Jobs boost for Dundee tech firm

A Dundee-based chemical company has announced plans to expand and create 27 manufacturing jobs.

BB International Dundee, formerly Alchemy Laboratories, said that it would expand its manufacturing facilities over the next three years.

The company specialises in the manufacture of rapid diagnostic test technology such as pregnancy and hormone testing kits.

Scottish Enterprise Tayside welcomed news of the expansion.

BBI Dundee managing director and founder Richard Lamotte said: "The global market value for clinical diagnostic point of care tests was estimated in 2005 to be worth approximately $2.1bn.

Planned expansion

"We predict that the market will grow by 27% over the next five years and the new employees and additional equipment will give us the extra capacity to execute contracts which we may have previously struggled to fulfil."

Deputy First Minister Nicol Stephen said that the planned expansion was excellent news for the local economy and for Scotland.

He added: "I am pleased to support this expansion through a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant of £220,000 which will result in the creation of 27 new jobs and further highlight Dundee as one of the leading cities in Europe for life sciences."

Jill Farrell, operations director at Scottish Enterprise Tayside, said: "This will help further promote our international reputation as a great place to live, work and do business which will in turn help attract overseas investment – all vital to Scotland's economic growth."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Polish factory farms cause a stink

Spiralling demand for cheap food is pushing countries such as Poland towards intensive agricultural production, despite environmentalists' fears. As part of the BBC's Planet Under Pressure series, Julianna Kettlewell visits one of the country's many new hog factories.

A row of clean metallic buildings are just visible from the road. They squat defensively behind high fences and locked gates, and one can almost hear the low hum of computerised efficiency.

The hi-tech farm looks awkward in its shabby surroundings – a queer mirage of future times, in a land of rusty Fiats and wonky fences.

Pig factories like this one are multiplying around Poland, as the fresh EU member jostles to bring cheap food to Europe's hypermarkets.

Here, near Poznan, the community is enduring an uncomfortable baptism into modern farming.

Some locals feel the progress is long overdue, but others believe they – and their environment – are paying the hidden cost that consumers escape.

Intensive farming is the only economically viable way to meet the world's growing demand, not only for basic nutrition, but for Western-style meat-rich diets, say some experts.

But what price must be paid by the nations that fill our trolleys?

Streamlined

Poland, whose nostalgic landscape would almost befit a Thomas Hardy novel, has pressed the fast-forward button.

Foreign owned companies – like the US pork giant Smithfield Foods – are taking root around the country, ready to collar the European pork market.

Small crumbling sheds housing half-a-dozen pigs are giving way to rows and rows of uniform grey factory buildings, inside which thousands of porkers fatten at minimum expense.

Smithfield slaughters 1.2 million hogs a year in Poland and 35-40% of their pork produce is exported.

The company promises its international operations will boost the Polish economy and create jobs in a country where unemployment and poverty is high.

This may be true, but when the BBC visited the village of Wieckowice, near Poznan, it found a community deeply divided by the brave new farm in its midst.

Some locals are eagerly soaking up the newfound job opportunities, driving smarter cars, earning higher incomes; while others are feeling angry – in some cases militant. They say Polish factory farms are polluting their earth, air and water, as well as putting their small farms out of business.

Dramatic change

Smithfield Foods, which processes 20 million hogs around the world each year, understands nothing if not cost efficiency.

Staffing is kept to a minimum, and the farm we visited only employed five people – none of them local.

But they do support the local economy indirectly, by paying contract farmers to fatten their pigs before slaughter.

Most of these farmers have seen a dramatic change in lifestyles. Where they once had 20 or so pigs, they now have 1,000 or more, owned and fed by Smithfield.

Ryszard Nowark is one such farmer. His still rundown farm buildings now bulge with 600 Smithfield pigs.

The company pays him a wage and buys all the necessary pig-feed. The arrangement gives him financial security and shields him from the undulations of an unpredictable market.

When we met him, Mr Nowark was busy showing off his shiny new Mercedes, which looked incongruous in a graveyard of ancient farm implements.

