Sunflowers

Sunflowers

For various reasons It’s been about three weeks since I walked the local footpaths around my village, so today I decided to take a stroll and see what has been happening in the countryside in my absence.  I didn’t have to go very far to encounter the first big surprise of the afternoon.  Only a couple of hundred yards from the house I gazed idly through a gap in the hedge and was almost blinded by the bright yellow vista in front of me.  Until April this field had been filled with cauliflowers.  About a month after that I walked the footpath that crosses the middle of the field and puzzled at the large-leafed plants that had replaced them.  Some sort of brassica I wondered, or a variety of bean perhaps.  Today all was revealed.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sunflowers growing in England before except in a garden. 






The sunflower is actually a wonderful plant.  The oil, which is used in cooking, is rich in monounsaturates.  The  leaves can be used as a cattle feed;  the stems provide an alternative source of cellulose fibre for the paper industry, and even the cake that is left after processing the seeds for oil can be used as a livestock feed.  In this case however I suspect the crop is destined to feed the ever growing bio-diesel industry.

Biodiesel is a controversial subject.  Advocates point out that it is renewable, secure and produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than fossil diesel.  For example, according to research from the EnvironmentalProtection Agency biodiesel made with soy yields a 57% reduction in greenhouse gasses compared with fossil diesel.  Opponents object to scarce resources, particularly land and water, being used to produce fuel instead of food, and there is some evidence that a switch to biodiesel production is becoming a factor in rising food prices around the world.  Either way it is not the whole solution to the world’s energy needs.  Most countries do not possess enough arable land to grow sufficient biofuel even for their own motor vehicles. If the entire land area of the USA were employed in soy bean production it would not meet current demand for heating and transportation in America, although a lot of research continues into alternative crops, using waste products and developing more efficient conversion processes.

The debate will continue for some time, but for me the argument is clear.  Biodiesel is renewable but it is not necessarily sustainable when you take into account the water and energy used to produce it.  It is better than fossil diesel but it is not green, just less dirty than traditional sources.  Also if the lure of a cash crop leads producers in tropical countries into further deforestation that is potentially disastrous.  All told I am not a fan.

Still it was beautiful to see them resplendent in the East Anglian sunshine and they brightened my day.  I defy anyone to walk through a field of sunflowers and not feel even a little bit uplifted.