Biofuel co-products as livestock feed - Opportunities and challenges

An outlook on EU biofuel production and its implications for the animal feed industry 19FIGURE 8Proportion of EU crop capacity used for biofuels in 2009and proportion of global crop capacity needed to meettotal RED target in 2020Proportion of crop area0.50.40.30.20.10.0Sources: FAOSTAT, 2011.Cereals Oilseeds Sugar cropsEU capacity, 2009 sourcingGlobal capacity, 2020 targetFigure 8. It can be seen that while only 2.3 percent of EUcereals was being used for biofuels in 2009, an order ofmagnitude higher – 33 percent – of EU oilseed capacity wasbeing used for biodiesel.The proportion of current global crop needed to meetthe full EU 2020 biofuel target for each crop type is alsoshown in Figure 8. Sugar crops include sugar beet andsugar cane. A much higher proportion of global oilseedor sugar crops would be needed to meet the 2020 target,compared with cereals. That is mainly because cereal cropstake a much higher share of the global crop area thanoilseeds and sugar crops. While the majority of EU biofuelhas so far been from biodiesel, it is unlikely that oilseedcrops will be able to expand fast enough to meet the 2020target, and a higher proportion of the biofuel growth willtherefore have to be met from bio-ethanol crops.The historic global growth rates of biofuel crops(FAOSTAT, 2011) are shown in Figure 9.This shows that the yield increases of cereal crops(wheat, maize, barley and rye) have been greater than theincrease in demand, such that the global land area neededto grow these crops has actually fallen since 1980. This hasled to a steady release of arable land in temperate regionssuch as the EU (Lywood, 2011), Eastern Europe and theUnited States. While the rates of yield increase for oil seedcrops and sugar cane are comparable to those of cereals,the higher increases in demand for these crops has requiredsubstantial expansion of crop areas. The growth of oilseedrape has been in the EU, Ukraine and Canada, while forother oil crops and sugar cane the expansion has primarilybeen in South America and SE Asia. The use of cerealcrops and oilseed rape for additional biofuel productionwill therefore reduce the rate of abandonment of arableland in temperate regions, while the use of other oil cropsand sugar cane for biofuels will continue to increase thedemand for arable land in South America and SE Asia.FIGURE 9Compound annual growth rate for global biofuel crop output, crop yield and land area from 1980 to 20097%6%Compound annual growth rate %/yr5%4%3%2%1%0%1% -Wheat Maize Cereals RapeseedSunflowerSoy bean Oil Palm Sugar CaneOutput Crop Yield Land areaSources: FAOSTAT, 2011.