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Strange Bedfellows Fight Ethanol Subsidies
Reader Actual Reality sends us to Business Week for a tale of the strangest political coalition to be seen in a while — greens, hippies, libertarians, and livestock producers uniting to get ethanol subsidies reduced or killed. The demand for the alternative fuel is driving up corn prices and having big impacts on other parts of the economy. Not many other issues are capable of getting left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and the Cato Institute on the same side.
But he worries that they'll face mounting pressures in the industry, particularly because of the soaring price for corn, which the business depends on to feed the livestock. In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged.
Start growing corn then.
When government FINALLY steps in to try and end fossil-fuel dependance, they start singing the praises of the "free-market" WOW, flip-flop much? Any arguement is a good one when it comes to getting what they want. COnservatives have been singing "free-market" for years...
Not many other issues are capable of getting left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and the Cato Institute on the same side.
I'm sure all Slashdot posters will quickly reach a friendly consensus too, it being an environmental and economical issue that also mentions left vs right wing politics. I'm looking forward to the thoughtful and informative debate.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
recently came out and said that, even with only a 15% ethanol/85% gasoline mixture - your mpg (due to ethanol's lower power density) gets reduced to the point that $3.20 gallon of pure gas becomes a $3.99 of the mixed type.
So financially and environmentally, it is good to fight the push for ethanol.
This was never about reducing oil dependence it was about subsidizing one of the most powerful lobbies the corn lobby. Corn alcohol requires large amounts of energy to produce so it actually increases the use of coal and oil. The current administration is also fanatical about hydrogen because most hydrogen is produced from fossil sources. Yes it can be produced by electrolysis from wind or solar but it won't be. It's like "clean coal". Yes coal can be burned more cleanly and the CO2 sequestered but there isn't a single clean coal plant in operation. There are better sources for alcohol but they lack powerful lobbies.
By "strange bedfellows" I assume you mean women?
Sigs are for the weak.
Nobody is trying to end fossil-fuel dependence here. Nobody is subsidising ethanol production, except in a rather technical sense. If people wanted to end fossil-fuel dependenence and make ethanol production easier, they could fund, subsidize, and promote any number of solutions.
What IS going on here is another huge subsidy for the very powerful corn industry. This particular subsidy is wearing a paper hat that says 'ethanol', which is enough to fool:
0% of people who know anything about energy markets.
25% of lawmakers
95% of the public
100% of all the libertarian slashdotters who have already jumped in and gone 'OMG teh socialism sux lol!!'
Now, repeat after me: ETHANOL is one thing, ETHANOL FROM NORTH AMERICAN CORN is another thing. You want energy, subsidize the former. You want money for corn growers, subsidize the latter.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Why not lobby to drop all farm subsidies, not just the ones for ethanol? It would take the same amount of effort and do even more good, as large, corporate farms are the ones who mainly benefit from them.
Sent from my iPhone
This needs to continue until they put real sugar into my soda, then they can change whatever they like, but I like the current trends.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
...just because it's alternative. Ethanol has the only advantages that it's not oil and that it's renewable. Environmentally and financially it's foolish, as a previous poster pointed out. But one shouldn't be all that surprised to find us Libertarians aligned with anybody. It's the Party of Principle for a reason: Libertarians do their best to stay out of partisan politics and make public policy about what's actually best (gasp!).
In this case, Libertarians are against any and all forms of government subsidies, and it's rather obvious why if we're absolutely pro-free market. Nobody should read this article and say, "Wow, that's surprising that they're working together!" Rather, they should read it and really wonder why these different groups oppose subsidies for ethanol and whether or not ethanol is a viable choice for an alternative fuel.
After all, alternative != better.
Gee Bob, maybe you should complain - I always thought you folks on that side of the pond had some balls! - or was that the Scots?
... as the Scientific American special on the environment a few months ago concluded.
...
Ethanol production does not save anything, because current production methods, storage and distribution use as much energy (mostly natural gas, and fuel) as it saves.
The money would better be spend on R+D into new forms of ethanol production than buying votes in the mid-west
There's no justification for what s essentially an income transfer program from the poor to the rich (the most money always goes to the biuggest producers while prices supports driving up the prices of bread and milk) that damages the environment, screws taxpayers and benefits the most politically well-connected. All agribusiness subsidies should be eliminated immediately, not just ethanol, though that's certainly a good place to start. I guess poor little Fortune 500 companies like ADM will just have to make money in the free market like everyone else...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
We're all trapped in entropy, but as long as we're going down the drain, we should just be as efficient about it as possible.
That said (and sorry for the downer message so early in the morning), the articles (follow the links) are correct- that it should be up to the markets to pick the winner, and not by politicians seeking favor and higher office.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Holy crap, an "I work there" situation for ME!
Working for a corn refiner, I can tell you that though there is an increasing demand and price for corn due to ethanol plants spinning up, the glut of distillers grain/feed from their spent corn will be putting tremendous downward pressure on the animal-nutrition side of the market. In a wet mill, we depend on our co-products (corn hull, fiber, gluten, spent germ, everything but the starch really) prices rising and falling with the price of corn. Now we're having competition in the feed market from ethanol plants whos business models don't typically include needing to sell their feed. Granted, distillers grain is kind of gnarly (not as finely tuned as a wet mill's products) but typically farmers more interested in lower cost nutrition. And they're going to get it.
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
mod parent up, there has to be alternatives to corn for ethanol production, sugarcane, sugarbeets, sawdust/wood pulp, lawn clippings, whatever, i agree with the point that raising more corn would help but raising the price of corn will have a bad effect on many peoples, even the price of corn tortillas has doubled in Mexico = lots of poor hungry people down there that need to eat...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
and the CO2 sequestered
t orage
Q; Please tell me more. Where does it go?
A; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_s
The truth shall set you free!
Increased corn prices isn't good for areas where corn is a staple. That may not be a justification for eliminating the subsidy as higher prices would lead to more corn being grown.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Of the tortilla crisis in Mexico.
