oil seed rape.

if farmers were allowed to plant oil seed rape on land normally laid fallow for the year, we would be able to make biofuels more available and practical, and thus reduce the carbon footprint our vehicles create. incidentally, my hometown, bishops castle, was the first town in the uk to have biofuel (in the form of reclaimed chip fat) available at the petrol station.

however,
biofuel is not a long-term answer to our pollution problems. our farming practices are overly-intensive as it is, and more fields should be laid fallow more often and fertilised using organic fertilisers such as the household turd. fields are rarely left fallow as it is, farmers choosing to fertilise using industrial fertiliser that not only is hellish in the long-term for the environment, it also creates a lot of carbon in it's production.

but,
as mentioned above, biofuels are not a long-term answer, just a temporary measure, and should be treated as such. the big-oil companies that jump on the "green" bandwagon for popularities sake should be directing what little and half-arsed research they put into biofuel production and development elsewhere; alternative modes of transport than the combustion of organic fuel in exchange for motion. ethanol-burning cars do produce less carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, but they create more than 20 times more acetaldehyde (even it's name sounds ugly) than conventional petrol and diesel engined-cars. acetaldehyde reacts with sunlight to form ozone, eventually. bad joo-joo.

it seems to me like the only way we're going to make any sort of dent in the damage our existence has caused the earth is by becoming fully self-sustainable, self-propelled people. this might mean a social regression of sorts, but in my opinion this can only be a good thing. at least, a better thing than the thing we have now. we might be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but late's better than never.

technical information:
7 vertical shots stitched together using arcsoft's panoramamaker software, levels edited and colour adjusted, 3 layers created, one masked for sky detail, one masked for path detail, one manually burned and dodged layer for foregroud contrast. olympus e500, 17.5-45mm zuiko lens.