krazygluon

I doubt that'll succeed. cannabis is one highly diverse plant. we've had some fungal-scares with other crops (like chocolate) in the past that were usually always the result of monocropping and low diversity of a species.

see, I know people who've done some economic studies comparing the amish and other low-tech present day agrarian societies to modern agribuisness. The funny result is that the amish make more money per acre than an agribuisness does, they just have a high enough concentration of workers per acre that the money goes back into those people's lives.

actually a large amount of that price is the result of government price manipulation. (they keep the production of oilseeds down so that the farmers growing the stuff actually make more than 3 cents per gallon of the finished product. cost-analysis studies done on the actual costs to make and sell oilseeds show that you could easily offer $3 a gallon, maybe cheaper biodiesel.

yes, certainly and undoubtedly yes. unfortunately we still need electricity, public transit and long distance transit; which means we still need an arseload of energy. My biofuels advocacy comes from this: all the energy we've ever gotten is trickle-down (via physical or chemical processes) solar energy. knowing that, I think plants are probably the best solar collectors we've got. (yes, supposedly the efficiency of newer solar cells would beat any acre of plants, but solar cells require VERY energy intensive
and pollutive manufacturing processes, whereas plants can be grown in a very environmentally safe, very low energy input situation)

of course, corn comparatively sucks per acre for oil production. canola and soy are the highest sources per acre in the north american and european climates. further south there's all sorts of oil-rich plants, some of which are trees that can be grown year in year out without heavy tillage.

the people that write all this "biofuels will never make it" write from a very shortsighted perspective wherein they don't see much social technological or methodological change occuring. of course you can't support the american SUV fleet with biofuels. I don't think any biofuel advocate ever said that (if they did, they were definitely bordering on lunacy) I do think you can support some kind of relatively technological society on a diverse blend of biofuels,wind,hydroelectric,geothermal and the other greener sources of alternative energy. But I doubt cars will play much if any role in such a world.