Question: how many acres or hectares of rapeseed does it take to make enough fuel to fly a jet across the Atlantic? Answer: You don't want to know. Update: Using information gathered on a web search, and therefore may or may not be correct, here goes: A Boeing 777 burns a little over 2200 gallons per hour, so a 6 hour flight uses about 13,400 gallons of jet fuel. Rapeseed does an average of 150 gallons per acre. Factoring conversion losses of raw oil to biodiesel at about 65%, it would take 137 acres /55 hectares of rapeseed to fuel the plane from DC to London. Less than I thought, but still a lot for a one-way trip.
It's actually pretty bad because you can only get one, or maybe two crop yields a year. How many trips will that plane make in a year? How about all planes? There is not enough land on earth to fuel them all.
At 350 passengers, that would "only" be 0.391 acres / .094 hectares per passenger. That sounds small, right? I once did a study for the most efficient means of travel. That turned out to be a bicycle, better than walking. For long distances, the airplane handily beats mileage of most cars because of the number of passengers.
Holy shit, I live on 22 Hectares man. 22 Hectares is a lot of land, and this takes 2.5 times that to power one fairly efficient large long-range jet. On top of that, you didn't consider that biodiesel isn't what's put into the plane, it has to get refined until it is Jet-A1 Kerosene-grade biodiesel, and even then ends up being less efficient than drill oil kerosene. I just think that proves how unsustainable biodiesel is
@@microdesigns2000 Yeah but a hectare is a lot of land dude. Like, a LOT of land. My house yard with a moderate-sized family home and four large farm sheds (barn-equivalent in size) doesn't even cover a hectare, and I could live my entire life in this yard without worry. It's just not sustainable. I will grant it's far better for the environment than petrochemical processing, but that's... not hard? Oil is disgusting and so unbelievably pollutive to the point the majority of global pollution comes back to 30 petrochemical-burning companies. Really, the concept of burning products for transport is just unsustainable. Atleast biodiesel makes it renewable, but doesn't solve the sustainability problem. Planes are efficient for long-range, high capacity travel, but I think this just proves that land-based travel needs to be superceded by electric high-speed rail. Imagine if all those 55 hectares were covered in solar panels or wind farms. You could power a moderate-sized city with that resource, or even an entire high-speed rail line. Infrastructure of that degree is just innately better. It's a long-term solution, whereas canola farming for biodiesel prolongs our reliance on carbon-burning transport. The "short-term costs" argument doesn't hold up when you consider the purpose of infrastructure is to BE long-term. It's an investment in the future private companies and world governments need to stop being too lazy or greedy to invest in
This is a good reason why I like the idea of algae biofuel. -They can grow a lot more of it in a lot less space. -They can cap the polution from power companies to use as food to grow the algae in place of fertilizers. -They don't need to use pesticides -They byproducts of algae biofuel can be used as animal feed, freeing up more acreage of monoculture farmlands. -They can make more than just biodiesel, they can make fuel to use in all engines currently in production, plus jet fuel too...
Plus there are some cases where theres an over abundance of algae and it could actually help some ecosystems to clear up some of it! I think it could also help to try and find a way to use food wastes as biofuel, we waste a lot of food every day so we could try to use some of that waste rather than doing nothing with it. Theres a lot of waste we produce and we just kinda,,, dump it in places which can really devastate some ecosystems. Like we can reuse a lot of that waste, even if its not recyclable. You can repurpose glass food jars into a myriad of light fixtures and you can use them to store other foods too. You can use food waste to make fertilizer for your garden. You can use cardboard boxes to organize your belongings and send gifts. You can use a shattered plate as mosaic tiles or jewelry. You can take practically anything in your trash and use it again, and even if you cant make it into something that would serve a purpose in your home or be "useful" you can make decorations, accessories, and various other cosmetic items and keep them, or give as a gift!! I just realized i went on a mini tangent there but oh well lol.
@@Realatmx It takes some time for ideas to catch on. I just heard an interview recently with a man named Dan Egan who was planning how to compost biodegradable food waste in New York State on a large scale. This would be a way to capture methane, one of the (some say the) major greenhouse gases, take compostable elements out of the waste stream, and provide soil enrichments, as has been suggested. Here's hoping.
🤔Incidentally-have been curious about the possibility[?] of marrying algal biofuel production with nuclear plants. 🤔By any chance-anyone know if anything in this direction has been attempted?…
In addition to what you've said, basing a significant portion of our energy supply on a monoculture like this is really risky. A pest or infection could decimate the fuel supply.
Excellent video, I looked into growing rapeseed years ago and quickly learned that it made a loss per field. This was due to the use (I believe 7 different types) of pesticide or herbicide. The only way you were able to make money on this was through subsidies. Our governments basically sponsor the large chemical companies this way.
Yeah right Sam. The entire Australian three million tons of canola is produced, cheaper than the rest of the world, with no subsidies. I don't think you did your sums very well.
@@herlescraft That is untrue. EU does subsides for farmes only to not farm. There is no subsidies form specific product farming. Looking at farming subsideis in euorope, most of them goes to restore farmland, not to use it
Hi there, greeting from Czechia here. We are mostly against this scale of rapeseed in this country. Because it's killing biodiversity, the number of bugs, butterflies, and so on anywhere near this yellow field of raped nature is basically nonexistent, thanks to the chemicals. There are two main reasons why we have so much of it here. 1. EU incentivized mixing biofuel into diesel fuel back in the day, not so much these days. 2. We have a law of mandatory biofuel mixing. And here is the catch, before the bill was passed back then one, of the most prominent lobbyist Andrej Babiš (who is the biggest agricultural/chemical oligarch) was lobbying really hard for this bill to be passed. He even built one of the biggest biofuel factories in our country right before that. Later on, he went into politics with his ANO "movement", then became a finance minister and after that, he threw his coalition partner under the bus (he started a smear campaign against them based on the non-existent cause). Then he won elections and became Prime minister, absurd i know. After he became Prime minister he immediately started to plant his henchmen into the state institutions. He put his loyal rectal alpinists into the Ministry of finance, Ministry of agriculture, Ministry of local development, Ministry of ecology, ministry of justice so there was basically no chance of change. Luckily we booted him out in the latest elections, but he is now a presidential candidate, he is doing it just because he wants lifetime immunity. PS: His company is delivering almost 87% of all biofuel to the state company Čepro without tender, which is the main distributor of the fuel in our country. He also owns some farms which grow rapeseed, but it's not so much. But yes, farmers are keener to grow rapeseed because of the high subsidies compared to other crops, which is never good. www.e15.cz/byznys/prumysl-a-energetika/babis-slavi-uspechy-s-bionaftou-vyroba-je-na-novem-rekordu-1167001 Not only that, he went into the fury blabbering where he was saying that butterflies and bees love the rapeseed when some investigative reporters were printing stories about beekeepers complaining about dying bees near the rapeseed fields, because of the amount of the chemicals they bring back to the beehives which also inhibits their immune system. Not to mention wild bees. www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/vcely-repku-rady-rekl-babis-jenze-ji-nesmi-byt-moc-ty-divoke-muze-dokonce-dohnat-ke-smrti-hladem-73603 He is just not only an agriculture/chemical oligarch, he also owns some media, many food industry "giants" and so on. His start and how he became so wealthy is more like from godfather playbook than good samaritan. I wish more people and media were into him, he should be in the prison, not on the way to becoming president. To be honest, this video is kind of flat and shallow(for me), which you noted in the video description, it would deserve more digging, but that's only thanks to the fact that i have more direct info about the situation, and there is basically no international info. Anyway, i am glad that you did this video, which is highlighting one of the issues of rapeseed and its chemicals. Another issue is the monoculture and the scale of the fields. We are doing it really bad here, the biodiversity here is lackluster here, thanks to the communist way of agriculture and abolishment of small farmers. Just look at google maps, satellite view, and compare the sizes of fields and the diversity between Czechia and let's say Austria, the visual difference is so stark. I am sorry that i can't provide any source in English. But i hope that you read this. Thanks, Martin
Thanks for this note Martin. Very interesting info. I started making this video just to highlight an interesting plant. It got deep very quick. I actually cut a big section talking about exactly what you discuss. It felt like a tangent. I’m glad you put it in the comments.
@@UntamedScience Not a tangent. In the USA, look to how Monsanto(Bayer) monopolizes. Industrial Agriculture is NOT the friend of Nature or the Common Man!
@@michealmclaughlin429 Well when political ideologies make the regulations for the countries, it changes the behavior inside it even when it's not "forced". Rapeseed was barely grown here, before WW2 and during that time. After WW2 and during the whole socialist era it went from 0,4 to 3,1 % of the whole sown area. Now rapeseed takes about 13-16 % of the sown area in this country.
@@UntamedScienceLet's examine how you got here, on a plane and by a car. Your clothes including your puffy jacket were made using oils, whether it's from a plant or so called fossil fuels. Fun fact about so called fossil fuels, no fossil has been found deeper than 16,000 feet and yet oils that are called fossil come from wells twice as deep. You and virtually everything living on earth is a carbon life form. Yet depopulationists like yourself want to reduce carbon. Reduce Life. Hypocrite is too easy of a word for your types. While I'm no fan of big AG, and spraying of herbicides or pesticides is abhorrent in my opinion, at least I'm not a Hypocrite. Growing food and oils that allow one to use while farming with diesel run machines, would seem ideal. I guess the WEF likes your types, doing their work for them. Nuremberg 2.0 is long overdue.
When you factor in all the costs, plowing planting, fertilizing, harvesting and processing, you have to ask. Is it a caloric surplus? Does the harvested energy exceed the energy spent? If not then you are using fossil at a greater rate than before.
work it out. About a ton of yield seed per acre, say two ton per ha. About 320 kg of oil per ton, minus say ten percent filtering. Call it 600 Kg/ha. It takes about six litres per ha for no-till sowing and a little less for stripping, so say 12 litres of diesel equivalent per ha. It would hardly be a fuel if it took more energy to produce that it embodies. The question is the efficiency of land use. This boils down to the efficiency of the photosynthesis in the plant.
