- Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have been pushing nations to play a disruptive game with food chain. The recent Indian government policy to raise the level of ethanol blending in petrol to 20% by 2025 needs an immediate serious rethink. Sugarcane, rice and maize are the three agriculture commodities which have the potential for manufacturing ethanol. Currently a portion of sugarcane is the primary source for the current volume of ethanol. Diverting rice and maize in to ethanol value chain could be disastrous. These crops already have committed demand for food, feed and other purposes. Committing additional land resources for these commodities is another challenge due to paucity of agriculture land and also sugarcane and rice need large volume of water. Maize is consumed by poultry and start hunting manufacturer and already they are in short supply.
An alternate solution is the need of the hour and solutions may lie in other technologies for manufacturing ethanol – farm waste to ethanol could be a case to explore in this regard.