Best Slashdot Co
Problem solved. Of course we would have never got the subsidies in the first place it wasn't for the ADM lobbyist. Now that we got them making them exclusive solves the issue.
Research has shown ethanol produced from corn is less efficient and carbon positive. Alternative stock materials that require less fertilizing planting, etc. are the answer.
Growing food is hard. Growing grass is hard not to do.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
That stupid frickin 10% ethanol shit gives me about 15% worse gas miliage (I went from 26 MPG to 22) and eats up the components of my fuel system, what's the point?
In terms of raw energy (including the government subsidising corn) ethanol gas is more expensive to us than regular gas. Worn fuel components, worse gas miliage, subsidies, increased corn prices, etc. all cost us money. The whole thing is totally stupid and was rammed down our throat because of rising fuel prices dispite the fact that this costs more money in the long run. Obviously someone got paid off or is making a ton of money on this because rationally it doesn't make any sense for the general population.
Corn doesn't even make that much sense as a crop (it's not the most energy dense, easiest, or healthy to eat). Why do we have so much of it? Is it because the farmers have already invested in so much corn based infrastructure?
Corn ethanol isn't even that green. Sure, the ethanol itself is carbon-neutral, but the production of the corn leads to alot of pollution. The gas that goes into the tractors, the herbicide for the vast rolling fields, the enormous amounts of fertizilers, a huge chunk of our country having absolutely no biodiversity, the transportation costs of the corn. These all leave really big footprints. Corn ethanol only exists because government subsidies allow it to exist. Brazil can do it cheaper and with less footprint, and the import tax on their ethanol proves this is all about subsidies and nothing about environmental concerns
This isn't surprising. Among all the many other reasons mentioned here, let me add one more. Corn-based ethanol is not a solution to the issue of depleting nonrenewable resources. Simply put, midwestern topsoil is being depleted at a faster rate than the supply of oil and coal. I can't find the study by the Illinois EPA that I learned this from, but it's not hard to find sources explaining that "On human time scales, fertile topsoil is not a renewable resource."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff
If you cant produce corn at a profit without the government paying you, you should produce something else that CAN turn a profit.
If there were no farm subsidies in this world, the world would be a better place.
Corn prices are fucking OUT of control. They were ~$2/bushel, but they have gone up a dollar or more since the bush admin enacted the fucking ethanol mandates. Ethanol is highly inefficient when mixed with gas, so you lose efficiency in your MPG, so that causes you to buy more fuel, so it is a nasty little cycle.
My great uncle is a corn farmer, he is salivating at the lips at the prospect the gov't is going to build all of these ethanol plants, a nice payday for him off our backs if it goes through. That is all it is, a payday, it isn't worrying about the environment. Sugar ethanol is much more efficient, 4x much so I believe. We aren't using that because we have subsidies and trade protections for the sugar farmers. HA!
that thinks the problem of not enough fuel for our cars should not be solved by using food for fuel?
Q; Please tell me more. Where does it go?
Coke and Pepsi
[Insert pithy quote here]
While I occasionally enjoy Krugman's columns, it's only window dressing that Krugman and the Cato institute are on opposite sides. They really represent a duopoly of opinion that relies on "the other side" to give "their side" some sort of validity.
Periodic ideological alignment is necessary to demonstrate that both "sides" are willing to engage in creative problem solving and aren't just part of an ideological game.
I live in Brighton, IL and my 8 neighbors within 10 miles who barely make ends meet growing corn and soy are surely happy with growing corn cost. Remember, there are more people in the world than just those who consume fuel and resources. Some people have made it a way of life to help supply those things we take for granted with little to no thanks and in the past falling prices on the goods they produce. Its little to no concern for many that the American farmer is selling his land left and right so someone can build a new sub-division or a brand new super-mega-spectacular Wal-Mart. The more and more they sell, the more and more we grow dependent on foreign goods. And the problem with that is, someday they can just say 'No oil for you, we invade instead'. Ethanol is good for the American farmer. Support ethanol.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman: "From 1982 to 1983, he spent a year working at the Reagan White House as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers".
I think you're confusing "willing to criticize the Bush administration" with "left-leaning".
Anytime a left wing organization and a right wing organization agree completely on something, that something should be passed into law post-haste. For instance, if the NRA and ACLU agree on a law regarding guns, Congress would be forced to pass it. I think this would make our nation run a lot smoother.
It's amazing the way you take a technical subject and immediately turn it into a political fight to bash your political enemies. Where would you be without a nice enemy to complain about daily? It is a sad state your society is in if it promotes such negative behaviour.
I am starting to think that every human has a specific spot in them for unbounded hate, but that your society stimulates people to fill that spot with some socially accepted image (reps, dems, libs) rather then the more un-PC images(blacks, jews, lepers, texans, homosexuals). Why not try to stop hating?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
While we're debunking the desirability of corn as a fuel source, let's also remember that corn is a far from ideal feed for raising cattle as well ... ruminants are designed to eat grass, not corn, and feeding them corn (along with confining them in too-small pens, etc. etc.) leads to health problems that then must be treated with antibiotics, rumen buffers, supplements, and right on down the technological treadmill.
I would highly recommend the first part of The Omnivore's Dilemma for information about how corn has become a malignant force in our agricultural system...
You don't need edible corn to make ethanol.
Maize will grow in the desert.
So, the business plan goes as follows:
1. Buy a few hundred acres of desert out in California at $5/acre.
2. Plant maize (no need for pesticides, save money!)
3. Truck a bit of water out the crops every few days
4. Make into ethanol
5. Profit
Screw the farmers.
If cellulosic becomes attainable, and it will, then the pressures on corn will decrease tremendously.
Link to article about the program And then there are those wacky ORNL researchers making both ethanol and hydrogen from algae..
The future seems bright enough for ethanol production, with new ideas popping up all the time. Its pretty fun to drink too... :)
1. Stop producing and eating meat. Especially now that we're encountering the issue of the extremely dangerous quinolone family of antibiotics being approved for use on livestock. The meat in this country is and has been poisoned for decades.
