New biorefineries and sustainable agriculture: Increased food, biofuels, and ecosystem security

Abstract

The sustainability revolution is the defining challenge of our time to meet increasing needs in the energy−food−water nexus without compromising the ability of next generations. To feed the world, modern agriculture is primarily based on annual grain crops that replace native perennial plant communities on most of the arable land on the planet. This practice may not be sustainable due to high inputs of fresh water, fertilizers, and herbicides; soil erosion; and runoff water pollution. Recent biotechnology breakthroughs enable the fractionation of nonfood lignocellulosic biomass to multiple components, the conversion of nonfood cellulose to starch without sugar loss, the production of in vitro meat without slaughtering livestock, and the production of healthy oil from microbes, suggesting great opportunities of new biorefineries based on nonfood biomass. Perennial plant communities have higher biomass yield per hectare, have easily resource management, store more carbon, maintain better water quality, utilize nutrients more efficiently, tolerate more extreme weather events, and resist pests better than annual crops. Sustainable agriculture based on annual grains and perennial high-biomass yield plants along with new biorefineries could produce a myriad of products from biofuels (e.g., butanol and hydrogen), biomaterials, to food/feed. Sustainable agriculture and new biorefineries could be cornerstones of the coming sustainability revolution based on the most abundant renewable bioresource−biomass.