[getsmart-l] Everdale's venture into our biodiesel project - efforts at local self-reliance among farmers and their friends

[John O'Gorman]

It's an exciting time at Everdale! One venture is our biodiesel project. We have brought together a farmer-led group in the Erin-Orangeville area that is about to launch a biodiesel coop based entirely on the use of recycled food by-products. In the first phase, the co-op will purchase biodiesel from Greg Lougheed (Ontario's pioneer in small-scale biodiesel production from food by-products) and in a second phase, the co-op's members will 'close the loop' on their own farms by producing oilseed, renting cooking oils to restaurants, then taking it back to make fuel to run their tractors and other vehicles. 
Recently, Everdale's board passed the following motion. 

In view of current controversies surrounding biofuels and their impact on food prices, the board of Everdale Environmental Learning Centre reiterates its support for our small-scale biodiesel production facility, biodiesel workshops, and the farmer-based biodiesel co-op we are helping to launch. All these efforts are based on the use of recycled food by-products in making biodiesel. This has been Everdale's approach from the outset of our biofuel research and it remains our policy today. We require that the food value of crops be fully obtained before used cooking oils and other food by-products are reused in fuel production, thus avoiding a food-versus-fuel conflict in the use of farmland.


We are now aiming to publicize this policy as widely as possible. 

In the wave of justifiable condemnation of corn-ethanol and other inefficient biofuels that subtract farmland from food production, it is important to recognize that there are some very progressive, small-scale biofuel experiments going on -- efforts at local self-reliance among farmers and their friends in rural communities. These need to be distinguished from the regressive mainstream.  Please pass the word! 

Cheers, Wally Seccombe

http://www.everdale.org/node/21

      Make your own Biodiesel Reactor!  Friday, August 15, 2008 7:00pm - Sunday, August 17, 2008 4:30pm  
      Make your own Biodiesel!  Saturday, September 13, 2008 9:00am - 5:00pm  

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