2. Ethanol is not economically or technically feasible. We can't produce enough corn to produce fuel to meet the demand AND feed people.
3. We need improved mass transportation with more flexibility and a clean up of the problem riders (insane, violent, etc...)
I'm opposed to Ethanol on several fronts and I believe the only solution is the electric car powered by green energy from wind farms and solar panels. But that's me...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Irrigation water and water for production of the ethanol is soon to be in short supply in many of these regions (of the US). Many of them teeter on the edge of drought every year, and the aquifers, stable for many years, are being depleted at a rapid rate once the stills (ethanol plants) are built.
This is on top of the propane used to make the fertilizer (corn is very hard on the soil), the natural gas to cook the mash, the electricity to turn the big drums, the diesel to run the tractors and combines, the diesel or gas to truck the corn to the still and transport (by train usually) the ethanol to (close to) the point of sale (it has to be mixed in locally, not at the refinery).
All in all, it makes slightly more sense than just paying the farmer not to grow the corn. It makes no sense whatsoever compared to bio-diesel (beans fix nitrogen), ethanol from sugar cane, or even burning through the cheap gas now while bringing more nuclear on line.
.. before flying off the deepend of political discourse.
Subsidies are one POLITICAL issue that can be handled separately form the SCIENTIFIC discussion of ethanol.
Ignoring the former to look at the latter..
Berkeley recently did a rather deep paper on ethanol.
Summary here: http://rael.berkeley.edu/EBAMM/summary.html
Ifn you can't read and understand that, I highly suggest sticking to political discussions only.
Why not biodiesel, which works in all current diesel engines, and is much easier, cheaper and energy efficient (compared to ethanol) to produce? Long story short, you can get vastly more biodiesel per acre of land than you can ethanol, the diesel will run your engine for (at least) twice as long compared to ethanol, and you don't need a specially built environment-engine to run it. Almost any car model has a diesel engine option already. So why is everybody talking about ethanol? Why do ethanol cars get Eco-benefits? (Your own conspiracy theory goes here).
I havent read all the posts carefully, but some have alluded to ethanol and Brazils sugar cane. Ethanol can also be made from potatoes, beets, fruit anything with starch or sugar. Why is corn ethanol the only thing that grabs attention? Ethanol would be a good way to relieve us of foreign oil pressure and move us toward a real hydrogen/renewable future. The technologies are here we just need someone with balls to put them into use. I guess that means it wont happen too soon.
Lets see...you take a big land hungry plant to produce a few ears of corn per plant, which in fact are mostly cob. You end up with a few ounces of actual corn per plant, then loose even more in the fermentation process. At least when you use corn to feed livestock, you can generally make use of the entire plant, cellulose and all. Growing corn for fuel is arrogant, wasteful, and can only compete because tax money is being thrown at it. Any politician supporting ethanol subsidies needs to pull their small and hollow head out of their arse and then wash what few strands of hair they have left. Don't vote for these asshats again!
Barack Obama, another Democratic Presidential hopeful, is on board
Of course he is; he's from Illinois. ADM is situated in Decatur, the stinkyest city in central Illinois. Decatur smells like somebody took a rotten pig carcass, threw it on a big pile of sugar, and set it on fire. But money talks and bullshit walks, and America has the best government money can buy.
You won't find a single Illinois politician against ethanol, thanks to ADM's bribes... excuse me, "campaign contributions".
Meanwhile, my redneck friend Mike used to raise hogs and chickens for a hobby. He had a friend who supplied him with free ice cream mix (surplus from some dairy farm), and he'd feed his hogs half ice cream and half hog feed. Mike's pigs were the tastiest pork I ever ate in my life!
Alas, the price of hog and chicken feed has skyrocketed, now Mike's only hobby is Budweiser.
-mcgrew
'The Great Global Warming Swindle' is a pile of half truths, knowing oversimplifications, and outright lies, from a commercial TV Network (Channel 4)that has form for broadcasting propaganda, from various industries, in a format designed to look like irrefutable fact. Follow the money. See how much cash Channel 4 gets from the fossil fuel industry. The results speak for themselves. The oil industry shills that are pushing it across the net are conveniently calling it a BBC production in a ridiculous attempt to give it more merit.
We use a lot of corn to make corn syrup to get around the sugar tariff to protect La. sugar growers. Let's get rid of that, reduce the demand for corn, and lower corn prices.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Krugman's politics are far from well defined, his views on most social issues are unstated and thus unknown. He does comment on economic issues, and to an increasing extent what he views as the mendacity of the Bush administration but there are plenty of self defined right wingers who have criticized Bush's actions too.
Krugman is frequently cited as a candidate for a Nobel Prize in economics and as such is pretty much an orthodox economist. Thus Krugman's unsurprising opposition to corn subsidies, as any orthodox economist he opposes trade distorting subsidies at all times and in all places and naturally would oppose the corn subsidy. The fact that it's on the front page of the news now notwithstanding. He's probably too pro-free trade for much of the traditional left wing, he also is more opposed to deficit spending, and has a more nuanced view of school voucher programs than a typical US left winger. In short, despite his reputation in the media Krugman's social political stance is unknown and his economic position is mostly orthodox (ie. centered not left or right wing) and driven by data analysis not opinon.
As for the Cato Foundation it is a serious policy think tank forming positions based on data, unlike the AEI which has sold whatever reputation it had as a center for serious thought for the benefits of cheerleading for the administration and its allies. Although the Cato Foundation has a charter allying it with a partisan libertarian bias its publications largely are well reasoned and well researched. Since the problems with subsidies have been known to economists of all stripes for at least a century now it's unsurprising that Cato Institute fellows also take the orthodox position with respect to a corn subsidy.
In summary, it's not surprising that Krugman and some Cato Institute fellows agree that corn subsidies should be abolished. What's depressing is anyone would consider an article about this worthy of anymore consideration than one finding polar bears and emperor penguins agree about preferring cold weather in spite of living near opposite poles.
