177 comments on Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
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177 comments on Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
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do you know the incremental yield on irrigated crops vs dry land farming, on average?
irrigation was a big part of the paper a colleague and I have pending publication called "Burning Water - The Energy Return on Water Invested" - using irrigated water numbers, the best biofuels required 10 times the water input as the most water intensive fossil fuel. But I couldnt find much data on large scale dryland farming, that also included fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
I don't know about an average. Clearly, there are quite a few places where the yield would be zero without irrigation, and can be quite good with irrigation.
I found this Colorado USDA publication. It says that in 2005 in Colorado, the average yield of irrigated corn was 184.0 bushels per acre, while the average yield of the dryland corn was 38.5 bushels per acre.