California Agriculture

The use of crops and crop residues as feedstocks for biofuels increases domestic and global supplies, creates new industries, and may result in reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. Uncertainty about the best crop and residue sources, technologies for manufacture, future public policy, and the global supply and price of oil make it difficult to predict the best approach. California growers can produce feedstocks from grain, oilseed and woody crops and, in the Imperial Valley, from sugar cane. If the technology for making ethanol or other liquid fuels from cellulose becomes cost-effective, then saline and other wastewaters may be used in biofuel feedstock production of salt-tolerant crops, particularly perennial grasses. However, recent global increases in biofuel production have raised questions about their impacts on food and feed prices, climate change and deforestation. New state laws affecting energy use and mandating greenhouse-gas reductions require that the sustainability of all biofuels be assessed. Sustainability should take into account factors at both the global and local scales, including resource-use efficiency, cropping-system adaptability and the potential of biofuels to remediate agriculture’s environmental effects.