Green Business

[MikeTM150]

What about the hydrogen powered tractor from new holland? That must be quite green, I'm certaintly looking forward to it getting to production stage but i'm sure something will be against it when it gets to market!!!

[cousin jack]

So are tractors, in fact every thing on the planet (with the exception of a very few deep sea creatures, that take energy from thermal vents) is solar powered.

 

Tractors just use stored solar power in the form of diesel.

 

I have to admit you're right, BUT the oil from which diesel came from took many thousands, if not millions of years to occur. The power from which a horse gets it's energy from can be got in one season, (weather permitting). And, nutrients from the waste can be used immediately in the form of fertiliser, also, as has been mentioned, the horse, when it dies, could feed a small village for a week. Would'nt want to try eating a tractor,

I suppose now, bio-oil will come into the equation, but the argument then becomes, should land be used to produce fuel or food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose I should just mention that I do have a tractor, but only for show of course.

[MikeTM150]

I have to admit you're right, BUT the oil from which diesel came from took many thousands, if not millions of years to occur. The power from which a horse gets it's energy from can be got in one season, (weather permitting). And, nutrients from the waste can be used immediately in the form of fertiliser, also, as has been mentioned, the horse, when it dies, could feed a small village for a week. Would'nt want to try eating a tractor,

I suppose now, bio-oil will come into the equation, but the argument then becomes, should land be used to produce fuel or food.

 

 

 

 

I suppose I should just mention that I do have a tractor, but only for show of course.

 

As a farmer i see it that it'll produce fuel and enviromental diversity until the world gets properly hungry then the governments will have this brain wave of an idea to encourage us to product food!!!

[Daniël Bos]

There is ofcourse the issue that growing crops for biodiesel tends to cost more in fuel that they actually produce....

 

And the fact that a tractor costs approximately 200 (!) barrels of oil to produce, a horse can be produced for a little less.

 

And then there is the fact that you are naturally right that a tractor is easier and cheaper to run a tractor versus a horse, but I believe the question was about sustainability, how "green" is your business" not how much profit can you make doing the same job in different ways?

[cousin jack]

As a farmer i see it that it'll produce fuel and enviromental diversity until the world gets properly hungry then the governments will have this brain wave of an idea to encourage us to product food!!!

 

Could'nt agree with you more, how many of us in the Western world know what it is to go hungry.

Miscanthus makes me want to piss, I can tell you.

[MikeTM150]

Could'nt agree with you more, how many of us in the Western world know what it is to go hungry.

Miscanthus makes me want to piss, I can tell you.

 

'Mis' what did u say........makes me laugh they burn this 'green' stuff in power stations but it requires more coal to make it burn hot enough to generate electricity!

 

I don't mind helping the environment, but the problem is it encourages the 'rest' of the world to produce products with less environmental care to replace what we don't grow!! At the end of it the human species has got too big for this planet already in my eye's!

[TRADITIONAL LOGGERS]

Some farms in Holland are using methane now to power the machines/produce electric. (like a large pointed canvas on top of a silo to catch the gases)

 

I had no idea coal was used to burn woodchips?

[MikeTM150]

well as i understand it they burn the woodchip/miscanthus at the same time as the coal,, but it requires proportionally more coal to keep the temperature up. Now this may have only happened in the older type systems that weren't designed to burn woodchip at all and may be different to newer systems.

[Luke Quenby]

At the Drax power station which provides around 7% of our power / electric there were plans to use 10% biomass, co-fired with the coal, but this would require 750,000 hectares of short rotation coppice to be planted. Alongside that there is the fact of only using 10%, and still needing vast amounts of coal just to get the right temperature.

 

This would then lead to an obvious land use issue over producing food or producing power as many are finding out in the US with Maize being produced for ethonol / fuel purposes. The cost of utilising this co-firing method is three times as expensive as using coal alone. And the fertiliser inputs to get the required yeilds are high, so it is not the 'greenest' of methods.

 

It begs a big question over the best way to utilise the land we have to fill all of our requirements for food and power. 200 million tons of coal are burnt every year in the UK to keep the power stations going, with best estimates of 150 years of coal left, at current consumption levels.

 

According to the NNFCC, we are some 80 million oven dried tons short in our biomass requirements for production of heat alone for the whole country.

 

As an example in Denmark they have the ability to produce 50% of their power requirement through wind turbines, but not one single 'conventional' fossil fuel powered power station has been de-commissioned yet due to the obvious reliabilty concern of wind. I belive big steps are being made on the issues of efficiancy of these units but we are still a long way off from being anywhere close to the levels of sustainable and affordable power generation.

 

It's a really interesting debate, and anyone who can come up with some definative answers is on to a winner!

 

For the record, I think heavy horse power has a definate place in forestry and to a certain extent agriculture / food production. We have abundant technology for maximising efficiancy in food production in agriculture now - look at the practices of even 20 years ago compared to now.

 

Using several different methods instead of just one is a definate plus, so for me the use of horses have a big role to play, not just on difficult / steep / sensetive sites. I have been involved in an area of small scale horse extraction, the owners of the estate were happy to pay that bit more just to see it happening and to protect the ground they were working on over conventional extraction methods.

[Matthew Storrs]

The trouble is, humans are apex predators and therefore there is nothing to control our population, in fact we seem to go out of way to help increase it. Therefore the current food production is destined to get more desperate so the idea of 750,000 hectares of coppice just won't swing in the future, im afraid i see it as a bit of a lose lose situation whichever way we look at it.

I'v just finished building over 200 meters of devon bank 7ft high. done with a minidigger this took me two weeks, 60 years ago this would have been a winters work for a team of ten farmworkers, so techncally although iv been efficient iv taken away jobs, I don't think DEFRA would pay for the alternative tho!