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The 9RX will be available in four models from 470 to 620 hp. These models are powered by the John Deere PowerTech PSS 13.5-liter engine and the Cummins QSX15 engine. ... The tractors weigh in at 60,000 pounds and come ballasted and ready to work. The smallest 9RX - the 9470RX - starts at $497,645 and the largest four-track - the 9620RX - comes in at $574,786. John Deere 9RX

Every aspect of the engine and transmission is computer controlled in high end tractors. The biggest reason this is an issue is because farmers are often working with windows of opportunity of days, a few hours can be the difference between getting a crop in the ground before it rains or having to wait for a couple weeks. These guys are spending a half a million dollars for a machine that might only get a 100 hours on the clock each year, waiting for an authorized tech for an hour cost $5,000.00 in lost usage.

Now that was an idiotic response.. corn is a BASE grain that is used for many products that enter the food supply!!!

Ethanol also DECREASES gasolne efficiency, Petroleum is the most efficient gas right now, when something comes along that surpasses that efficiency the Free Market will switch.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid= /templatedata/ag/story/data/1173795045162.xml&catr ef=ag1001

You must be new here. Here's the most recent stuff:

Argonne Study
Story explainaing the results

This link provides dozens of sources on either side of the issue. The "sides" are David Pimentel on one side vs. Everyone Else on the other side.

Not only are Pimental's figures grossly incorrect for corn, but there are much more efficient feedstocks that blow them completely out of the water.

This doesn't even account for ethanol from cellulose. If we can devise a way to efficiently break cellulose down to sugar, then ethanol become trivial to produce.

Holy shit, of course you do! Then you go get funding for the next thing by saying 'My team cured Cancer, fuck you'. Do you really think Bruce Willis auditions anymore?

Bruce Willis has never, AFAIK, cured a major illness - he brings his (successful) name to a project, and that's all the studios really want.

OT, I accidentally pressed both mouse buttons while typing this reply in firefox, and it opens up file:/// (showing the root filesytem in linux). Is this a bug ? Strangely, when I try it again, it opens up http://www.agriculture.com/ which I'm pretty sure I've never been to before. odd.

Sure, here's a lot of links for you to read over :) .

Some links are by obviously biased parties (for example, NCGA is the National Corn Growers Association). Others are not. This is just a start, of course - I gathered these in about three minutes of searching. Again, if you can find a single "net negative" study done by anyone - university, corn-industry, government, environmental group, anyone really - that didn't have Pimental and his bad data involved, please let me know, because I've never found such a study.

There's a considerable difference between the usually minor losses in most state changes - and the six-fold loss in the manufacture of ethanol.

Except there isn't such a loss. Ethanol generates more energy than it takes to produce. TFA is FUD from an oil industry shill. (Which is not to say that corn-derivved ethanol is a great solution; there are better crops and better growing methods.)

The point of the energy deficite is that it takes 6 joules of energy to grow and refine 1 joule worth of ethanol.

Except that it doesn't.

Patzek is an oil company shill, and this is just more FUD against renewable energy.

But, it is true that corn ethanol using modern energy-intensive agricultural methods is still a pretty poor path. Using waste biomass, or using less resource-intensive crops (like industrial hemp) is much better; and we need sustainable agriculture whether we're growing just food or fuel too.

Well I'm willing to admit a mistake if you can point it out. Let's go through my math a little more carefully and see if we can find the problem...

Given:
-1 Bushel of corn (shelled) = 56 pounds (Now sure how corn would be measured in gallons...) (source)
-High-oil corn yeilds 7.25% oil by weight. (source)
-Corn oil has a specific gravity of 0.92 (source
-Water weighs 8.33 pounds per gallon (accepted value)
-An acre of corn can yeild 150 bushels (source)

56 pounds times 7.25% is 4.2 pounds of oil.

The oil weights 7.66 pounds per gallon. (8.33 * 0.92)

Therefore, one bushel of corn yields (4.2/7.66) = 0.55 gallons of oil.

At 150 bushels of corn per acre, that amounts to 82 gallons of oil.

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Hmm. Wonder how I messed THAT up! :P Seems I multiplied by density instead of divided... *scratches head*
=Smidge=