@@allegorx58 sequesters carbon dioxide only to give it all off again as it's harvested (yes, dead things will begin to emit carbon dioxide if they aren't sealed under pressure). Andy's point still holds. You also didn't account for transportation emissions, emissions generated in processing, emissions for packaging and preservation... The efficiency of canola as jet fuel is nothing to write home about, and unless you plant rapeseed with the sole purpose of being succeeded by other crops / a permaculture system that continues that ongoing trend of nitrogen and carbon fixation, the same principle will be applied to other "carbon-sequestering" crops; the crops must be allowed to be put into the ground in the long term to sequester the carbon inside, not processed to high hell to turn into other products.
@@goatvision6908 You also forgot fertilizer and pest control, and the energy it takes to produce and apply them. Just because something may take a lot of energy to convert into a fuel, it doesn't make it not a fuel... I don't trust anything the "green energy" lobby has to say as most of it is bullshit. "Biomass fuel"?? That's just grinding up trees and burning them. Guess who's behind that??? Big lumber companies. Windmills??? Not a thing that's "carbon neutral" about them. They require a BUNCH of fossil fuels to make and install... Same with solar panels. They do have their applications, but they are not the be all, end all.
I grow Canola as a part of my rotation crops. The fast and dense growth suppresses weeds. They are Heavy Feeders and therefore, they are the follow crop after legumes ( Heavy Givers). Root crops & Low Nitrogen Feeders are planted after HF crop. (HG > HF> LNF> Repeat ). As a small organic homesteader, I have proven that we can produce food/feed and fuel/materials without destroying the environment. Wildlife and the messed-up climate is the biggest challenge I face. If 3 major monoculture farmers get together. They can do the rotation cropping using their very expensive specialized equipment. The need for fertilizer is greatly reduced or unneeded. The pesticides and herbicides are also reduced by breaks in crop cycles.
Yeah and people think it's "healthier" than olive. It's suggested to use in so many recipes and I hate it, I wish people learned about the history of the plant. It's incredibly toxic.
Funny how the internet suppresses the actual truth and history...as rapeseed was originally intended to run farm equipment...but the Rockefeller's had different design$. It's also funny what was old is all of a sudden new again after a generation cycle...wow! It's almost like there is some kind of secret agenda operating in the back ground? Anyone know how bad this is for gumming diesel injectors, because the mega yacht manufactures and pushing this now too?
I've been watching your channel for some time now and wanted to let you know, as a 54 year old, you are the best science teacher I have ever had. I've been working in the wildlife habitat field for the past 31 years and look forward to your lessons. Thank you and your family for all that you do.
Those yellow fields are one of the biggest ecological catastrophes that EU money brought to Czech Republic. This flower... is problematic. It requires too much pesticides and insecticides - to the point that there is no longer any source of underground water free of those chemicals. Then there is the soil erosion... How something that literally ruins the ecosystem can be labelled green is beyond me. Another controversial side of this business would be: the excess of that oil is making it the primary choice in the food industry. Don't take me wrong - the selective breeding was successful enough that people no longer directly die due to the heart failures, but there is still a group of people that upon consummation gets digestive issues/rashes. And it is not easy to avoid this contaminant as it is added to everything from bread to chocolate.
Heart disease is increased as a result of consumption of this oil which causes inflammation at insane levels in the arteries which then have to be plugged with cholesterol to prevent complete disintegration. There has been no reduction over the past 30 or 40 years in heart disease. In fact it has increased massively along with the rates of cancer. The rancidity of this oil is intrinsic as soon as you buy it. It must be bleached and deodorised using toxic chemicals and then coloured to hide its true disgusting nature.
@@randomroses1494 For the sake of making myself clear I will be the devil's advocate now: the rapeseed oil contains eruk acid. A long time ago it was in such quantities that it caused your heart grow in volume over the years, eventually leading to death. The selective breeding of this flower managed to decrease the quantity of eruk acid - to the point that it no longer causes this exact issue. That is a plus point for the science. The debate about how wise it is to use industry solvents in food industry, or if processed foods, fats/oils/carbohydrates/whatever are actually healthy is another topic I was not trying to mention. But you are right that cancer and heart diseases are on the rise over past decades and I would agree that the changes in the diet might be the leading cause. Still, I was talking more about this exact plant and its evolutionary focus on killing mammals.
I love the environment,but vegetable oils should be called seed oils and people should look into how the oil is extracted with the use of solvents,very un- healthy and also using seed oils to produce biofuels takes up land that could be used for food production,which causes starvation, somethings to think about.
@@nunyabiznes33 The Indians used sunflower oil. We can be sure they didn't use solvents. I bet pounding fresh hulled seeds with a mortar and pestle would yield oil. Makes me curious to try it.
What struck me about your film was I didn't see any birds or flying insects above those fields of yellow. Out on pastures of grazing animals the sky is alive with them. Smart farmers provide tree houses for the various swallows as well as moving their herds and flocks in short rotation to allow the grasses to grow .Some trees are allowed to grow in the pastures, if not to just provide shade for the animals and the hills that can't be cultivated must have have forest which grow to provide homes to the wildlife as well as to hold water and build a store of carbon as well. Growing a crop like this is akin to mining the land. Once the nutrients and minerals are depleted it must be restored by grazing animals. Chemical fertilizers,herbicides,insecticides will destroy the life of the soil and everything that relies on that soil.
@@chrismread as a beekeeper a few struggling bees in a field is not a healthy sight, the air should be alive with many bugs, especially many species of bees, not a few or a closeup of just one. I agree with Paul..... I have seen bees hard at work, even from miles away which is how far they will travel for good sources of pollen and nectar. This field is dead with activity, even for this time of the year. Bees this time of the year are desperate for honey reserves before the dearth and will be busy working to get what they can, that one bee was a little sluggish. Also they use poisons to protect the plants, but it passes onto the bugs and then the birds. that is why their are few if none. Even herbicides will kill bees, it confuses them and they get lost and won't come back to the hive. This monoculture is killing so much, diets of insects and animals shouldn't be of one thing, you get deficiencies and other issues from eating too much of one thing.
Please, also cover the fake advertising around Avocado's! HEAVILY subsidised by the EU, but because its one of the most water hungry things to grow lots of droughts in Spain and Portugal can be attributed to farmers solely growing Avocado's JUST to rake in the subsidies.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a farmer some 40 years ago. He told me he was not growing potatoes this year. He had changed to not growing tomatoes because the government paid more to not grow tomatoes.
I randomly stumbled upon this channel because of the pokeweed video. I'm glad I found this video as well. It's sensible, and it talks about things that often get overlooked. Thank you.
I like that you try to sound somewhat neutral about this, "it's great but no so much cuz...". The fact that you leave out the most important factor, the solution to that ever present "but", is the reason there is a, but, in the first place. There is no solution. If "you're" not gonna stop flying to your next destination, neither is anyone else.
I'm a biodynamic farmer who has used rapeseed as a cover crop amoungst others. In the fall, after the first frost, the rapeseed plant's flavor profile becomes sweeter and the deer will consume it's leaves. This is when I harvest the leaves. They are great sautéd in butter, olive oil and garlic. It's amazing and makes me feel great. This awesome plant has been demonized because of its processed seed oils. I'm pretty certain erucic acid is only problematic if you eat a bunch of the seeds or consume the oil. Does anyone know if it's present in the leaves?
You forget. Only the seed is harvested. There is carbon in the roots, leaves and stems. If a farmer uses soil building techniques, most of it will stay sequestered for years in the soil.
I’m from Colorado, where there is so much barren land. I haven’t been there in decades but there USED to be irrigation canals so farmers could grow crops. I’ve heard most of these have been closed. But there is so much barren land and there are water tables underground, they just tend to be running through iron filled soil and the water comes out orange. It would be the perfect place for rapeseed without the need to disturb other areas. I’m sure there are a lot of places like that on the globe. But they aren’t easy or convenient enough for the powers that be.
But it is nasty and so much grown for little benefit.so many chemicals that poison. Chemical companies. Not environmental, don’t disappear out of the soil. Other things then grow stunted. Engineered crops that resist herbicide, soaks it up but lives…you eat it. Sunflowers grown and eaten for centuries……last century they started spraying with defoliant before harvest. Same as cotton, the seed being used for oil and fed to the beef we eat. Good practice but not with the poison. Someone mentioned hydro, there are a lot of places where there is not enough water.
I am so glad you put out this video. While hearing many positives, I still had a lot of pretty hefty concerns about this and I wish more people were aware of how many resources and overall environmental risk lies in this kind of production. Anyways great video as always, and what a beautiful view that was!
Haha. So funny. My band from 15-20 years ago was called RAPESEED. Awesome plant but the name was controversial, so we used it for shock value. Good to see it hasn't lost its title.
Thanks Rob and Jonas! Malia (daughter) took me to Whitewater Center yesterday and she pointed out your house as we drove past. I saw you working on your front lawn! I had to catch a plane to Utah so couldn't stop and say hi. Take care and keep up the good work!!
It's too bad hemp farming has so many ridiculous regulations, especially in the states. Hemp is a great seed crop plus it has lots of fiber. And if cannibis was legal federally all the left over biomass could be used for biofuel or fiber or whatever. It's probably better than rapeseed in every way.
As much as it would be nice if cannabis solved every problem in the world, that's not much more realistic than the panic about the plant. Hemp is a good fiber, but it's not the only good fiber. Cannabis is one of the best drugs, but it's not harmless. It's not a panacea.
@@keithklassen5320 I was curius a while back and read several articles on renewable fuel and cannabis oil was nowhere in them, was that a conspiracy to scilence the excelent canabis oil? No it turned out that the yeald from cannabis oil was simply so low, they didn´t even consider putting it in the chart. It simply was not a competitor. This is similar to Soy oil that is really popular with some people. (gallons per acer) Cababis: 50-70 Soyoil:59 Rapeseed: 110 Castor: 140 Jatporha: 170 Palm Oil: 500 Algea: 5000 (yes, thousand) Firstly what say about palm oil is one of those "its really complicated, so we simple it down to something that is not remotely true" Firstly the claim that Palm Oil can only be grewn in the rain-forest is totally false. There is Palm oil grewn in the German Alps, its not even close to the rain-forest. If we look at the countries that is making palm oil in high volum they all have two things in common...Low pay and reasonable infrastructure.
