Replacing a commodity with another commodity that also competes for land: food v feed v fuel. We all know what happens when money and markets enter the equation... Let alone the issue of fertilisers and pesticides, and their impact on soils as well as human health.

" Its us who are in danger, not nature" well said.

I am a publisher of a magazine for the wood industry. From many conversations with industry professionals I can tell you that using wood for biofuel is not a great alternative. When you add up all the costs involved it’s more or less the same as carbon based options.

It's so fascinating how historically hemp was used for fuel, yet today it isn't even considered. Farmers grew it for their tractors and clothing. But today, only the few and rich get all the resource control!

It is evident that humans have the capacity to live in peace in a sustainable world. The only obstacle is the rapacious destructive greed of corporations, shareholders and the corrupt stupidity of politicians - and it's our responsibility to get rid of these obstacles through education and insight.

Regards the beets requiring dangerous chemicals, I saw a video of a gardener who watched when his chickens would go to roost in the evening. he then, by noting when sundown occurred, would let the chickens into his garden 10 minutes before sundown. The chickens would make a bee line towards the bugs for their protean content, and not eat the green leaves. As soon as sundown happened, the chickens, realizing it was bedtime made a bee line to where they could roost for the night. The gardener had no need to spend his money on chemicals!. Hope you can save also.

The swathes of land cut away by human agriculture and mining really breaks my heart. One day not far from now will have no nature, no grass, no wildlife. Excavation.

"Nature is not in danger..it's us." Indeed.

It is all vey well asking consumers to consume less (and that needs to be done) but it is also important to balance that with producers making products that last longer and are able to be repaired rather than have built in obsolescence and fashion cycles marketed to a gullible status orientated public.

@21:08 “as long as the oil price is low”. Well, things have now become a bit more economically viable haven’t they?

Outstanding Standing episode @DW Document Thank you Share this amazing Documents 🤩 👍

Problem with biofuel is that soil is a declining resource.

Best of luck to the scientists. A note about those coal pits in the beginning: maybe those wouldn't be a reality if Germany had let it's nuclear power plants work until the end of their service life instead of decommissioning them early.

the world bank said that corn used to be converted to ETHANOL biofuel and fill a tank of a car once ,same amount can feed a kid for an entire year

To get biofuels why not just use compost? Also how much food does the average person waste? At least in America we over consume meat. No one's got a solution for all the plastic yet though?

Study: Biofuels increase, rather than decrease, heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions ANN ARBOR-A new study from University of Michigan researchers challenges the widely held assumption that biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are inherently carbon neutral. Contrary to popular belief, the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas emitted when biofuels are burned is not fully balanced by the CO2 uptake that occurs as the plants grow, according to a study by research professor John DeCicco and co-authors at the U-M Energy Institute. The study, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture crop-production data, shows that during the period when U.S. biofuel production rapidly ramped up, the increased carbon dioxide uptake by the crops was only enough to offset 37 percent of the CO2 emissions due to biofuel combustion. The researchers conclude that rising biofuel use has been associated with a net increase-rather than a net decrease, as many have claimed-in the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. The findings were published online Aug. 25 in the journal Climatic Change.

The easiest thing to do is limit industrial animal agriculture also because it is relatively healthier to eat WFPB (although not as interesting and entertaining as one participant with financial interest in mock meat, highly processed food, put it). But then again how much profit and added value is there in beans and rice?

it is an environmental disaster. our cousins, the orangutans, in indonesia are driven off the land into extinction as jungles that are millions of years old are cut down to grow bio fuels for human greed.

Incredible film. Thanks all involved. We evolved pass numerical font.

We need to do further research into cannabis/hemp oils, plastics, fuels.

Very informative, thank you!

I really like your documentaries especially on green energy and other SDGs

Important topic! I will watch this documentary today!

41:37 This here is the end game, the main point we all need to accept. No matter what tech-Bros, green growth-economists and politicians want us to believe, it's the first point we need to deal with before we "innovate" our way from a problem we have created through "cheap" products and throw-away-and-buy-new behavior.

Absolutely love your documentaries, thanks DW for uploading such fascinating topics. Vielen Dank DW

Ingenious thinking, exceptional documentary.

Great one DW thanks....

Isn’t biofuel stupid and counterproductive? If we use the limited fertile land for fuel, what should we do for food??

Interesting at 21:00. Is this why the price of oil has been inflated? To make bio more cost effective?

Please keep adding more quality content like this. Big fan of your channel from USA.

3:47 the deforestation there is so heartbreaking.

I think it's ridiculous to make combustible fuels this way. As an alternative to plastics, yes. I think there's more energy put into this fuel then you get out of it, and we don't need to burn things anymore. There are much more efficient and clean ways to produce energy.

