Unit 2 Blog!

*Audience: my friends*

A blog post by Emma Hahn

All Feedstocks, Biorenewables Included, Have to be Sourced from Somewhere

        Hey y’all! Let’s begin learning about where all of our feedstocks come from. Now since none of you are agriculture or biology people, I’ll answer your first question without being asked: a feedstock is the very first material that is gathered to make a product, for example, cotton is the feedstock for jeans. Note to Kristen: so sorry, but I will not be talking about the topsoil in California. Now back to the topic at hand, these materials don’t just come out of thin air, they come from somewhere, but how does that affect Earth and us?

Two Productions of Biomass: Woody and Herbaceous

        I think the best way to begin learning about how feedstocks impact the environment is to first see the different types there are. The two I really know about are woody biomass- think trees and bushes- and herbaceous biomass- literally any other plant that doesn’t have wood as its stem (Lesson 10).

        The woody biomass is grown in natural, semi-natural, and plantation forests. In the United States about 90% of forests are natural, meaning that they don’t use pesticides and have a lot of biodiversity (Lesson 8). Plantation forests use pesticides and usually plant one or two specific trees, these forests make up about 3.5% of all forests globally, but produce 35% of the world’s wood supply (Brockerhoff et al.). Just like the name implies, semi-natural forests are somewhere in between natural and plantation forests. They tend to use silviculture practices like tree thinning, tree planting, and purposeful fires (Bettinger et al.). I like to think of the forests in comparison to parenting: the natural forest has the absent parents that let their child do whatever, the plantation forests have helicopter parents that plan out every detail of their child’s life, and the semi-natural forests have the rare parents who are the perfect mix. One thing each type has in common though is that all forests are normally grown to provide wood for products or energy.

A photograph depicting a plantation forest.

        Herbaceous biomass are crops that are grown for bioproducts or bioenergy and not food. Most of the time only one type of crop is grown in a section of land, and it needs to be replanted every year, just like my mother’s failed garden. Farmland occupies about 900.2 million acres of land in the United States, and my great (it’s actually more mid than great) home state of Iowa is number two in producing agriculture, just behind California (Scribner). And to prove that Iowa is the true Cornhusker State, not Nebraska, I am providing you all with this:

                                          

Figure 1. Amount of corn produced per state (Dutton).

How Good Is It Really? Environmental Certification

        Now that we know what feedstock is, how do we know if it’s good for the environment? In order to show customers that their products are good, companies will get an environmental certification. Being environmentally certified basically means that the product meets a certain standard, but not all certifications are the same. There are three different ways to be certified: by a third party, through self declaration, and through the Life Cycle Assessment. Obviously you should be able to tell that being certified doesn’t really guarantee that the product is good for the environment since it can be self declared, but the most common type of certification is through a third party. There are many different third party companies that have certification programs, and each company has their own set of standards, so just because a product is certified by one program, it may not be certified by a different program (Lesson 12). While I can’t teach you about each program, I can tell you that between the three most common systems in the United States, the Forest Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and the American Tree Farm System, that I personally think the Forest Stewardship Council is the best certification because of how much it protects the land and the people that inhabit it (Altor).

Different logos- eco labels- proving a product’s environmental certification

Okay Emma, Now What?

        I honestly don’t really know what the best answer is, but I have learned a few things to take into consideration when making future purchases. Numero uno, just because a product has an eco label does not mean that it’s necessarily good for the environment. Also, after doing research, I decided that when choosing between different brands of the same product, I will default to the product that has the FSC eco label. Lastly, the most important thing I learned is that Iowa is the true Cornhusker State. Just kidding! Everyone has different values and places emphasis on different issues, my best advice to y’all is to just do a little bit of research and find the company that aligns best with you.

Works Cited

Altor, Anne. “Sustainability Certification for Wood: FSC vs SFI.” One Earth Body Care, 31 July                 2017, www.oneearthbodycare.com/sustainability-certification-wood-fsc-vs-sfi/. Accessed 12             Mar. 2023.

Bettinger, Pete, et al. Forest Management and Planning. 2nd ed., London Etc., Academic Press, an             Imprint Of Elsevier, Cop, 2017.

Brockerhoff, Eckehard G., et al. “Plantation Forests and Biodiversity: Oxymoron or Opportunity?”               Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 17, no. 5, 9 Apr. 2008, pp. 925–951,                                             https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-008-9380-x.

Dutton, Jan. “US Corn Production by State: The Top 11 Rankings [in 2022] | CropProphet.” Crop                 Prophet, 29 June 2020, www.cropprophet.com/us-corn-production-by-state/#2021.                             Accessed 12 Mar. 2023.

Lesson 10, Herbaceous Biomass Production, BBE 1002, UMN

Lesson 12, Environmental Certification, BBE 1002, UMN

Lesson 8, Woody Biomass Production, BBE 1002, UMN

Scribner, Cari. “How Many Acres of Farmland Are Left in the United States in 2023?” Farmland                 Riches, 12 Dec. 2022, www.farmlandriches.com/farmland-acres-united-states/#:~:text=Fast%20forward%20to%20current%20times. Accessed 12 Mar. 2023.