Continue: The drawback with oil palm is that its need very much manual labor. Its really hard to make it industrialized. But it probobly will be at one point. Then we see the Rapeseed field of Europe replaced with palm oil fields. (Yes, they grew just fine in Europe despite popular belief, at least in Germany, maybe not in Sweden). The cost of vegetable oil is really mostly limited by field cost, but also to a lesser degree machine cost. For Rapeseed the farmer have to go 7-8 passes over the field to get one harwest. (powing, harwing, sowing, herebecide (x8) fertelizer, harwestnig). For palm oil the farmer goes 3 passes (herbeside, fertlizer, harwesting). Its less than half the machine cost and 5 times the yeald. Rapeseed oil currently have a consumer level price of just under €2/liter, that is a bit more than diesel, and that is what it always will be because the main cost of making rapeseed oil is diesel. If ever palm oil would be machine harwestable the cost of it would be about 50 eurocent per liter, way cheaper than diesel in europe. That is why there is so much bad press about palm oil, its all from the fossil fuel compaines, don´t get fooled.
In Australia, it's become an invasive species. We call it "wild canola" and it acetifies a lot of our land making it unliveable for native plants. Being a brassica plant just like cabbage or lettuce or mustard, it's capable of cross-breeding with these plants which taints crop yields - further hampered by its innate resistance to biocides that would normally clear away other weeds. On my property, it's starting to eat out our fence lines, which is killing our blackberry bushes. It's frustrating, but we've gotten lucky as far as other farmers in the area go.
Certain organic sprays will kill it. A mix of diluted epsomsalt with vinegar and dishsoap and water. Spray liberally on plants. They will die and you will get your land back.
@@samueladams1775 Kills the plant, soil is ruined by the canola anyway and it regrows later. Is better than most herbicides that ruin your land even worse, but once your soil's acetified it's ruined, and only a couple species grow on it inc. canola
@@samueladams1775 Free range cattle are really the best solution to deal with acetified land, bc they turn the soil. But they also carry plant material with them that canola will inevitably grow from and acetify, which just spreads it further
It's also called rapeseed cause it is extremely invasive, and nearly impossible to be rid of once you start growing it. This is why I use olive and avocado oils, besides those being better than canola anyway.
Its a plant that needs further research for biofuel eg (1)Can you develop a variety that use less nitrogen while at the same time increasing the yield.(2) Oil seed rape is a good rotational crop improving the yield of other cereals by 15% the following year REF. Teagas Ireland (3) Better yields can be achieved wit bees with a 35% improvement Ref Teagas Irl (4) The straw can be used to make pellets which can be burnt , improving the energy input to output ratio.(5) Once the oil is squished out the remaining cake can be used as a n animal feed.(6)The yields of nectar and pollen are very high from this plant producing a honey that can be creamed .So while the oil will be used for for biodiesel and the straw for combustion the remainder will enter the food chain. A holistic approach is what is needed clearly.
I'm a new follower since the amanita muscaria video. I am a PhD in Organic BioChemisrty. I totally love the way you teach these videos. Prononciation a bit American, but that's easily forgiven ❣️
In Spain there was a huge controversy with canola oil. Food grade canola oil was cut with unsafe mechanics oil that killed a lot of people. Because of that canola oil isn't found anywere anymore. If it's not olive oil, it's sunflower seed oil.
Canola and rape seed provide an abundant supply of pollen with an ideal mix of amino acids, protein and fats for bees. The plentiful nectar has a good sugar profile for honey production. These lands are not ever planned for going back to wild life habitat and we need healthy bee populations to pollinate many of our food crops.
If you care about the environment, you must pick one of three alternatives: 1. Keep burning fossil fuels and hope for the best. 2. Nuclear. 3. Starve in the dark, but still doing #1 behind a curtain.
As a kid growing up in the Palouse in Washington/Idaho, I remember the fields of canola flowers in the spring and how they were almost fluorescent. Very pretty I have to say.
The best thing to do to combat climate change is to have more natural environments, so that less oxygen is being lost to CO2. I really think a perspective change from less carbon to more oxygen would solve a huge chunk of our problems.
When the road was being built through the Amazon jungle there was a vine which when hacked open with a machete released a fuel that could be used as diesel. I actually saw truck drivers whacking the Vine with her machetes and this liquid GUSHED OUT LIKE WATER AND HE WAS FEELING FIVE GALLON CANS IN NO TIME. Whatever happened to this Vine or did it only grow in the Amazon???
I've worked with this crop in Oklahoma since 2003. I've seen many benefits with it here. Even though it's still monoculture, it gives continuous wheat producers here something to rotate with. I disagree about a "ton" of pesticides are used on the crop. Farmers only use herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides if they absolutely have to because it costs too much. We grow winter canola here. During the fall and winter, I often see deer and even waterfowl graze on the leaves. Which canola does make great high protein forage, like most Brassicas. I've never been in a field during bloom that wasn't buzzing with bees. Plenty of birds and other small wildlife too. The bees do great with it. We've even had hives brought in from California because they recover soo well with it and hive populations increase. Most insecticides options we have contain strick label requirements about not spraying during bloom to prevent pollinator harm. In our wheat and canola rotations we're able to use sustainable farming practices like no-till at greater success than continuous wheat. As far as the energy balance, there's a lot on carbon sequestered in the soil due to its deep robust taproot. Only removing the seed at harvest leaves all the plant biomass in the field. Another great use of the seed material after the oil is extracted is livestock feed. So more is being produced than just cooking oil or biofuel. Great video, just thought I'd add some of my own thoughts.
Agreed. Especially the part about no-till. People make crop protection out to be the devil, when there is so much more to it. Here in germany people call for more Bio-Cultivation, but they have no clue how destructive mechanically working the soil is. It's so unfortunate that no-till hasnt caught on here yet.
it's surprising how many youtube channels promote these sorts of projects (including hydrogen as a fuel alternative) despite the clear drawbacks. kudos to you for pointing out that they're likely a distraction from stabilizing the climate and preserving biodiversity
Sounds like an argument against flying in jet airliners. Where are the solar airships? Biodiesel jet fuel = no 9/!! fireballs. Better crash survivability. Less cancer. Kerosene jet fuel = wars for oil and the petro-dollar.
@@walterbushell7029 I'm not to sure , it's likely really bad for the the water shed and treatment plants and so on.. I don't recommend it or waterless urinals..
They put rapeseed oil in the peanut butter they sell in jail. I remember thinking that was a very strangely named ingredient in a food sold on canteen in jail.........
Hi we grow rapeseed in Czechia. The pestecides a herbecides that are used are actually very selective in what they kill. It would be a big problem if they would kill bees for example. I also don't think it makes sence to grow rapeseed for fuel, the groud for rapeseed has to be specially prepared so you have to drive across the whole field several times before you get to harvesting. I can't imagine that being very carbon neutral. It just seems like an ekoscheme. The cooking oil is great tho
Most do not understand that pesticides and herbicides are very expensive. Farmers do not use chemicals until they have to and then as little as possible. Farming is a business. Spend too much and next year you are asking the next in line "Do you want frys with that?"
cabbage broccoli and brussels sprouts are all actually the same species of plant as are kolrabi, cauliflower, kale, and collard greens. All of these and more were selectively bred from the wild cabbage plant brassica oleracea
This is absolutely frightening. The business of concentrating a part of any plant, or refining it, is not healthy, no matter what it's for. Using any seed oil in our diet is directly harmful to humans. Now we are going to devote more acreage to feed the fossil fuel industry which has boxed us into a way of life we can't escape. Thinking outside of this box doesn't feed the greed nearly so well.
I’ve farmed for over forty years now, and I have enjoyed the bump in prices due to biofuels, but I still warn people that it’s not wise to tie your food prices to the price of energy. We must be careful.
Great points on the drawbacks for biofuels. Ethanol, for example, drove cost of corn up and availbility as a food down impacting lower income people in Mexico. The best (most ethical) source for biofuel would seem to be used cooking oil. The processing of rapeseed to fuel seems to be pretty energy intensive. I wonder what the energy balance is.
Ethanol produced from lanolin production is much more friendly, growing anything across swathes of land to produce combustion duel will never be effective or friendly. Biodiesel should always be made from waste and bi products
@@nirodper it's a negative energy system when solar panels can produce more energy per area than can photosynthesis and it might be elephant grass is most efficient and seaweeds too .
@@michaelcorbidge7914 solar panels have many problems and are expensive. Elephant grass may produce a lot of biomass, but not oil, turning that cellulose into fuel is not trivial neither free. Seaweed has a lot of problems regarding environmental conditions, algae too. Algae may be great inside a lab or in a interplanetary mission but it just can't compete when you have large amounts of land wherw you can plant crops. I'm not even defending biofuels, just arguing against the dumb notion that growing crops is net energy negative
It’s rather similar with wind turbines… forests, blanket bog etc being developed. Huge subsidies being added to our electricity bills. Too much, too fast. So much for sustainability.
I been saying this forever, it is not wise to use food sources as fuel sources or for other products, we are coming into a stage where food sources are going to be very limited and using food sources for other things rather than food will only make the problem worse.
Thanks for this important reflection. Another bad downside is the Market and Agriculture dominance and manipulation of the company that owns the genetic contrivances and codependent chemicals, who sue organic farmers and other neighbours for merely having wind blown accidental growth of their Frankenstein plants in their fields and market the stuff as “ Feeding the Starving” whilst it’s all about proprietary control and monopoly.
The issue raised by this video is monoculture, which is hardly a new one. The only way to control it is by regulating the planting of crops- at present, most crops. A given plant type- maize, soybeans, wheat, rice, oil palm…or rapeseed, for that matter, tends to be hybridized (bred) until it is more efficient than other types, and it is then planted universally because it out-produces other types. Such is the nature of a market economy, and it has also been well-known for some time how to control it- regulation.
