“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself”, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Part 1. The Dirt on Dirt.

Ethanol is an agribusiness get-rich-quick scheme that will bankrupt our topsoil.

Nineteenth century western farmers converted their corn into whiskey to make a profit (Rorabaugh 1979). Archer Daniels Midland, a large grain processor, came up with the same scheme in the 20th century. But ethanol was a product in search of a market, so ADM spent three decades relentlessly lobbying for ethanol to be used in gasoline. Today ADM makes record profits from ethanol sales and government subsidies (Barrionuevo 2006).

The Department of Energy hopes to have biomass supply 5% of the nation’s power, 20% of transportation fuels, and 25% of chemicals by 2030. These combined goals are 30% of the current petroleum consumption (DOE Biomass Plan, DOE Feedstock Roadmap).

Fuels made from biomass are a lot like the nuclear powered airplanes the Air Force tried to build from 1946 to 1961, for billions of dollars. They never got off the ground. The idea was interesting – atomic jets could fly for months without refueling. But the lead shielding to protect the crew and several months of food and water was too heavy for the plane to take off. The weight problem, the ease of shooting this behemoth down, and the consequences of a crash landing were so obvious, it’s amazing the project was ever funded, let alone kept going for 15 years.

Biomass fuels have equally obvious and predictable reasons for failure. Odum says that time explains why renewable energy provides such low energy yields compared to non-renewable fossil fuels. The more work left to nature, the higher the energy yield, but the longer the time required. Although coal and oil took millions of years to form into dense, concentrated solar power, all we had to do was extract and transport them (Odum 1996)

With every step required to transform a fuel into energy, there is less and less energy yield. For example, to make ethanol from corn grain, which is how all ethanol is made now, corn is first grown to develop hybrid seeds, which next season are planted, harvested, delivered, stored, and preprocessed to remove dirt. Dry-mill ethanol is milled, liquefied, heated, saccharified, fermented, evaporated, centrifuged, distilled, scrubbed, dried, stored, and transported to customers (McAloon 2000).

Fertile soil will be destroyed if crops and other “wastes” are removed to make cellulosic ethanol.

“We stand, in most places on earth, only six inches from desolation, for that is the thickness of the topsoil layer upon which the entire life of the planet depends” (Sampson 1981).

Loss of topsoil has been a major factor in the fall of civilizations (Sundquist 2005 Chapter 3, Lowdermilk 1953, Perlin 1991, Ponting 1993). You end up with a country like Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, where 75% of the farm land is a salty desert.

Fuels from biomass are not sustainable, are ecologically destructive, have a net energy loss, and there isn’t enough biomass in America to make significant amounts of energy because essential inputs like water, land, fossil fuels, and phosphate ores are limited.

Soil Science 101 – There Is No “Waste” Biomass

Long before there was “Peak Oil”, there was “Peak Soil”. Iowa has some of the best topsoil in the world. In the past century, half of it’s been lost, from an average of 18 to 10 inches deep (Pate 2004, Klee 1991).

Productivity drops off sharply when topsoil reaches 6 inches or less, the average crop root zone depth (Sundquist 2005).

Crop productivity continually declines as topsoil is lost and residues are removed. (Al-Kaisi May 2001, Ball 2005, Blanco-Canqui 2006, BOA 1986, Calviño 2003, Franzleubbers 2006, Grandy 2006, Johnson 2004, Johnson 2005, Miranowski 1984, Power 1998, Sadras 2001, Troeh 2005, Wilhelm 2004).

On over half of America’s best crop land, the erosion rate is 27 times the natural rate, 11,000 pounds per acre (NCRS 2006). The natural, geological erosion rate is about 400 pounds of soil per acre per year (Troeh 2005). Some is due to farmers not being paid enough to conserve their land, but most is due to investors who farm for profit. Erosion control cuts into profits.