Yes, use food to power cars. What can possibly go wron?

Wonderful documentary Dw keep up the good work. We just need more people doing things like this

Thanks for posting.

It can't be just create "in the lab" It needs to be in a industrial warehouse scale

It amazes me how people can so precisely apply mathematical models to the efficiency of processes at this scale and still seemingly they are too fixated on a specific goal to see the entire picture. Any energy generating device requires energy to manufacture. In order to fit within the global carrying capacity we must use less energy and also generate less energy. If people had a greenhouse located on the southern exposure of their homes, vents were added to the top of the southern roofs, and windows were moved to the southern exposure wall, we could reduce our energy consumption by 60%. If we were all growing food in our own greenhouse we could sustainably grow a good portion of vegetables and plant based protein all year round and maximize utilization of biomass material directly. Likewise the plants we grow can be partly harvested and continue to grow without as much being wasted. Likewise, if energy was generated at the home then the thicker electrical conductors could be shortened and overall require far less infrastructure while providing resilient isolated grids. 25% of energy generated is lost through line loss due to the poor conductivity of aluminum power lines. Homes could use shorter more robust insulated copper conductors which would improve efficiency. Furthermore, water can be pumped to elevation and generate electricity on demand or passively each time water is used. The pumping of water to elevation can be achieved using the flow of nearby tributaries, streams, springs, and rivers without any additional energy. Likewise, the water extraction can take place without obstructing the main water channel or effecting animal migration and spawning. Since we need water every day it makes sense to use elevated water both as an energy storage medium and as a critical resource for growing food and sustaining life. Because the water tank is not an additional resource that requires energy to manufacture like a solar panel. We need the water anyways and it really doesn't need batteries. The water can directly produce energy when needed. Controlled by a system that uses small batteries for lights and general light electric use. When demanded a valve opens and the flow produces several thousand watts of power on demand for appliances and other needs. The system could be programmed with capacitors as well. All water flow from the tank can produce electricity when washing, maintaining the home, or watering plants. Any additional energy generating devices such as wind, solar, and biomass can either heat water to store in a insulated hot water tank, charge a small bank of batteries or capacitors, or simply pump additional water to elevation. This would be ideal applied with concentrated solar power. Benefits include reduced infrastructure, reduced resource demand especially precious metals, improved energy efficiency of up to 25%, reduced energy demand of up to 60%, reduced trips to and from grocery stores, reduced energy demand by grocery stores and the supply infrastructure, direct biomass recycling, improved health and quality of life, more upward mobility and financial freedom, near tropical growing conditions enabling fruit cultivation even in northern climates, and it does not require new technology or potentially hazardous materials. Best of all it is tried and true proven to work for centuries.

Thank you DW for this Documentary.

hello. this is for the two men raising maggots for fish (seen in the video). instead of using the husks and processing them into a paste fed to the maggots how about using the husks in a biogas digester along with human/animal shit to produce methane first then after 60 days spin the slurry to the proper (centrifuge) consistency removing unnecessary water and feeding that to the maggots. all this could happen in the same heated barn conserving fuel. fish poop is then used to feed plants. once the fish are harvested the unwanted parts, guts and ..., go into the biogas digester. i am always looking for ways to use the same material to provide two or more beneficial things. good luck.

With every show they produce I am more and more amazed about how DW can come up with such good and interesting topics. The subject, the research, the presentation. German quality at its finest. DW is by far the best investigative/documentary channel on the planet. Got to thank the German people, media outlets are only as good as the people supporting it.

i think sugarcane is the most efficient source of ethanol, with 20 % blend in regular fuels without any need to change the engines and say hybrid cars like prius/ camry. we can reduce the use of fuels by 35% without additional infrastructure. vegetarian food consumption is 1/10th energy use of meat products. so mostly vegetarian diet and some measures like mix of renewable will make it sustainable. human population is already plateauing. chicken must be using the same amount of energy as plants too i think

Every information keep me up about my passions and hard work

Biofuels production reduces crop output for foods 🤷🤦🤷‍♂️

I'm a huge fan of Deutsche Welle and it's fabulous subjects for the new world

The real trouble with biofuels is their very low efficiency at converting solar radiation into chemical energy. Organic matter that's ended up as fossil fuels had plenty of time to pile up, thereby sort of compensating for the inherent photosynthetic low conversion efficiencies. So, the challenge with modern biofuels is to do the same energy conversion at a pace that's demanded by modern societies. In order to circumvent that time constraint, more natural resources should be dedicated to grow biomass to be transformed into biofuels. How much more of them are we willing to sacrifice in order to create ersatz fossil fuels to power the same kind of civilization that locked us up in such a conundrum in the first place?