While biofuels are going to be important in the future, they aren't the answer. There isn't enough arable land, and more importantly water, to grow enough biofuel to satisfy the US's transport needs, which means we'll have to go elsewhere and then we'll just be trading one energy dependency for another.
The Department of Energy did a study that showed there was enough wind in North Dakota alone to fill the entire US's ENERGY needs, not just transportation. Nanotech in battery technology is showing huge promise in being able to store transport energy and be able to charge in seconds instead of hours. So why aren't we building windfarms and electric cars instead of encouraging South America to slash and burn their entire rainforest to grow sugarcane?
yes, that would be better along with legalizing the growing of industrial hemp, and further research into cellulosic ethanol. The last two would allow ethanol (and many other products) from different land, so called "marginal" land that isn't being used effectively right now.
In addition, pure electric vehicles combined with the "solar carport" idea could go a long way to helping the transportation sector. The studies say the average commute is something like 33 miles round trip, a distance easily reached with existing and cheaper battery tech. We need good pure electric vehicles-not expensive hybrids, cheap pure electrics- sitting on the carlots now, and not those hundred grand sportscars either, just regular plain vanilla commuter cars. We need some *choice* in the marketplace. For longer trips, to give them unlimited range, the small tow behind generator trailer.
It is not just corn prices that have increased as a result of ethanol production, soybeans and wheat are WAY up too. I should know, I live in South Dakota where they represent most of our crop production and much of our state's GDP. I've even heard rumors that soybean prices are being artificially kept high to discourage a massive decline in acreage in the region.
There is little doubt that farming will change substantially over the next 10 years in the eastern U.S. as a result of biofuel production. Unfortunately, not all of the changes will be beneficial to farming communities or the environment.
If we go on using resources as if there were no tomorrow, there won't be - whether its global warming, the oil running out or one to many Chernobyl.
We're locked in a catch 22 where the only way for scientists to raise awareness of a serious risk is to make over-dramatised pronouncements of doom and get pundits like Al Gore to promote their cause - then, surprise surprise, we get other pundits "debunking" the science based on the fact that Al Gore waved around a pretty ice core chart that he clearly didn't fully understand himself.
Meanwhile, the media are more interested in arranging entertaining slanging matches between pundits than actually trying to investigate the competing evidence and explain it to the public, leaving the politicians free to use it as a pretext for new taxes, subsidies and "carbon trading" schemes (cash cow for middlemen and speculators) provided that they don't actually change anything.
Lets face it, if, tomorrow, someone invented a machine that turned garbage into clean energy, the human race would soon be using so much energy that the "waste" heat would start heating up the earth directly without any need for CO2 - even assuming that the "most economical" solution to the resulting garbage shortage wasn't to use oil to manufacture AOL CDs, platic bags and six-pack rings to feed directly into Mr Fusion.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
How much money do you think Al Gore made from the "Inconvenient Truth"? I'm not with the right or the left, neither democrat or republican, but all these Gore groupies make the idiots in big business look like rocket scientists. You make claims like "follow the money", but you are unwilling to follow the money when it leads you anywhere other then where you want to go. People in glass houses should not throw stones.
Nuclear?
Sorry folks, but ethanol subsidies are not the problem. Our car culture is the problem. Yes, this includes me too. I own an suv. Although I live in a city and commute 5 miles to work one way. None the less we need a more sustainable way of living. Also I say this knowing that cities are very hard to live in, for instance crime, high costs, high taxes, and so on. /.did not read the article :-)
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
You're stupid smartass--as in, you think you are a smart and act lack an ass for it... but really you are only the latter.
Why add the bit about "if you can't read and understand that..." Why generate conflict with readers where it doesn't exist? Delusional narcissism?...dissatisfaction with your self?...Plain idiocy? One of these for sure.
You could have done things differently. You generated antagonism, though, and now you put me in a foul mood and I've become the very demon I am criticizing.
Shithead.
According to this discussion: on Slashdot it is currently under priced for it's ability to power our vehicles... I'm sure I can somehow raise the price of air to a reasonably profitable level, hell maybe I'll lobby for some subsidies... I'm sure there is a particular mixture of air that will bring the MPG down enough to make it expensive both to produce and to use as a power source.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I've been thinking about energy crops recently because my state Senator Mac Middleton is not on board with the Global Warming Solutions Act currently before the Maryland State Legislature. There was a tobacco buy out some years ago that really put a damper on the economy of southern Maryland because farming activity fell off. People farm just enough to get the buyout money but they can't make much on the replacement crops.
s .html in an entry on biofuels.s -selling-solar.html
I came across this site which claims that tobacco makes a good energy crop: http://home.ktc.com/bdrake/altengy.html. And, there is still a lot of know-how here about growing tobacco which might come in handy if the encouraging preliminary studies cited there pan out.
I've really only suggested that Senator Middleton attach a buy Maryland provision to the Act that would have state fleets buy Maryland produced biofuels at $3.50 a gallon, the level Tom Freidman suggests as a base price for gas. And, this would likely favor soy or rapeseed based biodiesel rather than ethanol, but the idea of tobacco as an energy crop in Maryland is intriguing.
I notice that TFA misses the Earth Policy Institute's warning that new ethanol production facilites are seriously undercounted. That is linked at my blog http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesi
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Solar: it beats corn for power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Cows don't digest corn well - not too surprising since it was never a part of their ancestors' natural diet. They digest it so poorly that they become prone to all sorts of intestinal diseases. The only way to feed cows corn and not have them sicken is to add large amounts of antibiotics to the feed to hold down the diseases that digesting corn makes them prone to. This leads to widespread antibiotic resistance that makes many diseases harder to treat in human beings.
As for human beings, the older among us can recall how much better food tasted when it was all sweetened with sugar rather than corn syrup. There are some pretty strong concerns about corn syrup not being so healthy for you either - although it's probably not as bad for us as corn is for cows.
