In Defense of the Deer Eating Sunflowers

In the State of Colorado a farming consortium has decided to grow sunflowers to turn into biodiesel fuel. The sunflowers are attracting deer and elk to the farm and in the infinite wisdom of officials in the State the pesky critters are going to be gunned down. This consortium is closely connected to Colorado Wild, an organization that has harassed both Telluride and Purgatory ski resorts because they believe expansion of the resorts will hurt wildlife populations in the San Juan Mountains. So let’s get rational here...

Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California- Berkeley study.

"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable." The report on this is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).

Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. They found that sunflower plants require 118 % more fossil energy than the fuel produced - at 118 % they take much more fossil energy than corn (29 %), switch grass (45 %) and wood (57%).

Costs are incurred in producing the crop (including production of pesticides and fertilizer, running farm machinery and irrigating, and grinding and transporting the crop). Additional costs are incurred, such as federal and state subsidies that are passed on to consumers. And how do we measure the costs associated with environmental pollution and degradation? That includes killing of wildlife outside of a hunting season.

In this modern era of computer modeling it is not necessary to destroy wildlife and degrade land for experimentation. And for those who believe that computer modeling does not give accurate predictions perhaps you should tell that to the folks using their computers to tell us the planet is heating up.