Tobacco for Food and BioFuel

Source from:  permakent.com  07/29/2008

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore said he grew tobacco among other crops on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee during summer vacations in his youth. Gore also likened what he views as today's suppression of global warming evidence by Big Oil to the cover up long ago by Big Tobacco of the health risks of smoking. But what if tobacco plants had positive alternative uses? Using research from university studies, Bill Drake makes the case for growing zero-nicotine tobacco for biomass rather than smoking. Tobacco-based ethanol can be produced for far less cost per gallon, with far more economically valuable sidestreams, than corn-based ethanol. . .tobacco is a heavily coppicing plant, enabling it to produce very high biomass tonnage. . .tobacco thrives on poor soils in a wide range of environments. . .not only would tobacco fuel not take away from food crop production, as corn-based ethanol does, it would actually add immense tonnage of food-grade protein that can be extracted from the sludge remaining after ethanol is produced. A recent Reuters story makes similar claims from different sources. Enditem