[Stoves] ETHOS program growing firewood

Anand Karve adkarve at gmail.com
Fri Nov 29 21:39:56 CST 2013


Dear Bob Lange and Stovers,
I am a plant physiologist. I won't mind attending Ethos Meeting if somebody
pays me my air fare and local expenses.
The high energy in seeds and tubers that you mention has nothing to do with
the physical calorific value of these substances. They have a high content
of digestible matter so that the energy becomes available to you, when you
eat them. Burning sugar, starch, cellulose or lignin would release about
the same quantity of energy per unit weight. Because cellulose and lignin
are not digestible to humans, the straw and stover from crop plants,
constituting about 60 to 70% of the total biomass, is available to the
farmer to be used as fuel. It must however be processed to increase its
energy density to resemble that of wood.
Yours
A.D.Karve



On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 5:09 PM, <rbtvl at aol.com> wrote:

> I think we should invite a plant physiologist to come to ETHOS to explain
> why  we should not focus on getting people to grow their own fuel.   Plants
> are living things. In the first place they are not very efficient at all in
> catching the energy in sun light.  But what they do catch they put mostly
> into metabolism and reproduction.   Like us animals.  That is why we eat
> seeds.   They are loaded with energy that the plant put there for their
> young to use until the little ones can photosynthesize for themselves.
> Mammals use the mother's milk   Plants use their seeds.  (Some animals, not
> mammals, use eggs for reproduction.  So we eat eggs.)
>
> If you are rural and poor and have a little land and sufficient water, you
> will almost certainly want to grow food itself rather than fire wood.
> no?  Fire wood is very demanding of land area.   You can be clever and
> minimize it. This species that species.    but it is land expensive.
> Because the part of the plant you burn for fuel is not important to the
> plant, except to support its leaves.  so the  plant puts minimal energy
> there.
>
> If growing fuel wood is going to be taken seriously, it should be a
> government task.  Local or national  government.   Centralize it.   Do it
> big and well on land that individual families don't need to grow food
> itself.  do it on land that is difficult to use for other things.  On the
> sides of hills.  someplace useless.  someplace rocky.  Make it a campaign
> in the Global Alliance's "enabling environment".
>
> Funny, but the problem is that people cook so much.   What we need are
> more species of plants and animals that produce parts that we could find
> nourishing and tasty and desirable without cooking at all.   Damn it.   Why
> do we have to heat up food so much?   Maybe soak the food in some liquid
> like fruit juice or spices some natural acid for all day and then serve
> it.   I know cooking has a very significant role in make food culturally
> and physiologically acceptable.   But If only we could find more foods that
> were good for us, culturally and physiologically, but eaten raw.  That
> would be real stove progress.  I personally like to eat almost all
> vegetables raw.   even beans and corn.  I don't know if I am throwing away
> a lot of their nutrition, though.
>
> Bob Lange    Maasai stoves and solar.
>
>
>
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-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
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