If Biofuels could grow like weeds…

This is by SCOTT CANON of the The Kansas City Star: "There was a time when planting Johnson grass in the United States seemed like a good idea. Brought from the Mediterranean in the early 1800s as a forage crop, Johnson grass practically planted itself. Its leaves could stretch 10 feet high. It adapted easily to virtually the entire continent. Which turned out to be precisely the problem. Today it’s a scourge, a fast-growing grass that crowds out native plants and forces farmers to spend billions in a losing anti-weed battle. And it offers a lesson for agricultural scientists looking for the right plant to convert into renewable fuels like ethanol. Preferably, the plant would produce a maximum of bio fuel with a minimum of effort. Ideally, it would flourish without fertilizers, be a perennial that shoots back to life on its own every spring and require little more than that a farmer cut it down and haul it to an ethanol plant. Like Johnson grass...." OR , says Spigot, like Dagga… think about it. It grows like hell in KwaZulu Natal, the former Transkei and Swaziland. No one need be trained to grow it. There already exists a sub-continent-wide distribution system. All we need is a genetically-modified version which contains no cannabinoids and we have a "green" solution to our energy problem, a brand new source of tax revenue and -- at a stroke -- a legitimate new industry employing thousands. Oh, and the fibre can make rope, and virtually indestructible cloth. Now Spigot knows there is some ongoing research into a drug free verion of dagga, but why the hell isn't money being thrown at it?