Advantages of Bio-Fuel Producing Communities
Many communities have assets that aren't immediately apparent to them as assets.
When industry comes looking for a home or a site to build their businesses they have certain basic requirements. Space, in the form of buildings, land and juxtaposition to infrastructure assets like energy (cheap), housing, a labor pool, transportation corridors, rail and highway access, storage tanks and facilities and a political attitude that welcomes their contribution to the general welfare of the community.
Devastated rural communities have many of these assets that are of value in attracting commercial enterprises and these assets spill over into many cross-pollinating prosperity factors like Main Street business repopulation. When there is a resident work force, they have needs for meals, and motels and bars and ... so the downtown area prospers. Property appreciates, homes get built, families grow and the school system undergoes a renaissance like the remainder of the town's infrastructure. The concept of eco-industrial farming applies here: "The waste of one process becomes the feedstock of another process until there is no waste."
One example of this concept might be the following. The heat produced from the biodiesel processing can be employed in the manufacture of ICFs. Insulated Concrete Forms are becoming ever more popular in the construction of homes. Highly hurricane and tornado resistant, impervious to termites and mold, the growth of ICFs will continue. ICFs are made with expanded polystyrene, and heat is necessary to expand the EPS granules into the forms that make ICFs. If the heat is readily available and inexpensive, the location of an ICF plant near a bio-fuel plant is very attractive.
Rice and wheat straw, typically grown in the winter to suppress soil erosion could be bundled, compressed and sold to structural insulated panel manufacturers for inner core insulation. This process also requires heat. Made into blocks and glued to an outer hard paper coating, these straw blocks are structurally strong and obtain high R-insulation values.
Talking with townspeople and town councils, as well as the Farm Bureau personnel in rural America, would cause one to wonder why they wouldn't endorse any economic enterprises that could help transform their downtowns. A partnership between towns and their farmers would enjoy benefits to all parties. It seems it would be easy for the towns to use the properties they have accumulated through process of tax liens, and defaults on loans to encourage enterprise to locate there. Empty buildings, rail sidings, storage tanks and bins could all be used as a resource to accommodate new industry based on the above mentioned possibilities. Farmers agree to commit a certain percentage of their food crops to oil production, the townships agree to use assets to house and transport products made, and soon you have a win-win- win joint venture where everybody prospers and people enjoy living there.
Local delivery to fueling stations along major cross-country highway routes may actually transform our dependency on foreign oil, and maybe those truckers will actually start eating tofu burgers along with their bio-fuels.
A big question to be answered somewhere downstream is if the introduction of sustainable agriculture would bring value to the biodiesel equation. The U.S. is not only dependent on foreign oil for transportation, but also for fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones, weed control, etc. If the farm machinery ran on biodiesel, could the introduction of sustainable agriculture lower our dependency on fossil-based chemicals as well? Many vintners have proven that it is cost-effective to raise grapes in a sustainable manner. We'll see how big Agriculture takes this challenge in the coming years.
April 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue