SHI Yuanchun
Based on the viewpoint of agricultural history, the author proposed a concept of "Whole Biomass Agriculture" that is contrary to the traditional agriculture whose biomass harvest only used by about half in forms of seeds, fruits, meets, eggs and milk, in the past thousands of years. In traditional agriculture, the residues and excretion of livestock are mere agro-wastes, on the contrary, modern bioconversion technologies could convert them and all available biomass into bioenergy and bio-based materials, and receives much value-add benefits. Such model of agriculture can tap new resources from wastes even pollutants through recycling process, and realize "winwin" results of substances reutilization and environmental protection. Bioenergy and bio-based materials are made from crop straw, livestock excretion, forestry residues, organic wastes of processing industry, MSW, as well as energy plants grown on marginal land. Such a "nonfood″ biomass system is of same nature of life process as common agriculture, with biological production and bioproducts as its system functions. It is then suggested that ″non-food″ biomass should be involved in modern agricultural production system, and promotes "Half Biomass Agriculture" or "Part Biomass Agriculture" into "Whole Biomass Agriculture" or "Biomass All-Used Agriculture". Five 'non-food' biomass industry chains and growth points that could be commercialization were also proposed in the paper.