Erosion is happening ten to twenty times faster than the rate topsoil can be formed by natural processes (Pimentel 2006). That might make the average person concerned. But not the USDA -- they’ve defined erosion as the average soil loss that could occur without causing a decline in long term productivity.

Troeh (2005) believes that the tolerable soil loss (T) value is set too high, because it's based only on the upper layers -- how long it takes subsoil to be converted into topsoil. T ought to be based on deeper layers – the time for subsoil to develop from parent material or parent material from rock. If he’s right, erosion is even worse than NCRS figures.

Erosion removes the most fertile parts of the soil (USDA-ARS). When you feed the soil with fertilizer, you’re not feeding plants; you’re feeding the biota in the soil. Underground creatures and fungi break down fallen leaves and twigs into microscopic bits that plants can eat, and create tunnels air and water can infiltrate. In nature there are no elves feeding (fertilizing) the wild lands. When plants die, they’re recycled into basic elements and become a part of new plants. It’s a closed cycle. There is no bio-waste.

Soil creatures and fungi act as an immune system for plants against diseases, weeds, and insects – when this living community is harmed by agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, even more chemicals are needed in an increasing vicious cycle (Wolfe 2001).

There’s so much life in the soil, there can be 10 “biomass horses” underground for every horse grazing on an acre of pasture (Wardle 2004). If you dove into the soil and swam around, you’d be surrounded by miles of thin strands of mycorrhizal fungi that help plant roots absorb more nutrients and water, plus millions of creatures, most of them unknown. There’d be thousands of species in just a handful of earth –- springtails, bacteria, and worms digging airy subways. As you swam along, plant roots would tower above you like trees as you wove through underground skyscrapers.

Plants and creatures underground need to drink, eat, and breathe just like we do. An ideal soil is half rock, and a quarter each water and air. When tractors plant and harvest, they crush the life out of the soil, as underground apartments collapse 9/11 style. The tracks left by tractors in the soil are the erosion route for half of the soil that washes or blows away (Wilhelm 2004).

Corn Biofuel (i.e. butanol, ethanol, biodiesel) is especially harmful because:

• Row crops like corn and soy cause 50 times more soil erosion than sod crops (Sullivan 2004) or more (Al-Kaisi 2000), because the soil between the rows can wash or blow away. If corn is planted with last years corn stalks left on the ground (no-till), erosion is less of a problem, but only about 20% of corn is grown no-till. Soy is usually grown no-till, but insignificant residues to harvest for fuel.
• Corn uses more water, insecticide, and fertilizer than most crops (Pimentel 2003). Due to high corn prices, continuous corn (corn crop after corn crop) is increasing, rather than rotation of nitrogen fixing (fertilizer) and erosion control sod crops with corn.
• The government has studied the effect of growing continuous corn, and found it increases eutrophication by 189%, global warming by 71%, and acidification by 6% (Powers 2005).
• Farmers want to plant corn on highly-erodible, water protecting, or wildlife sustaining Conservation Reserve Program land. Farmers are paid not to grow crops on this land. But with high corn prices, farmers are now asking the Agricultural Department to release them from these contracts so they can plant corn on these low-producing, environmentally sensitive lands (Tomson 2007).
• Crop residues are essential for soil nutrition, water retention, and soil carbon. Making cellulosic ethanol from corn residues -- the parts of the plant we don’t eat (stalk, roots, and leaves) – removes water, carbon, and nutrients (Nelson, 2002, McAloon 2000, Sheehan, 2003).

These practices lead to lower crop production and ultimately deserts. Growing plants for fuel will accelerate the already unacceptable levels of topsoil erosion, soil carbon and nutrient depletion, soil compaction, water retention, water depletion, water pollution, air pollution, eutrophication, destruction of fisheries, siltation of dams and waterways, salination, loss of biodiversity, and damage to human health (Tegtmeier 2004).

Why are soil scientists absent from the biofuels debate?