"My life has changed for the better now," he told us. "We have extra profit because we are able to sell our grain – because we don't need to feed it to the animals anymore – and we get an income from Smithfield… hence the car."

Costs and benefits

But no factory farming system is problem free. Keeping thousands of pigs in one place may be cost-effective but it has one unsurprising consequence – large amounts of waste.

Pig slurry, if not handled with care, can be a dangerous pollutant. Studies have shown that slurry lagoons emit toxic gases such as ammonia and hydrogen sulphide which, in high concentrations, can cause headaches, eye irritations, mood alterations and fatigue.

Also, nitrates from the manure can seep through the soil into water systems. Nitrates have serious implications for aquatic life and if drunk can be a risk to human health.

Some environmentalists also believe pig manure can contain antibiotic resistant diseases.

"Factory farmed pigs are kept alive by using big doses of antibiotics," claims Marek Kryda of the Animal Welfare Institute. "But this is dangerous because it can cause disease resistance. And these resistant pathogens can harm other pigs and humans."

Many farms around the country store untreated slurry in lagoons, although at the Wieckowice farm, the pig's waste is mixed with straw to form manure and then spread on fields.

Smithfield officials say all their waste is processed according to Polish regulations, and that levels of airborne gases like ammonia are within the legal limits.

Locals' fears

But when the BBC spoke to the inhabitants of Weickowice, there was much anxiety about the hog factory, which is only metres from the local school.

"The problem is very bad," said villager Edmund Pawolek, who is coordinating the local resistance against Smithfield. "The local authorities commissioned some research and found that the permitted levels of antibiotics were 15 to 30 times more than allowed," he claimed.

"We are very afraid for our health. Sometimes the smell is so bad that the local bus will not stop in our village."

Although Poland's new hog factories are producing cheap, high quality pork, allowing the country to become a major exporter, many believe the low prices belie hidden costs.

"The price on the shelf is only part of the real price – there are other costs which are difficult to pay," said Mr Kryda.

"You have the environmental costs, like liquid manure which causes pollution. Then you have the farm neighbours who cannot sell their homes because the stink is so bad – then you have the health problems," he claimed.

"Small farmers have the whole cost in the price on the shelf, because they are not polluting, not poisoning anyone, not making anyone unemployed. The food is more expensive, but the hidden costs are less."

Rare species

Poland is still unique among its European neighbours.

Its flat landscape is a vast patchwork of tiny strips, each growing cabbages or housing a lonely cow. People stoop over ploughed earth and chickens mill near small drab houses.

The country is still blessed with rich biodiversity, clean air and water.

"In Poland we have 50,000 pairs of the rare white stork. That is 25% of the world's population," said Marek Kryda. "We also have European bison – the last few thousand in the world."

But in its struggle to compete in the global marketplace, Poland may eventually lose some – or all – of these qualities.

Only time will tell if the benefits outweigh the costs.

Quarrying worry for national park

Parts of Dartmoor could be at risk from quarrying, according to a new survey.

The Council for National Parks (CNP) says there are several old quarrying permits that could be used in the next 40 years in the national park.

It said, if used, such permissions could have potentially disastrous consequences for the landscape, archaeology and nature conservation.

The National Park Authority said if necessary it would always negotiate to minimise any potential damage.

Environmental conditions

The CNP said Dartmoor had six dormant quarries, 16 old permits for extracting minerals and several active quarries. There is also one dormant permit for Exmoor.

The old quarries and permits could be used up until 2042.

The CNP said current laws regulating those existing quarries did not impose modern environmental conditions, so companies operating within the law could damage national parks they worked in.

The council has called for tighter regulation of active quarries and for old dormant quarry permits to be dealt with.

As part of its 2004 to 2005 Performance Plan, the Dartmoor National Park Authority said it expected "some changes to the operation within one of the working quarries and other reclamation work is expected".

But it added: "Usual liaison and negotiations will minimise damage to the national park. No new major developments are anticipated during the year."

Fire reveals moor’s stone legacy

A carved stone thought to date back more the 4,000 years has been discovered following a large fire on the North York Moors.

