Today in Biofuels Opinion: “They have reached the limit of what the corn plant can produce.”

Matt McKinney in the Star Tribune: “So reliable is corn’s growth of about 2 extra bushels per acre per year that government analysts folded it into their forecasts for this year’s 12.1 billion bushel crop. It’s just expected. And yet it’s still not enough…But the history and hype surrounding corn yields has one staggering asterisk: The very best farms, blessed with the best weather and land, have posted the same yields for at least 20 years — suggesting they have reached the limit of what the corn plant can produce.”

Emmanuel K. Dogbevi in Ghana Business News: “Is the investor community learning all they could about the jatropha or biofuel business?…There is literally a scramble for land in Ghana by multinationals and local companies…All together, these companies are cultivating the jatropha plant on millions of hectares of land with the hope of producing biofuels for export…The consensus of the team of experts after evaluating India’s jatropa projects from 22 agribusiness colleges across the country was that, indeed, jatropha would grow on wasteland, but would give no appreciable yield…The companies investing in jatropha and other non-food crops for the production of biofuels including the ones from India, have lots of lessons to learn from India’s example, so as not to repeat the mistake.”

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