We beekeepers love and hate this plant. We love it because even a single field of this in the flight radius of our hives gives us full honey supers in spring. And we hate it because we can observe how the combination of pesticide exposure and sheer overworking is taking a massive toll on the forager bees. After the rapeseed bloom, hives are often weakened and take a couple of weeks to recover.
I used to see rapeseed fields (small ones, not like these) at the side of the road in some parts of the Baltic states, and i gotta say, they are gorgeous. You never know how yellow nature can be until you see one of those in person!
The world isn't hungry. Localised populations may be hungry, but that's down to local economic or infrastructure issues, usually related to war. Obesity is more of a problem globally than hunger now. Something like 40% of the world's crops are being fed to farm animals!
I feel you hit the topic for just 30 seconds and the rest was an intro. I'd love the 10 min version of the actual topic; the reduction of food crops, biodiversity, and the whole dead zone concept. Hope to see more please!
There's no such thing as "carbon-neutral". When you look into the logistics, there's always a large cost, be it the land that's being replaced with huge fields or the amount of water required to pump to the fields and even the transport afterwards. The only way we'd ever get real carbon neutral would be to take a huge amount of land into space and do all the growing off planet.
@@woodspirit98 A. I didn't say carbon was pollution, I said "carbon-neutral", as in a pollution free, completely "green", doesn't exist. There's always a cost. Transporting all the food, displacing all the land for growing or raising animals, There's always going to be pollution. B. No, if you were paying attention I was talking about the only way to get true "carbon neutral" food is to do the entire pricess OFF PLANET (see that? That's what I said in the initial post, off planet as if OFF EARTH) so all the pollution is created there and not here, and then drop it to earth.
@@Izzmonster "Carbon neutral" means not contributing to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you cut out fossil fuel use from all industries, you achieve carbon neutrality, irrespective of other pollution, irrespective of water use. You can't transport "pollution" to another planet. Mainly because this is the only habitable planet we've got. Even if we had two, what would be the point in trashing the other one? Even ignoring the cost of transporting material between the two (which I can't see how we can do without burning a lot of rocket fuel in the atmosphere of THIS planet). Inane!
@@Mechness I never said anything about other planets. I said we need to do it off-planet. The point I'm making is that there are no "carbon neutral" industries and afaik there can't be because once it gets popular enough the requirements to get the product to everyone cause the same amount of pollution. *For example:* Electric cars are not carbon neutral. The batteries and basically all the electronics are mined out of the earth using... wait for it.... *GIANT MINING MACHINES*. If electric cars became the standard and everyone on the planet drove them they'd need to ramp up production causing WAY MORE carbon pollution. Meaning the pollution not caused by the cars is being made up for by their own production.
Carbon neutral? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Once you ignore the fuel & oils used in the tractors used to plow, harvest, and in the trucks that transport, the utilities (energy) used to process it into biodiesel then transport again to storage facility before shipping to retail outlets....🙄
true basic rules of science energy just transfers from one thing to another when you burn anything it creates heat that is lost in the atmosphere and the chemically reactions create pollution, not really Neutral
You're absolutely right about the potential of this to be a distraction along a path to a better carbon-reduced future, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at it as at least a potential stepping stone and not an end of the line. One other key factor to think about is the amount of hydrocarbon-derived fertilizer (Haber-Bosch Ammonia fixing) that is required for crops like this, corn ethanol, etc where does the line really get drawn for an actual improvement.
I love your thought process. All to often these days, people will focus on one good part, but don't consider the implication beyond their own life. People hear plant and assume that it is good all around, but then forget the animals and plants that can no longer live there. So thank you!!!
My Great Grandfather used this in all his foods he lived to 97 and had three different wives and 19 children. I starting to think he was on to something. 😆 🤣 lol .
Ok, Rape is not good where food crops can be grown and earns a living for the grower. However, in cold areas where most food crops don't thrive, like Sweden, rape crops aren't replacing food crops. Rape is replacing some forgage crops and small grain crops mostly used to feed livestock. Is it worse to produce a fuel crop than feed for livestock?
Many years ago the town of Tisdale in Saskatchewan, had a big sign at the entrance to the town announcing that they were the "Land of Rape and Honey" This due to the large planted area of rape seed and the honey produced from the rape by bees. Of course the slogan was somewhat tongue in cheek as the sexual innuendo is quite obvious. Eventually pressure was brought to bear on the town and the slogan was removed but I can't tell you what the new one is. Not because it is offensive or anything but because it is so inoffensive that nobody remembers it!
I think we have to understand that’s there isn’t just one solution to replace fossil fuels, but many different ones. I think biofuels or hydrogen is great where weight is a concern, like in airplanes. They’re good for short refueling times. Electrical vehicles are good for short commutes. And so on. Until we get a fast chargeable, light battery that can store lots of energy and doesn’t contain any rare earth minerals, we have to use what technology that exist today.
This was done 20 years ago here in New Zealand, farmers used to grow some of their own fuel from Rapeseed till it became uneconomical. The factory has since started producing cooking oils. There's always been a lot of Rapeseed grown in my local area.
Can anybody explain to me why "not as sexy as you think" is an appropriate caption after rapeseed? Are you insinuating rape is sexy? Am I missing something?
In WWII rapeseed oil was used as a lubricant for naval machinery and even as a cleaning solution for weapons. Apparently it was a great oil for steam engines even earlier because it didn’t stick as much as other lubricants when it got hot.
Plant that Jonas is showing at 1:19 is most likely Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis) not Brassica napus. Closely related but different genus of Brassicaceae.
Ha Ha Ha, Bought oil stocks last year because it would never be used again,LOL,LOL,LOL, making obscene money because you failed to remember Oil Co's will control all energy
Question: how many acres or hectares of rapeseed does it take to make enough fuel to fly a jet across the Atlantic?
Answer: You don't want to know.
Update: Using information gathered on a web search, and therefore may or may not be correct, here goes: A Boeing 777 burns a little over 2200 gallons per hour, so a 6 hour flight uses about 13,400 gallons of jet fuel. Rapeseed does an average of 150 gallons per acre. Factoring conversion losses of raw oil to biodiesel at about 65%, it would take 137 acres /55 hectares of rapeseed to fuel the plane from DC to London. Less than I thought, but still a lot for a one-way trip.
It's actually pretty bad because you can only get one, or maybe two crop yields a year. How many trips will that plane make in a year? How about all planes? There is not enough land on earth to fuel them all.
At 350 passengers, that would "only" be 0.391 acres / .094 hectares per passenger. That sounds small, right?
I once did a study for the most efficient means of travel. That turned out to be a bicycle, better than walking. For long distances, the airplane handily beats mileage of most cars because of the number of passengers.
Holy shit, I live on 22 Hectares man. 22 Hectares is a lot of land, and this takes 2.5 times that to power one fairly efficient large long-range jet. On top of that, you didn't consider that biodiesel isn't what's put into the plane, it has to get refined until it is Jet-A1 Kerosene-grade biodiesel, and even then ends up being less efficient than drill oil kerosene. I just think that proves how unsustainable biodiesel is
@@microdesigns2000 Yeah but a hectare is a lot of land dude. Like, a LOT of land. My house yard with a moderate-sized family home and four large farm sheds (barn-equivalent in size) doesn't even cover a hectare, and I could live my entire life in this yard without worry. It's just not sustainable.
I will grant it's far better for the environment than petrochemical processing, but that's... not hard? Oil is disgusting and so unbelievably pollutive to the point the majority of global pollution comes back to 30 petrochemical-burning companies.
Really, the concept of burning products for transport is just unsustainable. Atleast biodiesel makes it renewable, but doesn't solve the sustainability problem.
Planes are efficient for long-range, high capacity travel, but I think this just proves that land-based travel needs to be superceded by electric high-speed rail. Imagine if all those 55 hectares were covered in solar panels or wind farms. You could power a moderate-sized city with that resource, or even an entire high-speed rail line.
Infrastructure of that degree is just innately better. It's a long-term solution, whereas canola farming for biodiesel prolongs our reliance on carbon-burning transport. The "short-term costs" argument doesn't hold up when you consider the purpose of infrastructure is to BE long-term. It's an investment in the future private companies and world governments need to stop being too lazy or greedy to invest in
Informative
This is a good reason why I like the idea of algae biofuel.
-They can grow a lot more of it in a lot less space.
-They can cap the polution from power companies to use as food to grow the algae in place of fertilizers.
-They don't need to use pesticides
-They byproducts of algae biofuel can be used as animal feed, freeing up more acreage of monoculture farmlands.
-They can make more than just biodiesel, they can make fuel to use in all engines currently in production, plus jet fuel too...
Plus there are some cases where theres an over abundance of algae and it could actually help some ecosystems to clear up some of it! I think it could also help to try and find a way to use food wastes as biofuel, we waste a lot of food every day so we could try to use some of that waste rather than doing nothing with it. Theres a lot of waste we produce and we just kinda,,, dump it in places which can really devastate some ecosystems. Like we can reuse a lot of that waste, even if its not recyclable. You can repurpose glass food jars into a myriad of light fixtures and you can use them to store other foods too. You can use food waste to make fertilizer for your garden. You can use cardboard boxes to organize your belongings and send gifts. You can use a shattered plate as mosaic tiles or jewelry. You can take practically anything in your trash and use it again, and even if you cant make it into something that would serve a purpose in your home or be "useful" you can make decorations, accessories, and various other cosmetic items and keep them, or give as a gift!! I just realized i went on a mini tangent there but oh well lol.
Why it's not commercially successful
@@Realatmx It takes some time for ideas to catch on. I just heard an interview recently with a man named Dan Egan who was planning how to compost biodegradable food waste in New York State on a large scale. This would be a way to capture methane, one of the (some say the) major greenhouse gases, take compostable elements out of the waste stream, and provide soil enrichments, as has been suggested. Here's hoping.
@@Realatmx
🤔_Good_ question, eh?
