A comparative study of the land required for food and cooking fuel in rural India

Land is a limited resource that provides food and cooking fuel to the rural population. In this paper, we determine the land required for food production and compare it with the land required for cooking fuel (i.e. fuelwood) for six different regions of India. We use regional data to assess the land requirements for both food and fuelwood. Dietary patterns and agricultural yields are the major drivers of land demand for food production. The average land requirement for food is about 1000 m(2)/cap/yr, but the values range between 800-1300m(2)/cap/yr. The greatest proportion of this land requirement is for cereals, especially rice and wheat. Determining the land needed for cooking fuel requires biomass productivity and fuelwood use. We found that the average land requirement for fuelwood is about 3 to 7 times larger than the area required to produce food. Thus, there is a wide disparity in land demand between all the regions of India. Dietary change is not an option as rural inhabitants are already consuming less than their urban counterparts. Changes to cooking fuels could be another option. This comparative study shows the high demand for land for cooking fuel in comparison to food. It implies that, from a land requirement perspective, reducing the fuelwood consumption and shifting to a more efficient cooking fuel would be a better option

Alternative energy supply system to a rural village in Ethiopia

Abstract Background Most households in rural developing countries do not have access to modern energy supply. Household level biogas energy was considered as an option but failed due to lack of sufficient resources for its installation and operation. A community energy system can be an option, but most studies focused on off-grid electricity. This energy system cannot be a realistic option particularly for cooking demand. An efficient and suitable system matching local resources and demand expectation needs to be developed which this study focuses on assessing. Biogas and solar energy technologies are viable to establish such kind of a system since they can be converted to different forms of energy. Therefore, this study aims to determine efficient biogas and solar energy production and utilization options for small scale village energy application in rural Ethiopia. Methods The efficiencies of the production and utilization options are determined based on the system configurations involving resource, conversion, and utilization combination models. We used local resources, data, and relevant literature information for the system analysis. Results The analysis shows that most energy is needed in the form of heat for cooking and a smaller part in the form of electricity (about 10%). The community waste stream converted to biogas will be enough for cooking, but not enough biogas is left to produce enough electricity. Co-digesting altogether provides biogas that can meet only about 75% of the electricity demand. Concentrated solar cookers can be an alternative for cooking in areas where installation of biogas is not possible. About 2-m2 size solar concentrator is sufficient to meet each household’s cooking energy demand. The lighting and appliance energy demand can be met with photovoltaic (PV) energy produced with reasonably sized panels. However, the use of electrical energy for cooking produced with PV cannot be an economic option with the available technologies. Conclusions The community energy system involving anaerobic co-digestion (biogas) and/or solar energy technologies is viable to meet the demand when efficient production and conversion is made based on specific local resource supply and demand