The aviation industry is threatening farmland with its plan to power aircraft with sustainable aviation fuel from biomass, a Canadian farmers’ advocate told a recent industry conference.
He was referring to plans to ramp up production of agricultural feedstocks—including crops like corn, soy, and canola—to make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The aviation industry plans to use SAF to meet government targets for achieving a net-zero economy by 2050, claiming that SAF produces fewer emissions then current fossil-based aviation fuel.
“There simply isn’t enough farmland, biomass, soil, water, or productive capacity to supply SAF feedstocks in the quantities proposed,” Darrin Qualman, director of climate crisis policy and action at the National Farmers Union of Canada, told participants of this year’s Sustainable Aviation Futures North America conference in Houston, Texas.
“To try to do so risks triple failure: failing to actually decarbonize aviation, failing to ensure food security, and failing to safeguard our farmland and our besieged biosphere.”
Airlines have set their site on producing fuel from agricultural feedstocks like crop residues, and “purpose-grown energy crops” like fast-growing grasses and farmed trees. There are also plans for synthetically-produced liquid hydrocarbon fuels from air and water.
But Qualman cited statistics showing that the electricity demand needed to deliver that output is currently untenable.
SAF currently supplies a small portion of aviation fuel—according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), 2024 production will triple to just 1.5 million tonnes, or barely 0.5% of total jet fuel needs. But with aviation emissions on track to double by 2050, Qualman said airlines will need more than 130 billion gallons/492 billion litres of fuel per year by that time. The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates [pdf] an even higher total, around 230 billion gallons, and IATA puts the mid-century requirement at 165 billion gallons.
According to Qualman, supplying just half of that SAF from crops would require one to two billion tonnes of biomass per year, which would mean diverting a vast amount of farmland to growing SAF feedstocks.
Proponents say alternative fuels are needed because the aviation sector is difficult to electrify. They claim SAF emissions can be up to 80% lower than fossil jet fuels, as crops grown for feedstock sequester the carbon that is later emitted by burning the fuel. SAF also produces lower levels of particulates that can add to climate impacts beyond those caused by carbon dioxide, says the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
However, S&P Global has also reported that allocating land to expand SAF production could strain food supplies—and therefore push up food prices—while causing more forested areas to be cleared for crops. And the World Resources Institute raises doubts about SAF’s carbon footprint, saying its emissions are even worse than the fossil alternatives across the entire lifecycle, while using land for SAF feedstock could increase hunger and habitat destruction.
“Removing trillions of tons of biomass from the world’s farmlands will slow soil carbon sequestration and create soil health risks,” Qualman told the conference.
“Energy crops will require many millions of acres to produce and will compete with food crops and drive up grocery store prices.”
