Arable land use

In the United States, federal mandates have led to a growing debate: Should fuel or food grow on arable land? As we all know, some crops, like corn can be used as feed and as fuel. Russ Gesch, a plant physiologist with the USDA Soil Conservation Research Lab in Morris, Minnesota, talked with me about another food/fuel crop... Camelina found encouraging results when growing Camelina sativa with soybean in the Midwest. "The debate is over using a food use crop like corn to produce energy. Other crops that are developed are not necessarily high food use crops, and Camelina is one of them, at least here in the United States, is being developed more for biofuel and non-food uses so it is not competing for those same food use markets. You don't have that debate of using a food crop for producing biofuel so it is good from that standpoint. There is also the issue of land use because if you are using arable land for growing crops there is just a finite amount of that land here in the US and other parts of the world. If you are growing a biofuel crop on a particular piece of arable land, that is not available for growing a food crop. That is where this double cropping idea comes into play. That is because we are producing a biofuel crop which is Camelina but then that matures early enough and we can harvest it and we can follow it with a food use crop like soybeans. So now we are not devoting the land just for producing biofuels or just producing a food use crop.