The relic which is unique in England, was found after the blaze near Fylingdales in September 2003.

English Heritage archaeologists say the stone was one of 2,400 features uncovered by the fire.

It has a carved zigzag design and has been returned to the ground after being photographed and laser-scanned.

The fire was the biggest on the North York Moors in living memory and destroyed a huge area of heather moorland.

It was thought to have been started by a discarded cigarette in a waste bin on the nearby A171 Scarborough to Whitby road.

Neil Redfern, an English Heritage inspector of ancient monuments, said: "The fire had a devastating impact, but it has also revealed an astonishing archaeological landscape.

"When we stepped over the scorched terrain and reviewed aerial photographs we were confronted by a vast number of features we had no idea existed before.

"To find such well-preserved signs of settlement and human activity over such a long period in such a small area is amazing."

Apart from the stone other finds include Mesolithic flints, 185 carved rocks, old trackways and waterways linked to the alum industry together with slit trenches from World War II when the moor was used as a military training area.

A three-year project to restore the moor's range of habitats for wildlife and plants has been given a £200,000 grant from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The vegetation will also protect the archaeology beneath the ground.

UK Coal rejects talks on takeover

A renewed offer for UK Coal could be made by venture capital group Alchemy Partners, it has emerged.

Alchemy confirmed it had been involved in an earlier takeover approach that was rejected by UK Coal.

The coal producer, based in Doncaster and formerly known as RJB Mining, said on 8 June it had terminated talks with a party it did not identify.

On Thursday, Alchemy said it had asked UK Coal to take part in discussions but it had been turned down.

Alchemy said in a statement: "There can be no certainty that any offer will be made and if made, there can be no certainty as to the terms of any such offer."

£51m losses

It said fundholders advised by Alchemy would provide the equity financing of any new company necessary to make an offer.

UK Coal, which owns seven UK pits, said last week's approach had been subject to pre-conditions and that sufficient clarification had not been received on a number of matters.

Its extensive property interests – valued at £174m in 2002 – are likely to be one of the main reasons for the interest in a firm which in March unveiled losses of £51.6m for its last financial year.

Chief executive Gerry Spindler is looking to lead the company back to profitability by 2006.

Bosnia helps trace tsunami dead

Forensic experts used to identifying bodies from mass graves in Bosnia are turning their expertise to help the Thai government identify victims of the Asian tsunami.

Renee Kosalka, a forensic anthropologist, is scraping the dirt from a bone found in a mass grave near the town of Zvornik in eastern Bosnia.

"It's difficult to say how many bodies are here," she tells me.

"It's a really difficult grave to deal with. It's been disturbed and it's been used as a rubbish tip after the bodies were dumped. Not only that, but we're close to the underground water level."

Ten years after the Bosnian war, mass graves are still being discovered. The remains are usually some jumbled up clothes and jumbled up bones. There are at least another three mass graves within a few hundred metres of this one.

"At this stage, all we can say is that they're mainly young males aged between 15 and their early 20s," says Renee.

And until a few years ago that is about as far as identification would get, investigators having to rely on relatives perhaps identifying some of the clothing in the graves.

But then the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), set up in the aftermath of the war to try to identify thousands of victims, developed special DNA extraction techniques.

Justice

Their expertise has persuaded the government in Thailand to ask ICMP to try to identify up to 2,000 killed by the devastating tsunami at the end of last year.

Bone samples from the victims have already been flown to special laboratories in Bosnia, where ICMP scientists are applying the same techniques they have used for victims of the Bosnian War.

At ICMP headquarters in Sarajevo, the Canadian head of the DNA programme, John Davoren, shows me the techniques that have helped to identify the victims in mass graves.

The extraction of DNA from bones has been traditionally a very difficult process – especially if carried out on a mass scale.

"The bones are cleaned and bar coded. We then extract the DNA from the samples using special chemicals we have developed," says Mr Davoren.

"Once we have the DNA profile we use special computer software to match the DNA profile with the DNA of the relatives of the victims. The results are extremely accurate. We can identify bone samples with an accuracy of about 99.9999%."

