Farming

With regard to agriculture, there is also great potential: livestock waste, agricultural residues (cereal straw, corn stovers, vine shoots…), and especially farming activities dedicated to sustainable development, are examples of available agricultural biomass. The management schemes for this sector are currently being altered to favour short-rotation (fast-growing) farming, and plants of high energy efficiency ratios.

Crop energy can be recovered from:

  • Either the entire plant (dedicated crops),
  • Or the portions harvested (grains, tubers),
  • Or the crop residues as co-products of crops for consumption.

Biomass can be split into different categories according to the nature of the resources used and the products obtained:

  • Ligno-cellulosic biomass (wood, straw, stems, dedicated crops…),
  • Biomass for alcohol production (beetroot, wheat, corn…),
  • Oleaginous crops (rape, soya bean, sunflower...)

Furthermore, short rotation coppices (forest originating from coppice shoots, root suckers, or both) are an intermediate between agriculture and silviculture: These are fast-growing arboricultural crops (willows, poplars) treated as perennial energy crops (crops on the same plot of land for at least 5 years), that are frequently cut (every 3 years), and that have a life span of between 20 and 30 years.

According to estimates, 15% of the French territory could be used to produce 40 Mtoe, with 8 million hectares cultivated. It would also be an asset if we could benefit from unused agricultural surfaces for food production, by growing new or current herbaceous or ligno-cellulosic energy plantations depending on to the type of ground and the climate.

Furthermore, in France, crop waste represents approximately 55 million tonnes, and organic agricultural waste approximately 250 million tonnes, per year (liquid manures, manures, dung).

It is important to improve the efficiency and quality of sorting operations to ensure optimum recovery of biomass which, at the end of its life cycle, comes back in the form of waste (wood, papers, cardboard…).

Thus, farmers and foresters could be the energy producers of the future.