The British countryside will be transformed through the planting of tall energy crops, the BA Festival of Science in York heard on Monday. Fields planted with miscanthus grass, 3-4 metres high, will look like Caribbean sugarcane plantations.
The government’s Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme estimates that 15-20 per cent of Britain’s agricultural land may have to be devoted to growing biofuels to meet international obligations to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy security.
The two main candidate crops are willow coppice, harvested every three years, and miscanthus, a fast-growing Asian grass harvested annually in late winter or spring. Farmers would grow these on poor-quality arable land, said Angela Karp of Rothamsted Research, RELU energy crops co-ordinator.
“The impact on agriculture and food production is a big concern. Because the energy crops recycle their own nutrients and do not need fertilisers, they will not need to be planted on the best agricultural land. A lot of our research is about where best to grow these crops.”
Part of the exercise is to assess the public acceptability of a landscape dominated by giant energy crops. During the summer RELU researchers asked 490 people in four English cities for their impressions, using photographs of existing miscanthus and willow plantations. Two-thirds said they would not mind them growing within sight of their home, though this figure fell when participants were told that more local power stations would be needed to produce energy from the crops.
On Tuesday Dr Karp and colleagues will show shoppers in York city centre 3-D computer simulations of “virtual landscapes”. Such scenery is likely to change less over the years than a conventional arable landscape because, once planted, miscanthus or willow remain in place for 20 to 30 years.
In the short term, miscanthus and willow will be burned in biomass power plants. In the long run researchers want to find efficient ways to convert them into liquid biofuel (bio-ethanol) for use in transport.
Dr Karp said biodiversity assessments showed that miscanthus and willow were more beneficial than conventional crops for wildlife, because they did not normally require spraying with pesticide and they provided cover during the winter.
Philip Lowe of Newcastle University, RELU director, urged the government to “take a more strategic approach to land use in rural areas”.
Better planning was essential to help adapt to the consequences of climate change. Prof Lowe said the government needed a strategic vision for balancing the growing pressures on home-grown food supplies with the need to grow energy crops.