The skills pioneered by ICMP have been used by those investigating the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and also in attempts to identify up to a million people missing in Iraq.

At this stage, only the Thai government has formally asked ICMP to get involved in tsunami identification. But other countries in the region are thought to be interested in following their lead.

ICMP's principal mandate is to help identify the victims of war and human rights abuses. But they believe their specifically developed skills can help under different circumstances as well.

"By doing this work, by identifying victims you provide truth, a form of justice and that way you can help stabilise a peace process and hopefully bring some type of reconciliation," says Doune Porter, Director of Communications at ICMP.

And by identifying remains, a certain amount of peace is brought to the relatives of the victims, whether killed in a man-made disaster like the Bosnian war or a natural disaster like the tsunami.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Three share chemistry Nobel Prize

Three scientists have been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for improving a process used in making plastics and pharmaceuticals.

Frenchman Yves Chauvin and Americans Richard Schrock and Robert Grubbs were recognised for their contributions to a reaction process called metathesis.

Their work has made the process of synthesising carbon compounds simpler, more efficient and greener.

Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel founded the prizes in his will written in 1895.

The process of metathesis, or olefin methathesis, allows double bonds to be broken and made between carbon atoms in ways that make atomic groups swap places. The process has been likened to couples changing partners during a dance.

The chemical process takes place with the assistance of special catalyst molecules.

Metathesis is used on a daily basis in the chemical industry, mainly in the production of pharmaceuticals and advanced plastics.

"I am rather embarrassed, because I do not have the true profile," 74-year-old Yves Chauvin, of the French Institute for Petroleum, told Swedish radio after the laureates were announced.

Fundamental impact

Professor Laurence Harwood, an expert in organic chemistry at the University of Reading, UK, told the BBC News website he was "not one bit surprised" by the subjects of this year's prize.

"It is thoroughly deserved," he added. "The olefin metathesis has had a major and fundamental impact on how organic chemists build their molecules.

"Very rarely do people develop new reactions and this one has widespread applications."

The reaction itself was discovered in the 1950s, emerging out of industry. However, though scientists knew it worked, they could not explain how it worked.

They needed to understand the molecular mechanism by which the catalyst sped the reaction along.

Enter Yves Chauvin, who, in 1970, proposed that the catalyst was a metal carbene, or alkylide. He also presented a new mechanism for the way this metal compound functions in the reaction that explained all previous experimental results using metathesis.

Room for improvement

Later on, other researchers were to develop more efficient catalysts for use in metathesis. In 1990, Richard Schrock, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, developed a highly efficient catalyst based on the metal molybdenum.

Another breakthrough came two years later, when Robert Grubbs, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), developed a catalyst based on another metal, ruthenium, which was stable in air.

This has found many applications in science and industry.

In its citation for the 2005 award for chemistry, the Nobel jury declared "fantastic opportunities" had resulted from the trio's work.

Benefits to arise from the findings include advanced herbicides, additives for polymers and fuels, and research into new treatments for bacterial infection, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, migraine and HIV.

Their work has also been a step forward for "green chemistry", reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production.

"Imagination will soon be the only limit to the kind of molecules that could be built in the future," the Nobel jury said.

Ancient church found on jail site

Israeli officials say they have discovered what may be the oldest Christian Church in the Holy Land – on the site of a maximum security prison.

Israel's Antiquities Authority said the church at the Megiddo jail dated back to the third or fourth century AD and was "a once in a lifetime find".

It contained a mosaic bearing the name of Jesus Christ in ancient Greek, fish murals and an altar, officials said.

The dig took place near the biblical site of Armageddon in northern Israel.

'Great discovery'

"This is a once in a lifetime find and the inscriptions are very rare," excavation supervisor Jotham Tefer told Israel's Channel Two television.

"This is a very ancient structure, maybe the oldest in our area," he said.

Mr Tefer added that the discovery could help shed new light on an important period of Christianity, which was banned by the Romans until the fourth century.

"Normally we have from this period in our region historical evidence from literature, not archaeological evidence," he said.