🤨After all-haven’t the “promises” of algae been touted for *years* now?…
🤔Incidentally-have been curious about the possibility[?] of marrying algal biofuel production with nuclear plants.
🤔By any chance-anyone know if anything in this direction has been attempted?…
In addition to what you've said, basing a significant portion of our energy supply on a monoculture like this is really risky. A pest or infection could decimate the fuel supply.
Don't forget crop sabotage done by agents or terrorists funded by oil billionaires that probably have a huge problem with biofuel crops...
look into crop protection, and the damage done by the insane use of all kinds of chemicals.. monocropping like this is murder... sad but true.
Or a climate change, or a chemical supply chain shortage, or
Do you realize how many canola fields are already fully established and operating for decades?
@@robochelle To measure by decades is embarrassingly shortsighted. And speaks for itself in terms of its orientation and system of values.
Mono cropping anything, for any reason, is always problematic in some way or another.
There would be little need for mono cropping if the gov wasn't so opposed to people being self sustaining.
Just like the cheese harvesting on the moon o _ o?
Monocropping is a sure sign that something is wrong.
@@ximono nonsense
@@victorhopper6774 OK then.
Excellent video, I looked into growing rapeseed years ago and quickly learned that it made a loss per field. This was due to the use (I believe 7 different types) of pesticide or herbicide. The only way you were able to make money on this was through subsidies. Our governments basically sponsor the large chemical companies this way.
Europe does subsidies most of it's fields tho.
@@herlescraft Sounds sustainable.
"My power grows" ~Monsanto
Yeah right Sam. The entire Australian three million tons of canola is produced, cheaper than the rest of the world, with no subsidies. I don't think you did your sums very well.
@@herlescraft That is untrue. EU does subsides for farmes only to not farm. There is no subsidies form specific product farming.
Looking at farming subsideis in euorope, most of them goes to restore farmland, not to use it
Hi there, greeting from Czechia here. We are mostly against this scale of rapeseed in this country. Because it's killing biodiversity, the number of bugs, butterflies, and so on anywhere near this yellow field of raped nature is basically nonexistent, thanks to the chemicals. There are two main reasons why we have so much of it here.
1. EU incentivized mixing biofuel into diesel fuel back in the day, not so much these days.
2. We have a law of mandatory biofuel mixing. And here is the catch, before the bill was passed back then one, of the most prominent lobbyist Andrej Babiš (who is the biggest agricultural/chemical oligarch) was lobbying really hard for this bill to be passed. He even built one of the biggest biofuel factories in our country right before that. Later on, he went into politics with his ANO "movement", then became a finance minister and after that, he threw his coalition partner under the bus (he started a smear campaign against them based on the non-existent cause). Then he won elections and became Prime minister, absurd i know.
After he became Prime minister he immediately started to plant his henchmen into the state institutions. He put his loyal rectal alpinists into the Ministry of finance, Ministry of agriculture, Ministry of local development, Ministry of ecology, ministry of justice so there was basically no chance of change. Luckily we booted him out in the latest elections, but he is now a presidential candidate, he is doing it just because he wants lifetime immunity. PS: His company is delivering almost 87% of all biofuel to the state company Čepro without tender, which is the main distributor of the fuel in our country. He also owns some farms which grow rapeseed, but it's not so much. But yes, farmers are keener to grow rapeseed because of the high subsidies compared to other crops, which is never good.
www.e15.cz/byznys/prumysl-a-energetika/babis-slavi-uspechy-s-bionaftou-vyroba-je-na-novem-rekordu-1167001
Not only that, he went into the fury blabbering where he was saying that butterflies and bees love the rapeseed when some investigative reporters were printing stories about beekeepers complaining about dying bees near the rapeseed fields, because of the amount of the chemicals they bring back to the beehives which also inhibits their immune system. Not to mention wild bees.
www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/vcely-repku-rady-rekl-babis-jenze-ji-nesmi-byt-moc-ty-divoke-muze-dokonce-dohnat-ke-smrti-hladem-73603
He is just not only an agriculture/chemical oligarch, he also owns some media, many food industry "giants" and so on. His start and how he became so wealthy is more like from godfather playbook than good samaritan. I wish more people and media were into him, he should be in the prison, not on the way to becoming president.
To be honest, this video is kind of flat and shallow(for me), which you noted in the video description, it would deserve more digging, but that's only thanks to the fact that i have more direct info about the situation, and there is basically no international info. Anyway, i am glad that you did this video, which is highlighting one of the issues of rapeseed and its chemicals.
Another issue is the monoculture and the scale of the fields. We are doing it really bad here, the biodiversity here is lackluster here, thanks to the communist way of agriculture and abolishment of small farmers. Just look at google maps, satellite view, and compare the sizes of fields and the diversity between Czechia and let's say Austria, the visual difference is so stark.
I am sorry that i can't provide any source in English. But i hope that you read this.
Thanks, Martin
Thanks for this note Martin. Very interesting info. I started making this video just to highlight an interesting plant. It got deep very quick. I actually cut a big section talking about exactly what you discuss. It felt like a tangent. I’m glad you put it in the comments.
@@UntamedScience Not a tangent. In the USA, look to how Monsanto(Bayer) monopolizes. Industrial Agriculture is NOT the friend of Nature or the Common Man!
interesting how you brought political ideologies into the picture and how that changes how a country farms the land
@@michealmclaughlin429 Well when political ideologies make the regulations for the countries, it changes the behavior inside it even when it's not "forced".
Rapeseed was barely grown here, before WW2 and during that time. After WW2 and during the whole socialist era it went from 0,4 to 3,1 % of the whole sown area.
Now rapeseed takes about 13-16 % of the sown area in this country.
@@UntamedScienceLet's examine how you got here, on a plane and by a car.
Your clothes including your puffy jacket were made using oils, whether it's from a plant or so called fossil fuels.
Fun fact about so called fossil fuels, no fossil has been found deeper than 16,000 feet and yet oils that are called fossil come from wells twice as deep.
You and virtually everything living on earth is a carbon life form. Yet depopulationists like yourself want to reduce carbon. Reduce Life.
Hypocrite is too easy of a word for your types.
While I'm no fan of big AG, and spraying of herbicides or pesticides is abhorrent in my opinion, at least I'm not a Hypocrite.
Growing food and oils that allow one to use while farming with diesel run machines, would seem ideal.
I guess the WEF likes your types, doing their work for them.
Nuremberg 2.0 is long overdue.
When you factor in all the costs, plowing planting, fertilizing, harvesting and processing, you have to ask.
Is it a caloric surplus? Does the harvested energy exceed the energy spent? If not then you are using fossil at a greater rate than before.
That would be true if it weren’t offset by the fact that it’s a carbon sequestrating plant.
@@allegorx58 what does that have to do with caloric surplus?
work it out. About a ton of yield seed per acre, say two ton per ha. About 320 kg of oil per ton, minus say ten percent filtering. Call it 600 Kg/ha. It takes about six litres per ha for no-till sowing and a little less for stripping, so say 12 litres of diesel equivalent per ha. It would hardly be a fuel if it took more energy to produce that it embodies. The question is the efficiency of land use. This boils down to the efficiency of the photosynthesis in the plant.
@@allegorx58 sequesters carbon dioxide only to give it all off again as it's harvested (yes, dead things will begin to emit carbon dioxide if they aren't sealed under pressure). Andy's point still holds. You also didn't account for transportation emissions, emissions generated in processing, emissions for packaging and preservation...
The efficiency of canola as jet fuel is nothing to write home about, and unless you plant rapeseed with the sole purpose of being succeeded by other crops / a permaculture system that continues that ongoing trend of nitrogen and carbon fixation, the same principle will be applied to other "carbon-sequestering" crops; the crops must be allowed to be put into the ground in the long term to sequester the carbon inside, not processed to high hell to turn into other products.
@@goatvision6908 You also forgot fertilizer and pest control, and the energy it takes to produce and apply them. Just because something may take a lot of energy to convert into a fuel, it doesn't make it not a fuel...
I don't trust anything the "green energy" lobby has to say as most of it is bullshit.
"Biomass fuel"?? That's just grinding up trees and burning them. Guess who's behind that??? Big lumber companies.
Windmills??? Not a thing that's "carbon neutral" about them. They require a BUNCH of fossil fuels to make and install... Same with solar panels. They do have their applications, but they are not the be all, end all.
I grow Canola as a part of my rotation crops. The fast and dense growth suppresses weeds. They are Heavy Feeders and therefore, they are the follow crop after legumes ( Heavy Givers). Root crops & Low Nitrogen Feeders are planted after HF crop. (HG > HF> LNF> Repeat ).
As a small organic homesteader, I have proven that we can produce food/feed and fuel/materials without destroying the environment. Wildlife and the messed-up climate is the biggest challenge I face.
If 3 major monoculture farmers get together. They can do the rotation cropping using their very expensive specialized equipment. The need for fertilizer is greatly reduced or unneeded. The pesticides and herbicides are also reduced by breaks in crop cycles.
You can't grow canola. You grew RAPEseed
@@johnrice1943 same plant
@@johnrice1943 Canola is the common name given to the specific cultivar of Brassica napus used for oil consumption yah goober
That's impressive. I have some small clue as to how much work that is. Are you making money doing this?
@@johnrice1943 I got my original organic seeds before Monsanto's attack on the variety of rapeseed.
Thirty years ago I sold rapeseed oil as synthetic racing oil. I was shocked when it turned up on grocery shelves as cooking oil.
Yeah and people think it's "healthier" than olive. It's suggested to use in so many recipes and I hate it, I wish people learned about the history of the plant. It's incredibly toxic.
Funny how the internet suppresses the actual truth and history...as rapeseed was originally intended to run farm equipment...but the Rockefeller's had different design$. It's also funny what was old is all of a sudden new again after a generation cycle...wow! It's almost like there is some kind of secret agenda operating in the back ground?
Anyone know how bad this is for gumming diesel injectors, because the mega yacht manufactures and pushing this now too?
