Ethanol Calculations
According to the APAS feasibility study
(pdf) a 15 million litre ethanol plant, coupled with a 28,000 head cattle feedlot would require:
- the output of 70,000 productive acres.
- 40,000 tonnes of wheat for production of ethanol (1.5 million bushels),
- 25,000 tonnes of barley for feedlot (1,2 million bushels),
- 20,000 tonnes of silage for feedlot,
- 6,000 round straw bales for feedlot at full capacity every year.
The feedlot will produce
- almost 58,000 tonnes of manure every year.
- Spread at the rate of 35 tonnes per acre, over 1,600 acres of land can have fertilizer applied in the form of manure.
According to Statistics Canada:
In 2006:
- Canadians burned nearly 40 billion litres of gasoline
- Canadian farmers produced 26,000,000 tonnes of wheat
- Canadian farmers produced 10,000,000 tonnes of barley
- Canadian farmers raised 14.3 million head of cattle
Canada's agricultural land base is just over 67.6 million hectares (167 million acres)
E85 Requirements
To replace 85% of Canada’s gasoline usage with ethanol would take 34,000,000,000 litres of ethanol. If produced according to the wheat feedstock/cattle feedlot integrated business model, it would require:
- 94% of our farmland (156,844,000 acres),
- three times our current wheat production, (to 90,644,000 tonnes)
- all of our current barley production (11,322,000 tonnes)
- a four-fold increase in the cattle herd. (to 63,466,666 head)