Just hope we're not replacing one problem with another. I can see a GMO escaping captivity and wrecking havoc on ecosystems. Is there a reason not to stick with unmodified organisms?

Very good information, nice work DW. More videos like this will be great to educate the public

Amazing chanel, outstanding👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

As always very good documentary. Thank you DW .

DW documentaries are very informative,knowledgeable & educational ❤.

Amazing documentation.

i love to watch DW Documentary. Thank you very much.

Biofuels will destroy more than fossil fuels it will wipe out all forest to fulfill fuel need it's also not high clorific value

Regenerative ranching and farming is the key to producing carbon neutral food.

Are we still peddling plastics recycling as a solution? That's a decades-old bandaid that is now clearly showing its design shortcomings. It doesn't address the root cause. I see a trend towards smaller serving sizes instead of going towards bulk shops. It's concerning we're still manufacturing with 0.5oz packages.

we have plenty of material in bio waste... that is what I d use. solving 2 big problems.

Amazing how often these documentaries ignore the sustainable aspects of at least salvaging all things possible and needed to build smaller housing in countries that went over the top on space per person to live, a massive consumption of heating and cooling spaces unnecessary. Poor quality leads to speedy declines and short lived houses that force more rapid consumption of future resources to replace them instead of using the salvage of the past to generate trends and reward systems for those who use them, salvages the past to safe resource destruction, especially trees.

Happy world environment day 🙏😇

North America was covered in ice a while back. The Ice age is still receeding. Sure it's getting warmer for some in the south. Up here, those of us that do farming, we will tell you it's getting colder.

I'm also a Biochemist who worked to get this beat juice in trails in our Quebec Winters. Quebec is on the same latitudes of Moscow

" If a loaf of a bread costs more than a chicken, how is that chicken been feed?" An amazing enquiry

if anyone told you that a lot of the land is used to feed animals instead of being used for food , ask him where will you get natural fertilizers to fertilize other farms ,where will you get the milk to feed babies , tell him that even if u used 1% only for biofuel it would be better to use that 1% to feed 10 hungry people instead of burning agri products as fuel,do not use biofuel ,do not promote world hunger

Wow, Beautiful Upload friend. keep it up. Thank you for sharing this to us. Greetings from Korea

Amazing Documentary DW❤❤❤

If the Amount of Land to grow the food is the problem, Why don't we just start underground farming ?, it's Underground and it takes less space, and if the government could make a law that all citizens must grow certain type's of crops in there backyard, for example Sugarcane, so that the government can soon collect the sugarcane once its ripened to create Cellulosic biofuel from the sugarcane bagasse. This would take less much less space, we have to be creative guys.. We only have one planet, there is no planet B .

The foundational problem that drives nearly all of our other problems is that the human population is so large. 8 billion people are about 7 billion too many. Imagine if there were only 4 billion: that's half as much food required, half as much fuel, half as much housing, half as many cars, half as much clothing, half as much agricultural land used, etc. etc., before even considering changes to lifestyle or how society is constructed. If there were as many people as there were in, say, 1970 or 1940 or 1900, there would be so much more space for the natural world. We'll get back there in the end, but not without a tremendous collapse and loss.

Dw documentary is the best!

This should get more attention !

First of al you will need enough space to grow those crops...and that is only one problem of many, there is a limit to growth.

as always good materials trawling through the most sophisticated information which is not common for us to know However, it seems it is not easy as it looks also the capitalism will not let forge their industry or cost them their fortune. I hope we never reach a point in which it is hard to find a course reverse.

The established players will always fight change. I live in Idaho and I think the picture of The American Cowboy Rounding Up My Steak will loom over veggie/lab protein for quite a while. I personally could be a vegetarian except, it’s a lot of work to prepare a really appealing meal. When I lived Santa Monica I ate my dinners @ Govinda’s, the restaurant the Hari Krishna community has in Culver City (also have one in Santa Monica now, or did). I lost about 35 #, and enjoyed every meal. I like most of the faux meat,but the Tofurkey wasn’t up for a repeat.

Here where i live in Canada, we have Enerkem Company who turns garbage into fossil fuel.

Bio fuels from likes of Castor, Jatropa etc are priced higher than fossil fuels because of manual harvesting costs etc.

we literally have a star that produces a years worth of energy in a second... and we're messing with bio fuel.

I like the rest of this vid, I'm just not sure if I'm down with happy orchestral uplifting music while we're given brief video of slaughterhouse footage in the intro lol. Seems a bit twisted to me.