@@jumpyfox1 Sad that 80 percent of the population doesn't question so called "authority" (Dr. Milgram)...and ignore the pitfalls of history eh?
Probably one of the most unfortunate names on the planet.
Exactly like you said. How many times have serfs starved to feed an army's horses? Great video. Good to see a sensible approach, thanks
Guess they should have ate the horses.....or the army I guess
5:20 Thanks for the “obvious points”. More is needed in this world.
@@quoththeraven3985 eat the king who chose his throne over feeding his people.
Screw the Bugs, Eat the Rich!
Then maybe we should be asking who controls our debt based usurious monetary system.
As a beekeeper....I see a yellow death zone of industrial oil production
it wouldn't surprise me if the bee decline was organized by the people trying to destroy our country right now. Hurt the bees, hurt the people.
I've been watching your channel for some time now and wanted to let you know, as a 54 year old, you are the best science teacher I have ever had. I've been working in the wildlife habitat field for the past 31 years and look forward to your lessons. Thank you and your family for all that you do.
Thank you Robert. That’s a wonderful thing to hear on a Monday Morning. Much appreciated.
This is exactly the problem with ethanol as a fuel in the US.
Those yellow fields are one of the biggest ecological catastrophes that EU money brought to Czech Republic. This flower... is problematic. It requires too much pesticides and insecticides - to the point that there is no longer any source of underground water free of those chemicals. Then there is the soil erosion... How something that literally ruins the ecosystem can be labelled green is beyond me.
Another controversial side of this business would be: the excess of that oil is making it the primary choice in the food industry. Don't take me wrong - the selective breeding was successful enough that people no longer directly die due to the heart failures, but there is still a group of people that upon consummation gets digestive issues/rashes. And it is not easy to avoid this contaminant as it is added to everything from bread to chocolate.
Heart disease is increased as a result of consumption of this oil which causes inflammation at insane levels in the arteries which then have to be plugged with cholesterol to prevent complete disintegration.
There has been no reduction over the past 30 or 40 years in heart disease. In fact it has increased massively along with the rates of cancer.
The rancidity of this oil is intrinsic as soon as you buy it.
It must be bleached and deodorised using toxic chemicals and then coloured to hide its true disgusting nature.
@@randomroses1494 For the sake of making myself clear I will be the devil's advocate now: the rapeseed oil contains eruk acid. A long time ago it was in such quantities that it caused your heart grow in volume over the years, eventually leading to death.
The selective breeding of this flower managed to decrease the quantity of eruk acid - to the point that it no longer causes this exact issue. That is a plus point for the science.
The debate about how wise it is to use industry solvents in food industry, or if processed foods, fats/oils/carbohydrates/whatever are actually healthy is another topic I was not trying to mention.
But you are right that cancer and heart diseases are on the rise over past decades and I would agree that the changes in the diet might be the leading cause.
Still, I was talking more about this exact plant and its evolutionary focus on killing mammals.
I love the environment,but vegetable oils should be called seed oils and people should look into how the oil is extracted with the use of solvents,very un- healthy and also using seed oils to produce biofuels takes up land that could be used for food production,which causes starvation, somethings to think about.
Spectrum advertises their canola oil as "cold pressed."
I want to be able to press sunflower oil.
@@nunyabiznes33 The Indians used sunflower oil. We can be sure they didn't use solvents. I bet pounding fresh hulled seeds with a mortar and pestle would yield oil. Makes me curious to try it.
@@grovermartin6874 I better get rich and buy land to grow sunflowers lol. The only oil I can make is coconut (when it's not expensive).
Anything other than cold pressed oil should be outlawed for human consumption. Biofuels are a scam to create food poverty.
What struck me about your film was I didn't see any birds or flying insects above those fields of yellow. Out on pastures of grazing animals the sky is alive with them. Smart farmers provide tree houses for the various swallows as well as moving their herds and flocks in short rotation to allow the grasses to grow .Some trees are allowed to grow in the pastures, if not to just provide shade for the animals and the hills that can't be cultivated must have have forest which grow to provide homes to the wildlife as well as to hold water and build a store of carbon as well. Growing a crop like this is akin to mining the land. Once the nutrients and minerals are depleted it must be restored by grazing animals. Chemical fertilizers,herbicides,insecticides will destroy the life of the soil and everything that relies on that soil.
He literally had close-ups of bees going into the flowers are you inept?
@@chrismread as a beekeeper a few struggling bees in a field is not a healthy sight, the air should be alive with many bugs, especially many species of bees, not a few or a closeup of just one. I agree with Paul.....
I have seen bees hard at work, even from miles away which is how far they will travel for good sources of pollen and nectar. This field is dead with activity, even for this time of the year.
Bees this time of the year are desperate for honey reserves before the dearth and will be busy working to get what they can, that one bee was a little sluggish.
Also they use poisons to protect the plants, but it passes onto the bugs and then the birds. that is why their are few if none. Even herbicides will kill bees, it confuses them and they get lost and won't come back to the hive. This monoculture is killing so much, diets of insects and animals shouldn't be of one thing, you get deficiencies and other issues from eating too much of one thing.
They’re not full of wildlife. That’s very true!
The next door neighbor's wind farm killed all the birds
@@davidkato6407 Who cares about the birds and the bees when the worlds about to self detonate lol!
Please, also cover the fake advertising around Avocado's! HEAVILY subsidised by the EU, but because its one of the most water hungry things to grow lots of droughts in Spain and Portugal can be attributed to farmers solely growing Avocado's JUST to rake in the subsidies.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a farmer some 40 years ago. He told me he was not growing potatoes this year. He had changed to not growing tomatoes because the government paid more to not grow tomatoes.
"name a seed after your hobby"
me:
FBI wants to know your location
So you like fun is see.
Wanking
I randomly stumbled upon this channel because of the pokeweed video. I'm glad I found this video as well. It's sensible, and it talks about things that often get overlooked. Thank you.
Welcome aboard! Thanks for the comment.
Same I had been researching pokeweed and his video popped up, now I'm binge watching ☺️ and I'm very glad to have found this channel
@@samanthaivyleigh great to have you here Samantha
I like that you try to sound somewhat neutral about this, "it's great but no so much cuz...". The fact that you leave out the most important factor, the solution to that ever present "but", is the reason there is a, but, in the first place. There is no solution. If "you're" not gonna stop flying to your next destination, neither is anyone else.
I'm a biodynamic farmer who has used rapeseed as a cover crop amoungst others. In the fall, after the first frost, the rapeseed plant's flavor profile becomes sweeter and the deer will consume it's leaves. This is when I harvest the leaves. They are great sautéd in butter, olive oil and garlic. It's amazing and makes me feel great. This awesome plant has been demonized because of its processed seed oils. I'm pretty certain erucic acid is only problematic if you eat a bunch of the seeds or consume the oil. Does anyone know if it's present in the leaves?
You forget. Only the seed is harvested. There is carbon in the roots, leaves and stems. If a farmer uses soil building techniques, most of it will stay sequestered for years in the soil.
I am honestly surprised RUclips didn't censor this video for repeatedly using that word.
I’m from Colorado, where there is so much barren land. I haven’t been there in decades but there USED to be irrigation canals so farmers could grow crops. I’ve heard most of these have been closed. But there is so much barren land and there are water tables underground, they just tend to be running through iron filled soil and the water comes out orange. It would be the perfect place for rapeseed without the need to disturb other areas. I’m sure there are a lot of places like that on the globe. But they aren’t easy or convenient enough for the powers that be.
But it is nasty and so much grown for little benefit.so many chemicals that poison. Chemical companies. Not environmental, don’t disappear out of the soil. Other things then grow stunted. Engineered crops that resist herbicide, soaks it up but lives…you eat it. Sunflowers grown and eaten for centuries……last century they started spraying with defoliant before harvest. Same as cotton, the seed being used for oil and fed to the beef we eat. Good practice but not with the poison. Someone mentioned hydro, there are a lot of places where there is not enough water.
I am so glad you put out this video. While hearing many positives, I still had a lot of pretty hefty concerns about this and I wish more people were aware of how many resources and overall environmental risk lies in this kind of production. Anyways great video as always, and what a beautiful view that was!
Haha. So funny. My band from 15-20 years ago was called RAPESEED. Awesome plant but the name was controversial, so we used it for shock value. Good to see it hasn't lost its title.
Thanks Rob and Jonas! Malia (daughter) took me to Whitewater Center yesterday and she pointed out your house as we drove past. I saw you working on your front lawn! I had to catch a plane to Utah so couldn't stop and say hi. Take care and keep up the good work!!
It's too bad hemp farming has so many ridiculous regulations, especially in the states. Hemp is a great seed crop plus it has lots of fiber. And if cannibis was legal federally all the left over biomass could be used for biofuel or fiber or whatever. It's probably better than rapeseed in every way.
Hemp oil only gives 50-70gallons per Acer, that is even less than the 100 for rape seed, and way less than 500 for swich gras.
As much as it would be nice if cannabis solved every problem in the world, that's not much more realistic than the panic about the plant. Hemp is a good fiber, but it's not the only good fiber. Cannabis is one of the best drugs, but it's not harmless. It's not a panacea.
@@keithklassen5320 I was curius a while back and read several articles on renewable fuel and cannabis oil was nowhere in them, was that a conspiracy to scilence the excelent canabis oil?
No it turned out that the yeald from cannabis oil was simply so low, they didn´t even consider putting it in the chart. It simply was not a competitor. This is similar to Soy oil that is really popular with some people.
(gallons per acer)
Cababis: 50-70
Soyoil:59
Rapeseed: 110
Castor: 140
Jatporha: 170
Palm Oil: 500
Algea: 5000 (yes, thousand)
Firstly what say about palm oil is one of those "its really complicated, so we simple it down to something that is not remotely true"
Firstly the claim that Palm Oil can only be grewn in the rain-forest is totally false. There is Palm oil grewn in the German Alps, its not even close to the rain-forest.
If we look at the countries that is making palm oil in high volum they all have two things in common...Low pay and reasonable infrastructure.
