Biomass and bioenergy in organic farming systems - The BioConcens project.

Summary

The production of bioenergy from local biological resources and the maintenance of soil fertility seem to have been opposing aims in organic agriculture (OA). It is however, important to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in OA, especially in the context of enhanced integrity of OA.
This interdisciplinary project aims at developing new methods and processes for co-production of bio-ethanol, biogas and animal feed based on resources from OA and associated food processing and suggests the outline of a medium-sized plant for co-production of biogas, bioethanol, and animal feed. The project will also design and test a new cropping system for biomass production to be used for bioenergy, while at the same time safeguarding soil quality. The project will analyze the effects of remains from bioenergy production on soil fertil-ity, greenhouse gas emissions, survival of parasites and weed seeds in the manure as affected by bioenergy pro-duction. Corporate and socio-economic analysis of the co-production of biogas and bioethanol at different scales will be carried out.