While
farmers and meat packers in the United States and Canada lobby for a reduction
in corn demand to produce ethanol, farmers in Germany have another
alternative-energy government subsidy program in their crosshairs.
There
it is growing crops that are chopped up to feed biogas-producing digesters that
generate electricity.
Land
that was growing crops for cattle and was pasture for sheep is now growing corn
to generate electricity.
The
Renewable Energy Act in Germany is subsidizing the energy that is produced
through these facilities for 20 years. As a result, some dairy farmers are
forced to feed their cows imported soy meal from Brazil and chicken producers
are importing corn.
The
program started eight years ago when there was overproduction of commodities
and this program was devised to set up small eco-power plants to run on corn.
Each
biogas facility needs 200 hectares of corn, and now the nation grows 810,000
hectares of “energy corn”.
Every
crop other than corn is becoming more expensive, even potatoes.
Competition
by investors bidding up land to grow corn is causing strife for original farm
land owners.
Corn
farmers are abandoning crop rotation to grow corn on corn, at the cost of
losing song birds and wild life habitat.
Many
recognize the program as being an environmental disaster, as farming the
marshes releases carbon, and fermented corn waste from the facilities applied
to the fields is causing groundwater nitrate pollution.
The
program has taken on a political life of its own, but now has limited the
amount of corn that can be used for biogas to 60 percent of the crop.
Recently
a group of academic researchers called for an end to the program, as the biogas
plants continue to be built.
They
said that the inefficiency of the land use to generate electricity through
biogas is far below that of wind and solar.
Wind
is 10 times more efficient and solar five times, as compared to biogas land
use.
Some
who support the corn to biogas program say that through the use of natural gas
and improved technology it will prove worthwhile given time.
Germany’s
goal is to produce all electricity through renewable means by 2050 while
phasing out nuclear.