Continue:
The drawback with oil palm is that its need very much manual labor. Its really hard to make it industrialized. But it probobly will be at one point. Then we see the Rapeseed field of Europe replaced with palm oil fields. (Yes, they grew just fine in Europe despite popular belief, at least in Germany, maybe not in Sweden).
The cost of vegetable oil is really mostly limited by field cost, but also to a lesser degree machine cost.
For Rapeseed the farmer have to go 7-8 passes over the field to get one harwest. (powing, harwing, sowing, herebecide (x8) fertelizer, harwestnig). For palm oil the farmer goes 3 passes (herbeside, fertlizer, harwesting). Its less than half the machine cost and 5 times the yeald.
Rapeseed oil currently have a consumer level price of just under €2/liter, that is a bit more than diesel, and that is what it always will be because the main cost of making rapeseed oil is diesel.
If ever palm oil would be machine harwestable the cost of it would be about 50 eurocent per liter, way cheaper than diesel in europe.
That is why there is so much bad press about palm oil, its all from the fossil fuel compaines, don´t get fooled.
"Rapeseed, it's not what you think"
*shows a thumbnail of a naked woman*
something else worth mentioning is they terminate the crop with Roundup to get an even ripening, they also do this with other crops like wheat.
Mono cropping of anything is not a solution. The modern uses of fertilizer, herbacide and insecticide are a environmental disaster.
In Australia, it's become an invasive species. We call it "wild canola" and it acetifies a lot of our land making it unliveable for native plants. Being a brassica plant just like cabbage or lettuce or mustard, it's capable of cross-breeding with these plants which taints crop yields - further hampered by its innate resistance to biocides that would normally clear away other weeds. On my property, it's starting to eat out our fence lines, which is killing our blackberry bushes. It's frustrating, but we've gotten lucky as far as other farmers in the area go.
Thanks. Valuable information.
Certain organic sprays will kill it. A mix of diluted epsomsalt with vinegar and dishsoap and water. Spray liberally on plants. They will die and you will get your land back.
@@samueladams1775 Kills the plant, soil is ruined by the canola anyway and it regrows later. Is better than most herbicides that ruin your land even worse, but once your soil's acetified it's ruined, and only a couple species grow on it inc. canola
@@samueladams1775I do appreciate the advice tho ty mate :)
@@samueladams1775 Free range cattle are really the best solution to deal with acetified land, bc they turn the soil. But they also carry plant material with them that canola will inevitably grow from and acetify, which just spreads it further
Love rapeseed. I used that to fry my food. Well, used too but taking a year off Fried food and a bit air fry.
It's also called rapeseed cause it is extremely invasive, and nearly impossible to be rid of once you start growing it. This is why I use olive and avocado oils, besides those being better than canola anyway.
still canola is easyer to farm compared to those two, for industrial applications it does seem like the better alternative
ayo wheres consentseed
@@tonkman4429 love juice of the Testiculars !
Canola oil gets much hotter and fries things better. Beef tallow is even better but that is rarely used anymore here in USA.
@@SunriseLAW
I use avacado oil, it has a smoke point of like 500°
Its a plant that needs further research for biofuel eg (1)Can you develop a variety that use less nitrogen while at the same time increasing the yield.(2) Oil seed rape is a good rotational crop improving the yield of other cereals by 15% the following year REF. Teagas Ireland (3) Better yields can be achieved wit bees with a 35% improvement Ref Teagas Irl (4) The straw can be used to make pellets which can be burnt , improving the energy input to output ratio.(5) Once the oil is squished out the remaining cake can be used as a n animal feed.(6)The yields of nectar and pollen are very high from this plant producing a honey that can be creamed .So while the oil will be used for for biodiesel and the straw for combustion the remainder will enter the food chain. A holistic approach is what is needed clearly.
I'm a new follower since the amanita muscaria video. I am a PhD in Organic BioChemisrty. I totally love the way you teach these videos. Prononciation a bit American, but that's easily forgiven ❣️
😎
U best be forgiving 'Mericans.
In Spain there was a huge controversy with canola oil. Food grade canola oil was cut with unsafe mechanics oil that killed a lot of people. Because of that canola oil isn't found anywere anymore. If it's not olive oil, it's sunflower seed oil.
Dang, this is an eye opener. Another thing that's too good to be true. Always great content on this channel.
Usually rape opens a different part.
Canola and rape seed provide an abundant supply of pollen with an ideal mix of amino acids, protein and fats for bees. The plentiful nectar has a good sugar profile for honey production. These lands are not ever planned for going back to wild life habitat and we need healthy bee populations to pollinate many of our food crops.
If you care about the environment, you must pick one of three alternatives:
1. Keep burning fossil fuels and hope for the best.
2. Nuclear.
3. Starve in the dark, but still doing #1 behind a curtain.
Yup. But nuclear power isn’t a thing that’s “in fashion” currently.
@@joevaghn457 So there's burning as usual, starving in the dark, or being unfashionable.
As a kid growing up in the Palouse in Washington/Idaho, I remember the fields of canola flowers in the spring and how they were almost fluorescent. Very pretty I have to say.
Food to fuel...Sell that to millions who can't get or afford enough food daily
caused by overbreeding humans, usually by humans that can;t even feed their own dumb asses.
Growing fuel is probably the dumbest and most destructive thing we are doing to combat climate change. THANK you for pointing this out.
USA's ethanol program contributed to starvation in food-marginal populations. Could as well burn starving people for heat.
The best thing to do to combat climate change is to have more natural environments, so that less oxygen is being lost to CO2. I really think a perspective change from less carbon to more oxygen would solve a huge chunk of our problems.
But I do agree. I don’t see growing fuel as an answer, even though it seems pretty neat.
When the road was being built through the Amazon jungle there was a vine which when hacked open with a machete released a fuel that could be used as diesel. I actually saw truck drivers whacking the Vine with her machetes and this liquid GUSHED OUT LIKE WATER AND HE WAS FEELING FIVE GALLON CANS IN NO TIME. Whatever happened to this Vine or did it only grow in the Amazon???
Oil companies probably destroyed every plant or tree that produces that vine.
sure you "saw it"
Lots of people cook with rapeseed oil because it has a high smoke point
I've worked with this crop in Oklahoma since 2003. I've seen many benefits with it here. Even though it's still monoculture, it gives continuous wheat producers here something to rotate with. I disagree about a "ton" of pesticides are used on the crop. Farmers only use herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides if they absolutely have to because it costs too much. We grow winter canola here. During the fall and winter, I often see deer and even waterfowl graze on the leaves. Which canola does make great high protein forage, like most Brassicas. I've never been in a field during bloom that wasn't buzzing with bees. Plenty of birds and other small wildlife too. The bees do great with it. We've even had hives brought in from California because they recover soo well with it and hive populations increase. Most insecticides options we have contain strick label requirements about not spraying during bloom to prevent pollinator harm. In our wheat and canola rotations we're able to use sustainable farming practices like no-till at greater success than continuous wheat. As far as the energy balance, there's a lot on carbon sequestered in the soil due to its deep robust taproot. Only removing the seed at harvest leaves all the plant biomass in the field. Another great use of the seed material after the oil is extracted is livestock feed. So more is being produced than just cooking oil or biofuel. Great video, just thought I'd add some of my own thoughts.
Agreed. Especially the part about no-till. People make crop protection out to be the devil, when there is so much more to it. Here in germany people call for more Bio-Cultivation, but they have no clue how destructive mechanically working the soil is. It's so unfortunate that no-till hasnt caught on here yet.
I really love how adaptable English is and how easily new words can be formed.
it's surprising how many youtube channels promote these sorts of projects (including hydrogen as a fuel alternative) despite the clear drawbacks. kudos to you for pointing out that they're likely a distraction from stabilizing the climate and preserving biodiversity
Sounds like an argument against flying in jet airliners. Where are the solar airships? Biodiesel jet fuel = no 9/!! fireballs. Better crash survivability. Less cancer.
Kerosene jet fuel = wars for oil and the petro-dollar.
What an interesting moniker for a plant.
I use rapeseed oil in the waterless urinals.
It keeps the oder down for about 4 weeks.
Best use. Not good for food, because to much omega 6.
@@walterbushell7029 I'm not to sure , it's likely really bad for the the water shed and treatment plants and so on..
I don't recommend it or waterless urinals..
They put rapeseed oil in the peanut butter they sell in jail. I remember thinking that was a very strangely named ingredient in a food sold on canteen in jail.........
Hi we grow rapeseed in Czechia. The pestecides a herbecides that are used are actually very selective in what they kill. It would be a big problem if they would kill bees for example. I also don't think it makes sence to grow rapeseed for fuel, the groud for rapeseed has to be specially prepared so you have to drive across the whole field several times before you get to harvesting. I can't imagine that being very carbon neutral. It just seems like an ekoscheme. The cooking oil is great tho
Most do not understand that pesticides and herbicides are very expensive. Farmers do not use chemicals until they have to and then as little as possible. Farming is a business. Spend too much and next year you are asking the next in line "Do you want frys with that?"
cabbage broccoli and brussels sprouts are all actually the same species of plant as are kolrabi, cauliflower, kale, and collard greens. All of these and more were selectively bred from the wild cabbage plant brassica oleracea
This is absolutely frightening. The business of concentrating a part of any plant, or refining it, is not healthy, no matter what it's for. Using any seed oil in our diet is directly harmful to humans. Now we are going to devote more acreage to feed the fossil fuel industry which has boxed us into a way of life we can't escape. Thinking outside of this box doesn't feed the greed nearly so well.
I’ve farmed for over forty years now, and I have enjoyed the bump in prices due to biofuels, but I still warn people that it’s not wise to tie your food prices to the price of energy. We must be careful.
Great points on the drawbacks for biofuels. Ethanol, for example, drove cost of corn up and availbility as a food down impacting lower income people in Mexico.
The best (most ethical) source for biofuel would seem to be used cooking oil.
The processing of rapeseed to fuel seems to be pretty energy intensive. I wonder what the energy balance is.
It ends up being a negative energy system.