"There is no structure you can compare it to, it is a very unique find."

The Vatican's ambassador to Israel, Pietro Sambi, described the find as a "great discovery".

According to Christian tradition Megiddo will be the site of Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil on the Day of Judgement.

A field of dreams?

It's like another gold rush, but is the race to grow crops for bio fuels such a field of dreams?

In the flatlands of the American interior, grain is flying off the fields. Corn, wheat and barley are thrashing through combines.

And to watch the farmers behind the harvest, you would think you were on Wall Street instead of Green Acres. Members of the boots-and-baseball hat crowd sound more like tassel-loafed brokers on a binge, spinning straw into gold. And in a sense, they are.

Welcome to the latest field of dreams. Farm prices have not been so high in a generation. Wheat has more than tripled from the price of a few years ago. Corn is up 80% or more.

I bring you this news from the farm, not as a discourse on why breakfast cereal may soon cost a bit more. But rather, consider this as another variation of the old saw about being careful what you wish for. Or perhaps it's simply a tale of supply-and-demand economics.

For years people in rural America have been touting ethanol as the best path to energy independence. It's easy to make. It's just refined alcohol, usually processed from corn.

There's a seemingly endless supply of it. It doesn't involve sending billions to foreign despots. It doesn't release as much carbon into the atmosphere as petrol-based fuels do. And for years, most everyone else rolled their eyes and continued to fill up their SUVs with cheap gasoline, ignoring ethanol.

It was a niche, at best. A political bargaining chip for farm states during presidential election years. See Iowa and ethanol – two words that tumble out of the mouths of political candidates with quadrennial regularity. But as oil prices have crept past $80 a barrel, that fuel from the farm started to look a lot better.

At the same time came hefty tax breaks, government mandates to quadruple ethanol production and Wall Street venture capital sniffing around the edges of the prairie. Just like that, the old scarecrow patch became a lot more profitable.

Now 129 plants are making ethanol, mostly in small towns dotting the American mid-section, and another 80 are under construction. Half the states in the US have ethanol plants and it may soon be the leading producer in the world of this home-grown fuel – right up there with Brazil, which makes its fuel from sugar cane.

Moonshine

That ka-ching you heard was coming from farmers making high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain. In their vision there will soon be a "grass station" in every town, powering a fleet of new cars running on bio fuels.

What's left over might even be used for traditional moonshine. That is, grain alcohol. A plant in small-town Minnesota does just that, producing a high-end vodka in addition to several million gallons of transportation fuel.

One of the farmers I spoke to in the Interior West, a fellow named Read Smith, brought up the other reason people who work the land are so excited about ethanol: the prospect of a renaissance in rural America.

An evangelist for ethanol, Smith was so excited I had to check for dirt under his fingernails to make sure he was a farmer. Towns, now dying, would get a fresh lease on life through ethanol, he said.

The shuttered factory could re-open, with minimal investment, as a farmer-owned refinery, taking Jed's corn to make Jeremy's tractor fuel. Young people, now leaving in droves, would stay behind, lured by the promise of a new, $700bn-a-year industry.

On top of that is the draw of economic nationalism. Not long ago I drove through a small town in Missouri, where a new ethanol plant is the pride of the community.

A yard sign, showing a picture of corn, a gas pump and the American flag, carried the slogan: Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country. The not-so-subtle implication, which you hear farmers mention time and again is – stick it to those Arab oil billionaires.

The goal of the ethanol enthusiasts is to have farmers and foresters produce 25% of American energy by the year 2025. As it stands, the US now makes about six billion gallons of ethanol. It's barely enough to replace a mere 4% of the nation's gasoline consumption. And most of that is used in blends.

The "Big Vision" sounds wonderful to farmers who have long complained about bad weather, bad prices, bad rural economics, bad global economics, or some combination of woe.

Protests

Hard times in the wide open spaces date to the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s. Since then, more than half of the counties in the western Great Plains have lost population – a steady drip, drip, drip of out-migration and loss. Banks are boarded up. Stores are shuttered. Schools are closed, never again to hold a child's voice.

