Local Ethanol Production Could Ensure NZ Farming Sustainability

New zealand farming communities could be growing alcohol based fuels without impacting on the global food supply whilst at the same time benefitting the local environment says American sustainable farming expert David Blume.

Blume is the keynote speaker at Ecoshow NZ in Taupo from the 10th - 12th of October. He will be outlining his community based schemes that produce ethanol as a fuel whilst providing environmentally beneficial flow-on effects such as sequestering CO2 into soil, capturing excess nutrients from current farming practices and sewage disposal systems, improving the health of our waterways and providing organic products that can fertilize our farms for further food production.

Blume is an internationally recognized authority on alternative ethanol production. He has recently published an extremely quirky yet fascinating textbook titled “Alcohol Can be a Gas” complied from over 30 years study on the subject working with such luminaries as R. Buckminster Fuller.

Blume cites studies that demonstrate that Cattails or, common Typha Reed such as the NZ native wetland grass Raupo (Typha orientalis) can yield up to 9000 litres per acre of ethanol fuel.

“By utilising hardy swamp plants such as Raupo, coupled with good landscape design, we can not only absorb excess and polluting nutrients from agricultural run off and sewage treatment but also gain financially by producing a transport fuel grown from that excess nutrient. Further, by returning waste biomass from those energy crops back to the land to build soil humus, we can sequester up to 13 times the CO2 from the atmosphere, than is emitted from the use of that fuel.” says Blume.

David Blume will be available for media interviews and presentations from the 7th of October through to the 15th.October.

Note: visit www.ecoshow.co.nz for details and a 3 minute video of previous Ecoshow