Ethanol produced from lanolin production is much more friendly, growing anything across swathes of land to produce combustion duel will never be effective or friendly. Biodiesel should always be made from waste and bi products
@@michaelcorbidge7914 that's absolute bullshit, you have no idea what you are talking about. Rapeseed produces 1000-1500 L of oil per hectare
@@nirodper it's a negative energy system when solar panels can produce more energy per area than can photosynthesis and it might be elephant grass is most efficient and seaweeds too .
@@michaelcorbidge7914 solar panels have many problems and are expensive. Elephant grass may produce a lot of biomass, but not oil, turning that cellulose into fuel is not trivial neither free. Seaweed has a lot of problems regarding environmental conditions, algae too. Algae may be great inside a lab or in a interplanetary mission but it just can't compete when you have large amounts of land wherw you can plant crops.
I'm not even defending biofuels, just arguing against the dumb notion that growing crops is net energy negative
A much better idea than rapeseed oil is hemp seed oil which requires no pesticides and is safe and can grow in almost any kind of growing conditions
It’s rather similar with wind turbines… forests, blanket bog etc being developed. Huge subsidies being added to our electricity bills. Too much, too fast. So much for sustainability.
... I mean,... I wouldn't exactly go charging towards something called rapeseed... But I appreciate the warning?
Would it be feasible to grow a small field of this for farm use?
All present fuel is as carbon equally carbon neutral. Oil has just had its carbon sequestered longer Trees sequester carbon the longest .
That is smart. Use 10 gals. of fuel to make 8 gals. of fuel then make the ground poisoned to some plants.
Diversity and progress to climate hysterics.
Civilization begins in a forest and ends in a desert.
The carbon cost of compound fertilizers are huge aswell other the harvesting and processing.
I been saying this forever, it is not wise to use food sources as fuel sources or for other products, we are coming into a stage where food sources are going to be very limited and using food sources for other things rather than food will only make the problem worse.
no, we are not coming there at all. You are just wrong here dude. Nobody changes here food sources.
there's a food excess, just stop eating wasteful ultraprocessed and throwing food in the trash
Thanks for this important reflection. Another bad downside is the Market and Agriculture dominance and manipulation of the company that owns the genetic contrivances and codependent chemicals, who sue organic farmers and other neighbours for merely having wind blown accidental growth of their Frankenstein plants in their fields and market the stuff as “ Feeding the Starving” whilst it’s all about proprietary control and monopoly.
Lots of irony here. Not the least that they have to use so much 'icides on that crap. Where I live the mustard is practically indestructible.
INSANE quality as always. The Emmy was well deserved.
The issue raised by this video is monoculture, which is hardly a new one. The only way to control it is by regulating the planting of crops- at present, most crops. A given plant type- maize, soybeans, wheat, rice, oil palm…or rapeseed, for that matter, tends to be hybridized (bred) until it is more efficient than other types, and it is then planted universally because it out-produces other types. Such is the nature of a market economy, and it has also been well-known for some time how to control it- regulation.
Without figuring environmental impact...what is the true efficiency after calculation ALL costs? Its actual % of feasibility.
That's a big question lol.
If there's a govt push for it?? It can't be good.
I love that you cover ALL of the different perspectives.
We beekeepers love and hate this plant. We love it because even a single field of this in the flight radius of our hives gives us full honey supers in spring. And we hate it because we can observe how the combination of pesticide exposure and sheer overworking is taking a massive toll on the forager bees. After the rapeseed bloom, hives are often weakened and take a couple of weeks to recover.
I used to see rapeseed fields (small ones, not like these) at the side of the road in some parts of the Baltic states, and i gotta say, they are gorgeous. You never know how yellow nature can be until you see one of those in person!
maybe when nostradamus warned of yellow peril it was this , most peeps assume it is the chinese
In a hungry world growing crops for fuel is a sin.
The world isn't hungry. Localised populations may be hungry, but that's down to local economic or infrastructure issues, usually related to war. Obesity is more of a problem globally than hunger now. Something like 40% of the world's crops are being fed to farm animals!
I feel you hit the topic for just 30 seconds and the rest was an intro. I'd love the 10 min version of the actual topic; the reduction of food crops, biodiversity, and the whole dead zone concept. Hope to see more please!
There's no such thing as "carbon-neutral". When you look into the logistics, there's always a large cost, be it the land that's being replaced with huge fields or the amount of water required to pump to the fields and even the transport afterwards. The only way we'd ever get real carbon neutral would be to take a huge amount of land into space and do all the growing off planet.
There's no such thing as carbon being pollution.
You mean land in space, like a planet...that can support life? Like say..um..earth.
@@woodspirit98 A. I didn't say carbon was pollution, I said "carbon-neutral", as in a pollution free, completely "green", doesn't exist. There's always a cost. Transporting all the food, displacing all the land for growing or raising animals, There's always going to be pollution.
B. No, if you were paying attention I was talking about the only way to get true "carbon neutral" food is to do the entire pricess OFF PLANET (see that? That's what I said in the initial post, off planet as if OFF EARTH) so all the pollution is created there and not here, and then drop it to earth.
@@Izzmonster "Carbon neutral" means not contributing to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you cut out fossil fuel use from all industries, you achieve carbon neutrality, irrespective of other pollution, irrespective of water use. You can't transport "pollution" to another planet. Mainly because this is the only habitable planet we've got. Even if we had two, what would be the point in trashing the other one? Even ignoring the cost of transporting material between the two (which I can't see how we can do without burning a lot of rocket fuel in the atmosphere of THIS planet).
Inane!
@@Mechness I never said anything about other planets. I said we need to do it off-planet. The point I'm making is that there are no "carbon neutral" industries and afaik there can't be because once it gets popular enough the requirements to get the product to everyone cause the same amount of pollution.
*For example:*
Electric cars are not carbon neutral. The batteries and basically all the electronics are mined out of the earth using... wait for it.... *GIANT MINING MACHINES*. If electric cars became the standard and everyone on the planet drove them they'd need to ramp up production causing WAY MORE carbon pollution. Meaning the pollution not caused by the cars is being made up for by their own production.
They used to have a biofuel factory near us here in northern Indiana. They used corn. It dried up our fresh water aquifers and smelled terrible.
Great video Rob, thank you. Always seems to be trade offs or compromises in environmental technology. Tough decisions....
This plant doesn’t need your consent.
Carbon neutral?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Once you ignore the fuel & oils used in the tractors used to plow, harvest, and in the trucks that transport, the utilities (energy) used to process it into biodiesel then transport again to storage facility before shipping to retail outlets....🙄
true basic rules of science energy just transfers from one thing to another when you burn anything it creates heat that is lost in the atmosphere and the chemically reactions create pollution, not really Neutral
more than 20 times the energy invested is returned, you're saying bullshit
all the other plants: "dude.....................................get another name"
It’s mustard oil, used since centuries in India
You're absolutely right about the potential of this to be a distraction along a path to a better carbon-reduced future, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at it as at least a potential stepping stone and not an end of the line. One other key factor to think about is the amount of hydrocarbon-derived fertilizer (Haber-Bosch Ammonia fixing) that is required for crops like this, corn ethanol, etc where does the line really get drawn for an actual improvement.
There is no future without carbon. We need more of it.
All monocultures in agriculture are an environmental threat with their requirement for fertilizers and pesticide.
I love your thought process. All to often these days, people will focus on one good part, but don't consider the implication beyond their own life. People hear plant and assume that it is good all around, but then forget the animals and plants that can no longer live there. So thank you!!!
ALL monocultures have serious disadvantages. Let's hear more about alternative ways to farm.
why you all talking that people doing monoculture? Nobody does that at all, it is just retarted, agriculture 1.01
My Great Grandfather used this in all his foods he lived to 97 and had three different wives and 19 children. I starting to think he was on to something. 😆 🤣 lol .
Ok, Rape is not good where food crops can be grown and earns a living for the grower. However, in cold areas where most food crops don't thrive, like Sweden, rape crops aren't replacing food crops. Rape is replacing some forgage crops and small grain crops mostly used to feed livestock. Is it worse to produce a fuel crop than feed for livestock?
Great post my friend. Thanks for opening my eyes to this issue.
Really interesting stuff, really like the concept for this video.
Many years ago the town of Tisdale in Saskatchewan, had a big sign at the entrance to the town announcing that they were the "Land of Rape and Honey" This due to the large planted area of rape seed and the honey produced from the rape by bees. Of course the slogan was somewhat tongue in cheek as the sexual innuendo is quite obvious. Eventually pressure was brought to bear on the town and the slogan was removed but I can't tell you what the new one is. Not because it is offensive or anything but because it is so inoffensive that nobody remembers it!
Saskatchewan used to have tv adds 20 years ago promoting towns. When i heard the Land of Rape and Honey jingle I died laughing.
I think we have to understand that’s there isn’t just one solution to replace fossil fuels, but many different ones. I think biofuels or hydrogen is great where weight is a concern, like in airplanes. They’re good for short refueling times. Electrical vehicles are good for short commutes. And so on. Until we get a fast chargeable, light battery that can store lots of energy and doesn’t contain any rare earth minerals, we have to use what technology that exist today.
This was done 20 years ago here in New Zealand, farmers used to grow some of their own fuel from Rapeseed till it became uneconomical.
The factory has since started producing cooking oils.
There's always been a lot of Rapeseed grown in my local area.
Can anybody explain to me why "not as sexy as you think" is an appropriate caption after rapeseed? Are you insinuating rape is sexy? Am I missing something?
In WWII rapeseed oil was used as a lubricant for naval machinery and even as a cleaning solution for weapons. Apparently it was a great oil for steam engines even earlier because it didn’t stick as much as other lubricants when it got hot.
Can the growth of rapeseed plant be rotated with food plants every 2 or 3 years?
weedseed
Plant that Jonas is showing at 1:19 is most likely Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis) not Brassica napus. Closely related but different genus of Brassicaceae.
Ha Ha Ha, Bought oil stocks last year because it would never be used again,LOL,LOL,LOL, making obscene money because you failed to remember Oil Co's will control all energy