So, you can see why ethanol is greeted as the salvation of the rural economy. But reality has intruded. This new fuel, after all, comes from food. Corn is used for everything from cereal to soda pop. Corn fattens hogs and chickens and cattle. So, of course, as the demand for corn in bio fuel has soared so too have food prices.

This makes corn farmers happy, but everybody else in the food production chain is not. Earlier this year there were large protests in Mexico by people who claimed that ethanol demand had caused tortilla prices to double.

Whether ethanol is truly to blame for higher food prices is debatable. No one ever thought it would take off this quickly and the market may be in for a settling, which will level prices. Still, enough economists say there is a lesson here – you can't have your fuel and your food come from the same source.

Also, environmentalists have weighed in, pointing out that while ethanol is much cleaner than fuels that come from oil, it is not the panacea for global warming.

The process of converting fields into corn and then into fuel requires intensive amounts of fertiliser and old-fashioned petrol in the refining – ultimately adding to the carbon in the atmosphere.

A cleaner method – the sort of Holy Grail of ethanol – is the process of making fuel from straw, or field waste, or wood chips. This is not a pipe dream. It can be done, as a small plant in Canada and other projects in Europe have demonstrated.

But the price, for now at least, is prohibitive because the processing is so much more difficult, although the hope is that costs will come down.

And of course, big oil has cast its shadow over the "field of ethanol dreams". The oil industry initially tried to get in on the boom. Most ethanol plants are now farmer-owned co-ops. The little guy can actually produce ethanol cheaper than the big guy.

Failing to get a toehold on the farm, the oil industry has since funded an anti-ethanol campaign. All sorts of so-called "experts" – many, it turns out, on the payrolls of oil companies – have been sounding alarms about bio fuels. But to be fair, some oil companies are still trying to partner with ethanol producers.

Cold and fallow

But perhaps the biggest blow yet has come from the free market. If it looked like a good thing to plough up prairie grass and plant corn for the ethanol boom in Kansas, it also looked the same way in Missouri, or Idaho.

I met a farmer outside the one-stoplight town of Burley, in the high desert of the Interior West, who told me he was going to rip out all his hay, which requires very little care, and plant a special kind of corn so he can make a killing in the ethanol boom.

Yes, sir, he told me – it's a sure thing. Right. Just like all gold rushes. Now, guess what? There's a glut. In fact, there's a huge glut.

Farmers and the small towns that service them built their refineries nearly overnight. But at the other end – cars that use ethanol, stations that pump it and actual consumers who will trade in their gas-fired rides for moonshine motors – they have not kept up.

So, while food prices remain high, ethanol prices are trending downward, off nearly 30% on the spot market since May. So, is this the beginning of the end of the big ethanol dream? Killed, just as it got going?

Most farm economists say no – ethanol will find its place. Now, maybe it won't replace all the imported oil – more than half of US consumption – and maybe it won't save the planet. Such overstatements, critics believe, set ethanol up for a fall to begin with.

But even if we can't farm our way to energy independence, it's a start toward a more local energy economy – connecting consumers to producers.

That may be enough to keep people on the land, people who dream of putting something in the ground just as it goes cold and fallow. Because, more than anything else, they are farming tomorrow.

Below is a selection of your comments.

Brazil has been doing this for decades, ever since they stopped supplying the USA with unfairly-traded sugar and decided to turn it into motor fuel. Why hasn't the world followed? Might it have something to do with the fact that "ethanol" is the same stuff that the food and drink industry calls "alcohol" or "spirits"? For centuries the distillation of spirits has been tightly controlled, with bonded warehouses and Customs and Excise inspections. To see the rise of a parallel industry producing the same stuff in massive quantities without the same controls must be daunting to our tax officials. But if the alternative is climate change from burning fossil fuel and our boys dying in Iraq in a vain attempt to guard our oil supplies, why don't our ministers tell HM Customs & Excise to exercise a little imagination over the problems involved?
Ian Clark, Whitby, England

