains the neutral status quo. Taking into account the wider context, is continuing to support the incomes of the drug oligarchs instead of tackling global warming, truly a more important global issue?

This leads me onto thinking that if we really wanted to and made biofuels as economically viable as the illegal drug cultivation through government incentives, or if the world powers united to replace the drug agriculture with biofuel cultivation, a currently invisible source of land would suddenly emerge. The calculations in the reports also ignore this option. Perhaps we need to be a little more imaginative in terms of the amount of land available and finally get our priorities straight…

*Other potential sources of land not included in the calculations (using my own somewhat limited imagination after doing some research):

-our gardens, which are often used for little more than grass monocultures at present

-deserts, which could be populated with algae, if appropriate technology emerges to make this envioronmentally and economically-efficient (Butterworth, 2008)

-the oceans, which could also be used for growing algal biofuel (Butterworth, 2008).

Concluding on the posts concerning how much biofuel it would be possible to produce sustainably:

The large uncertainty that exists due to the fail of studies to incorporate biofuel sources such as wastes, alternative production pathways, by-products and the hidden sources of land makes it difficult to answer this question. However, it seems that there is potential for a substantial amount of biofuel to be produced, even if this biofuel is not enough to meet all of our energy demands. Whether it will be too late to inhibit global warming from developing an extreme course, by the time this biofuel begins to be produced on a large-enough scale to have a significant effect on reducing it, is a different issue, the answer to which depends on the multiple political, economical and technological factors.

The lesson I would draw from this is that we need to follow India's example (Government of India Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, n/d) and to start acting by employing biofuels where it is already known that they will be sustainable as soon as possible e.g. expand the sustainable utilization of wastes.