More and more farmers are growing canola to supply the country’s burgeoning biofuel market.

Biodiesel New Zealand general manager, Andrew Simcock, says the industry is now planting more canola than ever before and that it is now producing and selling double the volume of biofuel.

He says farmers are reaping multiple advantages from growing the crop.

“One year in three is a good combination for canola. It conditions the soil it’s got a long tap root, canola, so it breaks the soil, and while it’s not nitrogen fixing, the woody mass goes back into the land, or can go back into the land.

Andrew Simcock says as a brassica it breaks up, particularly in the South Island, where the wheat farmers require a disease crop.

He says that over time he expects farmers to be tapped into supplying canola for transport fuel rather than the traditional market.”

Just last week the Reserve Bank said biofuels are driving up the price of food.

The Bank said the trend of diverting food crops to fuel has led to increased demand and prices for crops and quoted studies which questioned biofuel’s efficiency.

A 2009 United Nations study found that just one tank of biofuel in a large SUV used the same amount of corn needed to feed a human for a year.  

Andrew Simcock says that is happoening overseas with a food versus fuel mentality and model but in New Zealand we have a food and fuel strategy.

“By putting in the canola we also produce high-protein cake when we press the seed. So what happens there is we produce quite a lot of animal feed and the oil is part of that mix.

“Now the oil can either go into fuel but a portion might also go into the food oil mix as well."