Biofuel Plants

I use google reader as a way to keep up on the news from places such as Psychology Today, National Geographic, Discovery, and Scientific American. I found an interesting video about the Jatropha plant. At the bottom of the video it displays

Jatropha, a hardy biofuel plant grown in salty soils near the Indian Ocean, may reduce biofuels' competition with food-producing crops, industry officials say.

If this plant in fact can produce mass quantities of ethanol and reduce the use of corn it could drive down food costs and end the food riots that are going on currently. According to Circle Biodiesel & Ethanol Corporation these Jatropha plants are resistant to drought and produce seeds that contain 40% Jatropha oil. This corporation has also done research into the use of algae to produce biofuels. They state that one of their machines runs for 195,000 US dollars (which is probably 1 day in iraq) and it can produce 1 gallon per minute. They have containers in which algae can be grown, but the use of algae would also be a way to clean up lakes, streams, oceans and pretty much all water sources since some algae blooms are caused from runoff pollution from fertilizers and farm waste.

Some species of algae are so rich in oil that it accounts for over 50% of their mass, which means not counting the water, which is over 90% of the algae. It is believed that the majority of oil and natural gas originates from algae in ancient oceans.

With an economy in an economic slump one would think we would be investing more into these resources, for one it would produce thousands of jobs. You have to have "farms" to grow the algae, people to transport it, people to run the machines that transform the algae into usable fuel, to bottle it up for transport, etc. etc. Also if oil companies should be looking more into these resources because their product is going to be a thing of the past, and the costs are already too high