Large-scale plantations

In spite of the lessons from Jari, other large scale plantation development plans continue in the Brazilian Amazon. If developed, the Grande Carajas Program would consume large areas of tropical forest in the eastern Amazon in order to obtain charcoal for the smelting of pig-iron from the Carajas mines. The area of Eucalyptus plantation to produce the required amount of charcoal would be over 700,000 ha-more than 10 times the area of E. deglupta already cultivated in the Jari Project (Feamside 1989). 

Large-scale biomass production will come at a considerable cost to the society. We have already given an order of magnitude estimate for wood plantations. When biomass raw material is processed that competes with the food chain, as vegetable oils and sugars, the situation is even worse. For instance Smil [4] mentions that if the US vehicles were to run solely on corn derived ethanol the country would have to plant corn on an area 20% larger than is currently cropland . 

It should be noted that large scale land use, whether for agriculture or for energy plantation purposes, raises environmental issues. 

The flavor and fragrance industry has expanded so much that the plants required to supply the raw materials are now grown on a very large scale. Examples are the peppermint and spearmint plantations in the United States, the lavandin plantations in southern France and the cornmint plantations in China and India. 

In the period 1700 to 1900, the production of what came to be known as natural indigo was carried out on a very large scale. The indigo plant was cultivated in enormous plantations, chiefly in India and the countries of South-East Asia and America. As much as one square kilometer was needed to obtain a tonne of indigo a year [2], The reason for such a high land requirement was simply that the plant material contains barely 1 % of the dye s precursor indican, the rest being biomass. 

This chapter considers large-scale industrial tree plantations, as well as small- and medium-scale plantations for timber and land rehabilitation. Aspects that influence plantation sustainability are emphasized, and suggestions are given regarding plantation design and management. 

The yields from intensively cultured plantations are considerably greater than those from natural stands of similar tree species. It must be emphasized, however, that many of the reported plantation yields are from small study plots and indicate what is biologicaly possible. To project such yields over a larger area may be inappropriate. Several studies in Wisconsin, South Carolina and Georgia (26,27,28) are currently underway to determine the feasibility of intensive plantation culture on a large scale. 

It is now convincing that palm oil products are attractive renewable resources for the production of PHA. In order to ensure sufficient supply of this raw material for large-scale production of PHA, we should first take into account the amount of palm oil products generated in Malaysia every year. The data should include the net balance of global trade (import and export) and existing demand of end users. It was estimated that to produce 5,000 tons of PHA annually, approximately 7,000 tons of soybean oil were required with more than 150 batches of fermentation run (Akiyama et al. 2003). At the moment, this set of simulation is by far the closest and most relevant to the PHA fermentation from palm oil. Over the past decade, the average yield of palm oil on plantations has been measured at 3.8 tons per ha (Murphy 2007). Therefore, in order to produce 1 million tons of PHA, 450,000 ha of oil palm plantation is required. Hence, more lands have to be reclaimed to pave the way for new oil pahn plantation in order to produce more oil. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that the yield of oil could be doubled by... 

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