Our Perspective

Betting on the Sun

By Kate Randall, sustainability writer

Posted 7 months ago

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“I’m putting my money on the sun.” Dr. Gale Buchanan, Emeritus Dean of Agriculture at the University of Georgia and former Under Secretary of Agriculture, made this statement during an April 5, 2010 speech at Monsanto’s St. Louis campus. Buchanan believes the sun is a ubiquitous energy source that needs to be tapped into to solve the energy crisis -- and agriculture is going to be a key player in that endeavor. Buchanan says agriculture has gone through many paradigm shifts over the years. Growing up on a farm, he saw the transition from plowing fields with mules to internal combustion engines and experienced the significant impact agrochemicals had on the industry. “The changes I’ve seen in just my lifetime have been phenomenal,” he said. “If you had told me that when I was hoeing peanuts that a jar of chemical would kill all the crabgrass plants on an acre, I would have said it would be more logical to go to the moon than for that to happen. But that happened. “I bet there is not an anti-herbicide human on this planet who had to hoe crabgrass out of peanuts,” Buchanan joked. According to Buchanan, agriculture has evolved and gone through some significant changes to meet the growing demands of the population. And he says these demands are only going to grow -- by 2050 the overall demand for agricultural products will be 179 percent of the 2000 output. Buchanan believes agriculture needs to adapt to meet these demands and face new ones, such as addressing the energy crisis. “It’s my opinion that of all the paradigm changes in agriculture, the need of energy is by far the most significant,” he said. “I think we’re going to have to look at agriculture as doing more than providing food for humans, feed for livestock, fiber for our clothes, and flowers for our landscaping. It is going to be looked at as a major contributor for providing fuel and energy that takes care of all of us.” Buchanan said as a country that’s reached peak oil, it is vital we start looking at alternative sources for energy -- and the sun is a great resource. But how do we capture the sun’s energy? One word – biomass. “Biomass has the advantage of being efficient at being transformed into liquid fuel,” he said. “This is made possible because of one simple reaction that we all learned in freshman botany – photosynthesis. In green plants, carbon dioxide is fixed into glucose and the plants give off oxygen, so simple but so fundamental to this planet.” Biomass traps an enormous amount of energy through photosynthesis. This planet captures approximately 100 terawatts of energy from the sun on an annual basis – that is 6 times the amount of energy consumed by humans annually. It also has the potential to be transformed into a variety of energy forms. It can be feedstock for liquid fuels, thermal energy or converted into bio-products. “Keep in mind, we are currently using crops that are thousands of years old – sugarcane and corn,” he said. “It’s also using a conversion technology that dates all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, but we haven’t used any new technology yet. We’ve certainly made some improvements in efficiency, but we really haven’t developed any radically new technologies.” Biotechnology will be an essential tool in the development of sustainable energy, according to Buchanan. In order to meet the energy needs plants must do more -- and biotechnology is the tool to achieve this. Buchanan laid out the research challenges he feels can be met and will lead to a sustainable solution for the energy crisis:

• Converting or enabling C3 plants to utilize the C4 photosynthetic pathway
• Nitrogen fixation in non-legumes
• Incorporating the process of apomixis into crop plants
• Improving pest resistance in plants
• Improving energy, nutrient and water efficiency of plants
• Developing plants with specific useful properties, such as health benefits or energy properties
• Learning to farm the oceans
• Develop more efficient means of conversion of photosynthate by plants into more useful products such as cellulosic fuels

“The sun is our only hope for our food and among our best hopes for the energy we need,” Buchanan said. “My greatest concern is we as a nation -- and the entire world -- are not doing the research to make this a reality. We need major investments in research.” “It is not an overstatement to say that the success of agriculture is necessary for the survival of our species on this planet and that the success of agriculture, in the end, will be determined by information, knowledge and technology gained through research.”