FOOD VERSUS BIOFUELS – AN ENERGY BALANCE APPROACH

• Main Authors: Ionut PURICA, Mihai SINDILE
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Academiei Oamenilor de Știință din România 2014-11-01
• Series: Annals: Series on engineering sciences (Academy of Romanian Scientists)
• Subjects: Biofuels; agro products; Corn for food; corn for cars
• Online Access: http://aos.ro/wp-content/anale/TVol6Nr2Art.9.pdf

In recent years the production of fuels for transportation has seen first an almost exponential increase then a sort of saturation given by the adverse effect on the agriculture of food products. Since both biofuels and agro products are expressed in energy units, we try here to make a balance in terms of energy units that are correlated to land surface available for food and biofuels in given economies e.g. the Romanian and the USA ones, such that to identify the optimal division of agricultural land to cover both the basic food needs and the biofuel ones. In this first approach food is measured in human daily energy intake converted to equivalent corn and biofuel is measured in the needed fuel for cars also converted in equivalent corn. These two corn quantities are then expressed in the land surface needed to cultivate them, followed by a dynamic analysis of the optimal partition between feeding the population and supplying the cars.