Calculate the amount of land needed to produce even 10% of a country's current oil consumption and for many – like the African continent, already unable to feed itself, you will see the physical impossibility of making even a minor contribution to its total needs. Remove the subsidies then see what happens.
T B Muckle, KENYA

Bio fuels are a great boom for the Mid West states but at what cost. That tractor that plows the field is run on Diesel the plant runs on various oil products either to add to the ethanol or to run the plant such as the electricty it need to run. Then when we have a completed product it is put in a Diesel run truck to transport to the station. Now how about those grass lands that are set aside because they clean the ground water that is used for drinking and to water and other uses if we dig this up the aqua fur will no longer have a recharge zone. I grew up in the Iowa and i know how much this new means to the people in all of the mid west so i hope we can find ways to make this truly the fuel to atleast in part replace the oil that comes from the middle east and put the money back in our pockets.
Mark D, Austin USA

Do you want to pay $12.00 for a loaf of bread? Farmers want to max proffit potential, so growing fule may pay more than growing food and produces more pollution overall than what we have now.
Alistair Aldridge, Markham, Canada

It is fine until we can't afford the high price of food and we will have to compromise by not buying fuel
Brian Allman, Hyde Cheshire

BioFuels see to be the latest buzz work and will probably become a "gold rush" with farmers switching to growing biofuel crops instead of typical food crops (e.g. carrots). Eventually I can see certain food prices rising, likee bread or flour, as this will be diverted for fuel production. Mind you at least there will be more than enough Bio-Ethanol available to make starving to death once hell of a party!
Corsa Driver, Norfolk, UK

Degradation of arable land; wheat prices at record high; starving people. Growing crops for fuel is the dummest idea I have ever heard.
Joe H, Guildford

Although I welcome any idea that replaces petrol use with 'greener' fuel, I think that one of the reasons why we are being repeatedly disappointed by other fuels is that we are expecting them to work exactly the same way that petrol does. The sooner we go back to the drawing boards and find alternative ways to power our transport without pumping it into an internal combustion engine the better. Using any fuel that is farmed like corn will have an impact on the diet of someone elsewhere. This question and answer is all about looking at the problem in a new way rather than trying to fit a new fuel into the gap left by petrol or diesel.
Heather, Willenhall

As the farmers rip out yet more hedges and biodiversity to extract yet more money from the ground they are industrially and mechanically estranged from is there really any difference between these "modern" farmers and the slash and burners of the amazon? How much has the EEC agricultural policy contributed to global warming? History points to the eco collapse of ancient Egypt and Greece and their civilization demise. Should we subsidize the destruction of nature or should we only subsidize ecological growth? This means reduction of pesticides and nitrates drastically and growing natural field boundary of a biologically usefull density and spread.
themosthandsomemanever, UK

What about the billions of poor people in the world with no food to eat? Now the rich people can grab away food from their plates and burn it (literally) in their SUVs!
Abhishek Rawat, Pune India

Rainwater plan for Jersey Royals

Rainwater could be collected and used to wash next season's crop of Jersey Royal potatoes.

Scottish company A Bartlett and Sons has bought land at Haut Du Mont farm in Trinity and applied for permission to build a water treatment plant.

The environmentally friendly project would involve gathering rainwater from the plant's roofs which would be treated and used to wash the potatoes.

The soil from the potatoes would then go back onto the land.

Ronnie Bartlett, the company's managing director, said rainwater gives the famous potatoes an even better taste.

Fresh and fast

"Jersey's are such a fantastic product and one of the best in the UK, but we've got to make sure we're giving the consumer a better product," he told BBC News.

"Some people in Cornwall might want Cornish and people in Scotland want Ayrshires, but everyone in the UK wants Jerseys.

"By washing and packing the potatoes right there on the island, they're fresher and we can get them to the consumer more quickly."

Mr Bartlett, whose vegetable company is based in Airdrie, is hopeful planners will give their consent in time for next season's crop.

Jersey Royals are the island's highest crop export. The seasonal average for production is about 45,000 tonnes of which 99% is exported to mainland Britain.

At the peak of production in May, up to 1,500 tonnes are exported daily.