I asked 35 soil scientists why topsoil wasn’t part of the biofuels debate. These are just a few of the responses from the ten who replied to my off-the-record poll (no one wanted me to quote them, mostly due to fear of losing their jobs):
• ”I have no idea why soil scientists aren't questioning corn and cellulosic ethanol plans. Quite frankly I’m not sure that our society has had any sort of reasonable debate about this with all the facts laid out. When you see that even if all of the corn was converted to ethanol and that would not provide more than 20% of our current liquid fuel use, it certainly makes me wonder, even before considering the conversion efficiency, soil loss, water contamination, food price problems, etc.”
• Biomass production is not sustainable. Only business men and women in the refinery business believe it is.
• "Should we be using our best crop land to grow gasohol and contribute further to global warming? What will our children grow their food on?"
• “As agricultural scientists, we are programmed to make farmer's profitable, and therefore profits are at the top of the list, and not soil, family, or environmental sustainability”.
• “Government policy since WWII has been to encourage overproduction to keep food prices down (people with full bellies don't revolt or object too much). It's hard to make a living farming commodities when the selling price is always at or below the break even point. Farmers have had to get bigger and bigger to make ends meet since the margins keep getting thinner and thinner. We have sacrificed our family farms in the name of cheap food. When farmers stand to make few bucks (as with biofuels) agricultural scientists tend to look the other way”.
• You are quite correct in your concern that soil science should be factored into decisions about biofuel production. Unfortunately, we soil scientists have missed the boat on the importance of soil management to the sustainability of biomass production, and the long-term impact for soil productivity.

This is not a new debate. Here’s what scientists had to say decades ago:

Removing “crop residues…would rob organic matter that is vital to the maintenance of soil fertility and tilth, leading to disastrous soil erosion levels. Not considered is the importance of plant residues as a primary source of energy for soil microbial activity. The most prudent course, clearly, is to continue to recycle most crop residues back into the soil, where they are vital in keeping organic matter levels high enough to make the soil more open to air and water, more resistant to soil erosion, and more productive” (Sampson 1981).

“…Massive alcohol production from our farms is an immoral use of our soils since it rapidly promotes their wasting away. We must save these soils for an oil-less future” (Jackson 1980).

Natural Gas in Agriculture

When you take out more nutrients and organic matter from the soil than you put back in, you are “mining” the topsoil. The organic matter is especially important, since that’s what prevents erosion, improves soil structure, health, water retention, and gives the next crop its nutrition. Modern agriculture only addresses the nutritional component by adding fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and because the soil is unhealthy from a lack of organic matter, copes with insects and disease with oil-based pesticides.

“Fertilizer energy” is 28% of the energy used in agriculture (Heller, 2000). Fertilizer uses natural gas both as a feedstock and the source of energy to create the high temperatures and pressures necessary to coax inert nitrogen out of the air (nitrogen is often the limiting factor in crop production). This is known as the Haber-Bosch process, and it’s a big part of the green revolution that made it possible for the world’s population to grow from half a billion to 6.5 billion today (Smil 2000, Fisher 2001).

Our national security is at risk as we become dependent on unstable foreign states to provide us with increasingly expensive fertilizer. Between 1995 and 2005 we increased our fertilizer imports by more than 148% for Anhydrous Ammonia, 93% for Urea (solid), and 349 % of other nitrogen fertilizers (USDA ERS). Removing crop residues will require large amounts of imported fertilizer from potential cartels, potentially so expensive farmers won’t sell crops and residues for biofuels.

Improve national security and topsoil by returning residues to the land as fertilizer. We are vulnerable to high-priced fertilizer imports or “food for oil”, which would greatly increase the cost of food for Americans.

Agriculture competes with homes and industry for fast depleting North American natural gas. Natural gas price increases have already caused over 280,000 job losses (Gerard 2006). Natural gas is also used for heating and cooking in over half our homes, generates 15% of electricity, and is a feedstock for thousands of products.

Return crop residues to the soil to provide organic fertilizer, don’t increase the need for natural gas fertilizers by removing crop residues to make cellulosic biofuels.