Green Options

Without an additional £100m a year being spent on crop research in Britain, there could be food riots in developing countries as the growing world population fails to find enough affordable food.

The ocean is a powerful force that covers most of our planet. But until recently, the rugged coastline hasn’t really been considered a source of farmable land due to salinity. Saltwater crops are being more carefully by scientists as a possible source of bio-fuels, an article in Science shows that developing saltwater crops in coastal and salty areas could help open up vast new areas of land previously thought unusable.

WiredScience reports on new findings that show the biomass producing potential of salt-loving plants for use in alternative fuels:

We should have known that any product endorsed by the U.S. auto industry and the agribusiness lobby couldn’t really be sustainable. Agribusiness loves ethanol biofuels because they can get higher prices for corporate corn; the auto industry loves ethanol because it doesn’t have to retool their gas-guzzling cars. In October, the United Nations called for a moratorium on the use of biofuels, because they are exploiting land used to produce food and [...]