What percent of consumption is wasted though? Here in the U.S. we waste some 40% of our food supply, which is ridiculous and allows for so much room to make changes that may result in reduced yields.

It's putting a tiny bandage on a severed leg. Humans are about the meet the consequences of our behaviour.

Fossil fuels are millions of years worth of geologically stored solar energy. Incredibly energy dense. Biofuels are one season of stored solar energy. Notice the difference?

That's fantastic information we read and hear,is there any book you can recommend to read.

Amazing Documentary

It's very simple, bio-fuels work but can't scale up to global needs, not even close. Just trying is a bad idea because it competes with food production. Transportation fuels need to come from synthetic liquid or gaseous fuel generated by nuclear power.

A very nice set of commercials with some documentary tossed in. I look forward to endless commercials soon 🤮

The tiniest drop of a green idea in an ocean of OPEC+

Hopefully some breakthroughs after nearly 50 years of research.

The bio-economy is built predominantly upon genetic engineering, I hope people in the Germany are ready to accept this fact. Genetic engineering is a necessary part of our agricultural future.

The problem is that the energy and resource requirements of these high-technology growing methods offset in part, or whole, any advantages that accrue from increased yield produced by these methods. I am introducing greenhouse hydroponic farming methods to Sri Lanka as a means of reducing the impact of export oriented farming on land, water, fertilizer, pestcide/insecticide/weedicide, and labor use. I am attempting to go the 100% carbonic route, but it is very difficult to control all external impacts and the reduce unit cost of production in spite of increases in yield by hydroponic greenhouse growing. BTW, Sri Lanka is heavily populated and land availability is limited and expensive, so high-tech greenhouse farming is a no-brainer.

What the heck!!! That digging is enormous!!!

When you are cutting consumption but the cause is so others could also get a piece.. will never work from ancient times.. The method to grow is either produce more.. or cut demand".. when all country have grown to be a "Developed" Country (In which the developed will keep ensure it won't happen in the near future) why would the country with high area of arable land export their food products to other country when their own needs are not met.. This already happening now.. see some countries already banning food export cause their own needs are not met.. and do you wonder what happen to countries that HEAVILY rely on food from imports ? EVEN if you literally buy lands from other countries..

"IF a loaf of bread is more than a chicken, how is that chicken being fed?" The cost of the grain in a loaf of bread is only 8 cents. The rest is "processing" and profit for the owners of the different parts of the bread making. Chickens are usually fed corn, while bread is usually made from wheat. IF you are going to have experts on, you should make sure they know what they are talking about. I did not see where they talked about algae. It could be fed on bio waste and turned into diesel of charcoal and replace coal plant.

at 2007 ,20% of corn in US alone was used for biofuel instead of food for the people , do not buy biofuel ,do not participate in that industry ,do not buy from them any fuel ,help the poor find the food to eat just by not using biofuel

Leaning English + culture + enjoy = DW 😁✌️❣️

It was found that the ethanol-glycerol blend at the ratio of 3:1 (75/25%) can be directly applied as a substitute fuel for either gasoline or ethanol in internal combustion engines in the automotive and power industry.

Using plants for fuel production instead of food is wrong on so many levels. Nuclear + renewables until we reach fusion is key. And less over-consumption and better global food distribution.

It doesn’t matter if “new” ways of production are “easier” on the land and resources of this consumption of products keeps being the center of the economy. Maggots and waste are not infinite, even if it’s less land expensive, tubes and sprayers and the technology to run all this circuses rest over slavery in Africa and America, we need to decrease our consumption and look back to the pre industrial modes of production that werked in tandem with the environment.

BioFuel used more energy than it produces, also taking the land from food production drive up food prices

Siguro ang proper perspective na lang is “least damage possible” than “no damage at all”. Since kahit saan ka magpunta, there will always be potholes and leakages. So dun ka na lang talaga sa lesser evil.

Using agricultural land for energy production is absurd and morally wrong. FULL STOP Applies to biodiesel, bioethanol from sugar cane and all other variations of the same theme.

Don’t worry guys, we’ll soon be able to 3D print our food, work remotely permanently and live in the Metaverse so we won’t even need our cars.

A lot of towns have expanded into arable land, perhaps there should be a "double shell" with a "Planned Garden" between the outsside and interior. It gives an insulation layer outside of the growing season and maybe a heating plenum on the southside during the winter. In the growing season you get green plants, and their cooling properties. If they are a fuel crop, you do not have to worry about urban pollution contaminates like you would if they were used for food.

Ja! Das ist wunderbar! Ist der einen groß ausferung unglaublich für die Zukunft vorsicht!