Re: Renewable Energy Stuff (was citizenship silliness) (fwd)

[Petro <petro@playboy.com>]

At 3:14 PM -0500 9/10/98, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>> I think you misunderstood.  They are claiming "gasoline equivalent
>> gallons/acre" -- not that 1 gallon of hemp oil = 3 gallons of gasoline.
>> And were not talking about "burning" hemp in that sense.  In this
>> particular case were talking about hemp-based biodiesel.
>
>How many gallons of gasoline can you raise on an acre?
>Actualy the point I was trying to make is that it's comparing apples and
>oranges. Until it's in a dollars/gallon for each of them format no real
>worthwhile comparison can be made.

	No, the point is can enough be raised in this country to meet the
needs of the transportation industry in the near and mid term (anything
longer than 10 to 15 years out couldn't be predicted with accuracy anyway).

>> Raising a full acre of hemp in that matter is something I don't have the
>> data on.  However, hemp is widely known as a low-maintenance crop -- that
>> translates little to no fertilizer.  After that we have the price of the
>> land/month, servicing loans on the farm equipment, labor costs, taxes,
>> energy, water etc.  Typical business overhead.   And for that 1000 galgas
>> eq/acre.
>
>Well don't forget crop rotation since the hemp is going to deplete the soil
>if you simply grow three crops a year (which is possible this far south).
>There is also the issue of water, hemp is a plant that needs lots of water
>and is very sensitive to light levels/times, tempearture and pH. Hemp also
>leeches nitrogen quite heavily.

	Nitrogen is easy to replace, as long as you don't mind a few
tagants in the soil, and don't buy your diesel at the same place...

petro@playboy.com----for work related issues. I don't speak for Playboy.
petro@bounty.org-----for everthing else.      They wouldn't like that.
                                              They REALLY
Economic speech IS political speech.          wouldn't like that.