Ethanol is a boondoggle, and I'll prefer any presidential candidate who stands firmly against subsidizing it. But corn too is subsidized - has been for decades - and that leads to it being used in other ways that are already seriously screwing things up. Plus, agriculture is not infinitely renewable, not the way we practice it. The US has lost something like half its agricultural topsoil, on average, over the last century or so. Long-term viability requires us to take more agricultural land out of production, rather than exploit our land more extensively for short-term gain. Over the long run, in many locations, agriculture is just another form of strip mining - at least until we develop technologies we don't currently have to replace millions of tons of topsoil that current practices have allowed to be washed away and otherwise depleted. Soil is more precious than oil.
There's no easy fix here. And corn shouldn't even be a candidate.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It's all about creating a market: cars that can run off it, gas stations that can pump it, distributors that can distribute it at all levels. This takes many years. Yeah, ethanol from corn doesn't seem like a good idea, but when someone does develop a better way to grow ethanol (and scale it up to US volume) we'll have a market in place to use it.
Doesn't anyone remember one of the many critical impediments to hydrogen, where's the market? Who's going to buy a hydrogen car when there are no refilling stations? Who's going to run a refilling station when there are no customers and no suppliers?
Now that we've solved the conundrum of whether the chicken or egg came first, we can apply the same reasoning to re-usable fuels. Obviously the market is coming first: the fuel will (hopefully) come later.
... was the collective "DUH".
Market forces. Much about the caring, not so much with the thinking.
Y'see, though, we have states here that are larger than your country. (NOT trying to get into a ** waving contest here, trying to make a real point) Ergo, we have to do a lot more driving. I generally put about 25,000 miles a year onto my car. How many miles a year do you typicaly drive?
Wow, influenced by the propoganda instead of the facts..
Care to explan the Mars Polar Ice Caps? It's not from a propaganda source I think.
Too many people just consider the source as either liberal or conservative and glaze over the numbers and indicators. Have you personaly looked at the Tempratur and CO2 level charts and numbers yourself to try to find out for your self which happens first? Is there a corolation between a spike in CO2 and temprature. If there is, which happened first? Is there a corolation between the Earth and Mars polar Ice Caps? What is common between them. Leave politics out and look at the facts from both sides. What does the data show? How about some basic science?
The truth shall set you free!
>> greens, hippies, libertarians, and livestock producers
We can only hope they don't interbreed.
Enough with the humans don't effect global warming because Mars is warming too. It's been debunked so many times, it silly. Stop getting your "facts" from right-wing nut jobs. Ever notice how each season it's a new proof that global warming is a fraud. Why don't the old ones ever stick?
"Because all evidence has shown that every $1 the government spends on subsidies translates into $2-3 of additional wealth across the economy."
You must mean it can or on average. Have you looked at Ford recently? How much money has been poured into the American auto industry through out the 90's? You can't save a sinking ship by throwing money at it. The company is not competitive, therefore, it goes under. It is unfortunate for the employees, but it happens when a company fails to remain competitive in their field.
Should we give Ford or Chrysler a few billion more to see if their luck changes? What is the government, an industrial bookie? Maybe they need to start busting knee caps to get some of the money back. There is a bigger problem then the fact a company hit a bad luck streak, and we need more restrictions on when subsidies are used.
Sorry to say, I'm trying to catch up with Micheal Moore's films and "Bowling for Columbine" put me to sleep the other night despite it being very popular at Slashdot. I have not seen the film that followed but I've heard that it suggests that Bush is very freindly with the Saudis. Maybe he'd have a hard time doing what you suggest.s -selling-solar.html
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Rent American: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Better yet, you repeat after me: ETHANOL is one thing, ENERGY is another thing. You want energy, don't subsidize anything. You want money for ethanol producers, subsidize ethanol.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The idea of ethanol sounds really great.... in theory. But in the practical world of living on this planet to produce enough ethanol (in the US) to really have any sort of impact on our consumption of black gold. You have to make a choice. The problem is the amount of tillable ground to produce enough corn to make enough ethanol to have any real effect. I don't have the link handy but read a report/story sometime back we would need to put nearly all of our tillable ground towards ethanol production. That's ok I guess. Like someone else said a long time ago... "Let them eat cake." Oh wait.... we can't make any of that.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
... would be hemp. To make it a real "green" option you'd also have to think about the cykles of the crops you grow. This in order to minimize synthetic fertilisation which kind spoils the whole equation. Wikipedia has a shortish entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#Fuel
I dunno what the Hippies will say to the possibility of increased price of weed. Is that a good or a bad thing?
send + more == money?
This method of producing biofuels looks as though it might enhance soil as well. Looks a bit like a bison ecology: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314 /5805/1598.s -selling-solar.html
--
Graze the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Hmm. don't want to be depending on potentially unstable countries for food? Well, maybe that becomes an incentive to start helping to STABILIZE other countries, rather than DESTABILIZING them?
-- All That's Evil in the Geek Space
Ethanol is not as efficient (in mpg) as gasoline, even in perfectly tuned vehicles. Why? because the energy content of the fuel is only about 2/3 that of gasoline, and only 3/5 that of Diesel fuel. One source is the ubiquitous wikipedia entry on gasoline.
Flex fuel cars suck balls on ethanol because ethanol sucks balls when it comes to stored energy. As for cars taking more than 15% ethanol, there are several vechles on the market that run on 85% ethanol (aka E85 vehicles), though most are work trucks, iirc.
Fact is, ethonol is more expensive to produce and produces less energy per unit volume than is currently the case with petroleum fuels. So that $3.00 ethanol really is like buying $4.50 gasoline, or $5.00 diesel fuel. Not that that'sa bad thing, but people, and Americans in particular, have a very hard time figuring out that kind of math to make an informed decision. That's lucky for the ethanol folks who just want to sell us gallons of ethanol in place of gallons of gas, but it's particularly bad for them on a PR level because people will associate ethanol with shitty gas mileage (and lumped into the perception of "shitty performance").
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
With the current switch to biofuel, I don't see this improving. A very interesting article about this appeared in the International Harold Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/28/healthscie
The free market can be a good thing, but it has a problem: it works with a short term vision, it wants quick results. We will survive when biofuel doesn't suffice, we will find solutions, I am sure of that, but let's not forget about the footprint we leave, and the impact we have on less fortunate countries. It is not only the law of the strongest that should count.
Read this for a glimpse into why reliance on corn is such a bad idea. Some of these essays on the subject shed more light on the corn conundrum.
First off, I recently left my operating position at a research ethanol plant. We started and stopped the runs to change conditions for clients. Production grade facilities usually stay at steady state conditions for months not days.
Where to start? For every bushel of corn, a dry mill ethanol plant produces 2.8 gallons of ethanol. That ratio keeps improving by the year. The CO2 that is released during ethanol production can be thought of as releasing what the corn has stored. A few ethanol plants store the CO2 for different industries. From what I have read, most energy assumptions about ethanol do not take into account the feed that is produced. I can tell you a lot of research is going into producing nutritious feed for cattle. You can pretty much tell the nutrition in the feed from its color. Heck, if we have to shut the run down, we call up some local farmers to see if they want our wet cake for feed.
According to Wikipedia, the United States is the 3rd largest grower of sugar beets. To me, it makes no sense to spend all this money on corn while sugar beets can more efficiently produce ethanol. Although, there is a large gap between sugar beets and corn production (25 million metric tons to 280).
Regardless, it mathematically impossible to replace our dependence on oil with ethanol. We might as well start using more nuclear energy. This is coming from somebody who was in ethanol research.
And not to be modded off topic, let the free markets decide.
Looks like Bad Ideas can manage this just fine.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You lost me at "explan."
propoganda, explan, personaly, Tempratur, corolation, temprature.
My eyes, they burn!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Left Leaning Krugman? It'll come as a surprise to that economist that he's a communist pinko. So, every person that doesn't subscribe to the free-market-cures-everything is "leftist"? That's pretty much every economist who's not a member of the Chicago School. No wonder the neocons are so paranoid: they're surrounded by left-wing enemies of freedom.
And Krugman has made every basket a slam-dunk since Bush took office. I guess being right makes you a com-mun-ist.
But corn is still at Great Depression or lower prices.
There are additional problems with the claim:
The residue from the brewing produces a high-quality livestock feed
The consumer base is demanding lower-fat beef, which means free range, hay-fed, or fed on the left-over mash from the ethanol process.
I normally make it a point to kick green butts for their typically soft-headed take on how the world works. But in 2000, I had a weak moment and paid extra for a more environmentally-friendly Ford Ranger with an E80 (80% ethanol) capable engine.
It's seven years later, and up here in Canada the only filling station in the entire country that has E80 fuel is 500 km away.
Robert Rapier is a chemist with a background in biofuels and renewable energy. He also writes a very technically informative blog on energy.
Here is one of the many things he has to say about the energy balance of ethanol, and why the whole thing is a crock.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Dude, where do live? Have you ever seen the people in America?
Isn't a US gallon and a British/Imperial gallon actually different though?
:-)
Not that I would know, I'm Canadian, we use a sane system (Litres)
Indeed. Chop the subsidies and some farms will go out of business, and you'll import more food from where it can be grown for less. Pretty simple. Farmers in India probably get paid a lot less for growing rice than those in the USA so at some point even factoring in shipping costs it would be cheaper to buy from them. Currently subsidies artificial raise the prices for farmers from other countries to compete with farmers in your country.
You are 'importing' already from further than your back yard, it's just that you consider a 3000 mile region to be part of an internal market, "your country" rather than "foreign country".
I just reread that and I sound like an anti-ethanol nazi. I'm not, but ethanol is competing with gasoline, which is just a rip-roaring fuel to use in our IC engines, and everything is built around gasoline. I'd love to see cheap ethanol (sugarbeet? grasses?) take over as a renewable energy source, but there needs to be a compelling reason to switch for most consumers - and I just don't see it happening any time soon.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
While I am not entirely supportive of the agricultural subsidies, their rationale is a little better than that. By subsidizing farmers to not grow crops (but maintain the cropland), they stabilize prices. Without the subsidies, produce prices would plummet, farmers, even large scale agribusinness, would bankrupt, then food prices would skyrocket. For examples, look at the leadup to the Great Depression or current problems with unstable food and coffee export prices in Ethiopia. By maintaining surplus cropland, the subsidies can be revoked if food prices suddenly go up, such as because of crop disease or drought.
The bottom line is that efficiencies in farming brought about by hybridization, large scale irrigation, and farm automation created a situation where we can grow orders of magnitude more crops than the economy can actually consume. This is one of the biggest arguments against the companies that campaign against pesticide and gene mod restrictions. We just don't require greater efficiency and large scale organic growing would reduce the need for subsidies.
First, Invest in infrastructure. Build a national high speed rail network and subsidise it to the point that it costs about the same as your average commuter rail ticket. (Compare prices of taking Amtrak, a discount airline, a greyhound bus, gasoline for a car and a chinatown bus between Boston and NYC). Generate the electricity to power this network from a series of nuclear power plants operating solely for this purpose.. Green, and cheaper over the long term!
Second, drasticly improve the public transportation systems in small/medium sized cities. Keep them clean, well maintained, and operating frequently enough where the majority of people will prefer to ride them rather than deal with traffic, parking, and high fuel prices. Install light rail and or electric trackless-trolleys where ridership warrants it, and again, use carbon-neutral/free energy sources where possible.
Third, Give major tax incentives to people who buy fuel-efficient vehicles, transit passes, participate in carpooling programs. Increase taxes on gasoline/diesel to the point where the cost per gallon starts looking more like western europe.
Fourth, move more long-distance cargo onto the rail network, and use diesel trucks only for the "last mile" of delivery.
The initial startup cost would be massive, without a doubt, but in the long run the enviornmental benefits would be massive, and the cost of consumer goods would not be affected as much by fluctuations in fuel costs.
--Addressing the subsidy issue. Yes, our farm receives them, on occasion. Generally speaking they are set up if prices do not reach a set point for a season. Many say they should be eliminated, and in principle I agree with them. However, there are some costs that are unique to farmers, that, well, hurt. One is property tax. Farmers generally do not benefit from abatements like corporations do, and therefore bear the full brunt of tax. In areas with increasing housing pressure, that drives up land values, which can really sting with respect to taxes as a viable single family farm generally isn't less than 350Acres (here in IN due to good soil) X 3-4K per acre = ~$1-1.5Millon. Farmers also cannot control their prices. Whereas a factory can sell lots of widgets for less money a piece, or a few widgets for more $, farmers must take what they can get on the market. Farmers also cannot fully control their production. Agriculture is dependent on weather conditions completely, and poor weather for a year can put a small farm out of business. Subsidies are supposed to help small farmers in those bad years, but are greatly abused by commercial "gipsie farmers." It kind of gives a bad rap to the whole system.
--Bio-fuels.... Yes, we farmers know that rapeseed and sugarcane and all these other exotic crops are better for ethanol than corn. But, not many are willing to take the gamble to grow these exotic crops and not have a market for them. Most farmers around here take their grain to an elevator less than 50miles from their fields. Its generally not feasible economically to go farther than that. Do I know of any elevators in that range that take anything exotic; no. These crops are just too risky for a business that already has so many factors that we cannot control. I mean, think. What if rapeseed does not grow well in certain soils in Indiana? What available chemicals are there to control weeds in these crops? What equipment must I purchase? (for small seeds, probably new drill attachments, and special harvesting equipment, also very expensive). We all know that corn grows well in Indiana. We all know that there are markets, cheap chemicals for weed control, and hey, I already have all the equipment to plant and harvest corn. Hmm, I think I'll stick with corn.
With respect to corn ethanol plants, they have the potential to be very efficient. Imagine this: Ethanol plant takes corn from nearby farmers and produces ethanol and distillers grain. Attached to the ethanol plant is a large confined beef cattle feeding operation which consumes the distillers grains. The cattle operation produces beef and manure. The manure is then placed in a digester, which produces methane and residuals (inorganics, etc.)The methane is used to augment the fuel to power the ethanol plant, and the residuals are used in fertilizer production for the corn fields. Nice and efficient. Too bad this has yet to be implemented.
As for biodiesel (virgin biodiesel that is), its made from soybeans, a crop planted on years opposite corn. It has its issues, such as gelling issues in higher concentrations when temps are low, but from a farmer stand point, we fully support it.
I could go on, but I'm sick of typing...
Eat a Chicken, You know you want to.
Enough with the humans don't effect global warming because Mars is warming too. It's been debunked so many times, it silly.
Refrences please. We are talking science. I can prove beyond a shadow of doubt I can cause a wind in any direction I want by setting up a small fan. How much influence does it have on the aproaching storm? CO2 does cause a warming. How much of it is causing the flood? Pissing in a lake does raise the lake water level, but I'm not going to have everyone downstream run for the hills because I have started a flood. How much global warming is from solar cycles and how much is from CO2? I may choose to not piss in a lake for reasons other than causing a flood, but don't shake the chance of a flood and rising lakewater of a couple inches on my pissing in the lake. I would like to see real data on the greenhouse model verses a solar model where warmer oceans hold less CO2 which is now in the atmosphere. In short, quite yelling fire and find the data.
From the data I have so far, global warming is the stampeding of the population with a match in a theatre and yelling fire!
It is true the match will warm up the theatre, but it is much less heating than the couple making out in the back row.
Again, how much is solar cycle and how much is greenhouse? Can removing the CO2 fix the problem any more than spilling a coke in the theatre to cool the room down?
Is is worth spilling the coke? Will it have a measurable effect?
The truth shall set you free!
I've listed some representative yields for ethanol and biodiesel production here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html
along with where they come from. From what I can see the ethanol yield is substantially higher on a gallon per acre basis. This makes some sense since plants
tend to produce more sugar and starch than oil. But, it may well be that biodiesel production is more effective since the squeezed soy
or peanuts still contain useful proteins that are incorporated in food and feed.s -selling-solar.html
--
Use the Sun better: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Keep in mind that IC is at best 20 percent efficient (Wikipedia), so most of that gasoline is wasted. I can't nail down efficiency for batteries/electric motors, but these guys claim 93 percent for their battery, even if it's half that it's still much more efficient. So you'd only need half (or maybe even less) of the electricity suggested by your figures.
Still a pretty big hit on the ol' grid.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
After fermenting the corn, the waste material is resold back to farmers. The cows seems to like it. Remember that cows can eat non sugar material because the bacteria in their guts can break it down. So the cost of corn is going up, but the mash or whatever it is called is much cheaper, and nearly as good for the cattle. This doesn't help farmers in locations far from a ethanol plant who are limited to the fresh corn though
You say "On human time scales, fertile topsoil is not a renewable resource.".
;) ) - as in bare ground, and in a matter of one year turned it into land that could grow basic "green manure" plants. The following year it was growing food. Good, tasty food. No commercial fertilizers were used. Just compost, dirt, and plants.
.2 tons/acres of soil runoff. That is a reduction of about 95.23%. With this level of soil runoff, collection methods for recovering the soil are actually manageable and realistic. But this is not the complete picture.
So let us define human time scales. Is two-three years a human timescale? I'd certainly say it is. Would you disagree? If so please provide your belief on what a human timescale is. I've personally taken sandy dirt that for years wouldn't even grow weeds (note the 's'
It is a matter of applying knowledge of how the system works naturally. What causes the misunderstanding is that people, including academics, assume that the practices of the "big/corporate" commercial farmers represent the peak of our agricultural knowledge. The key fact is the practices of the commercial farmer, the row setup, tilling, and fertilizer patterns are not representative of the best by any measure other than "makes it easier for machine harvesting". Using techniques and methods known and developed over the last several centuries (and in some areas over the last couple millennia), higher yield and quality is obtained by not using the row-crop methods. But these alone are not the only changes that demonstrate the fallaciousness of your assertion.
Even the "simple" change of moving to a no-till system of farming dramatically changes the soil and it's fertility. It increases it. No-till farming cuts down on water use, chemical use, and drastically reduces fertilizer and chemical residue run-off. All of these are good things, and increase or maintain (depending on the previous state of the spoil) soil quality. Millions of acres have been used with no-till methods for years with no depletion of soil quality.
The primary topsoil destruction vector is runoff. No-till drops the amount of runoff dramatically. For example in wheat fields studies have shown a full-till wheat acreage to have 4.2 tons/acre of soil runoff/By switching to a no-till method the runoff drops to about
One of the aspects of no-till is the use of "cover crops" or "green manure". This part of the process involves growing a different an "overwinter" crop. These crops are usually of the clover or legume family with the primary intentions being to keep the ground covered and healthy (avoids sun-baking and erosion), fix nitrogen, and reduce weed incursion during the "off" season. Reduction of weed incursion reduces the use of herbicides. Once a field has been converted to a full no-till system and has been in place for two years or so (depends on the previous state of the topsoil, the weed levels, the crop choices, etc.) herbicides are generally reduced by large amounts, in some cases virtually eliminated (that's 90+%). The reduction in herbicide usage maintains a healthier topsoil. In a matter of a few years vast amounts of acreage can have their healthy topsoil replenished and set on a course of maintenance. As an added benefit, no-till reduces petroleum usage and leads to lower costs and equal or greater yields after the first couple years of migration.
So this notion that "fertile topsoil is not a renewable resource" on "human timescales" is absolute bunk. Find a patch of land that has been sterilized, and you can bring it to a robust healthy topsoil state in under three years; without the use of (man-made) chemicals petroleum usage, or heavy equipment. You can find the details at your local library - even in books a couple decades old.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Butanol is a better fuel anyway, pretty much a one to one replacement for gasoline in Mpg, and you can use it at 100% in your car right now.
Okay, start growing hemp to replace the use of corn. That stuff will grow anywhere, as I understand it. Any fallow field would do, and there are plenty of those. Biomass a plenty...
For greens and libertarians that is. How much environmental damage is caused by misguided government subsides? How much environmental damage is directly caused by the government, by say, war (for example, among others)? I was reading this morning that FEMA flood insurance is causing people to move into environmentally sensitive areas in mass numbers, because they don't have to be responsible for that decision.
1. switch to growing a specific crop for ethanol production and/or use a combination of organic waste as the biomass producing ethanol.
2. cut corn subsidies altogether.
3. eliminate the US moratorium on personal ethanol distillation.
4. figure out how to use existing oil pipelines for effectively transporting pre-refined ethanol beer to a network of regional refineries, since they can't be used for pumping refined ethanol.
corn prices fall, the US beef industry is happy, and regular joe sixpack who wants a steak and a beer to watch NASCAR can once again afford it. And maybe in 10 years' time he's fueling his camaro with ethanol from a combination of sugar beets, switchgrass, banana peels and coffee grounds.
For a short piece on what summer gasoline is about, see Refining 101: Summer Gasoline.
He has another essay on winter gas, IIRC.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Look at the Wabash River IGCC plant in Terre Haute. The particulate, heavy metal and sulfur emissions are minuscule.
True, it still emits CO2. On the other hand, steam-reforming the syngas to pure hydrogen would allow all the carbon to be removed and put somewhere other than the atmosphere (at a bit of an energy penalty, but probably not as big as other capture schemes).
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Robert Rapier went over those numbers and found that one of the outputs had been counted twice. He fixed it, and found that even by the proponent's numbers the EROEI was a lousy 1.09:1.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Anthony Flew is now, at most, a deist.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Any scheme to replace petroleum with biofuels requires much greater efficiency at all stages than we have now.
Check out the link in my sig for one take on how to get the job done.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The use of "God" instead of "a diety" implies things that aren't true to the average reader.
I thought real Christians frowned on that sort of thing....
Sustainability and energy independence essay
You lost me at "explan."
Sorry. Touch typist and defective keyboard. I need to go back to the old clacky IBM keyboard.
When it clicks, I just expect the letter to be there. It doesn't always happen on a cheap Dell keyboard.
The truth shall set you free!
rlp has pretty much nailed this whole thread, really.
How long would the USA food industry last without a stable energy (i.e. oil) supply last? You wouldn't even be able to sow crops, let alone harvest, process and distribute the food.
If you really believe that an independent secure food supply is vital to American security, then you have to believe that a secure independent energy supply is (at least) equally vital.
Of course, I think this attitude lies more in America's isolationist past (late 19th, early 20th Century). In a global economy as integrated as it is right now, the belief that by subsidising the local farming industry you can protect yourselves from negative events elsewhere is insanely naive. By extending this logic, every country should attempt to become completely independent for everything. We tried that. It's called the stone age.
The Bank would look at the prices of futures contracts in the farmers crops over the next growing season, and if they were high enough to justify the cost of the maintaining the farm and generated a better return than bonds, The Bank would gladly give the loan.
Futures contract pricing is determined by the market, which would look at indicators such as bank loan volume and equipment sales in order to gauge how many farmers plan to farm next year. As more farmers apply for loans, future contract prices go down, and less farmers loans are approved. Overall, there are less farmers then we begun with, and prices will go down. However, prices will stabilize at this level, and will not 'skyrocket'.
Future markets provide a very smooth transition, a year in advance, from previous subsidy inflated production levels , to realistic market supported production. Efficient markets do a fine job at stabilizing prices.
This process requires a great deal of information and financial infrastructure, so it is not surprising that this failed to occur during the Great Depression or Ethiopia. But our nation has the best information services and financial infrastructure in the world, so I fail to see your concern.
This is one thing that I don't get; Americans might compete a bit with Joe next door, but we're also usually at least somewhat thrifty.
If we're buying SUVs it's for a reason.
For example, my mother has a condition making it difficult to get up from a seated position. A SUV/Truck would work for her, but modern cars are built too low, making it impossible for her to get out of them without assistance. Is her trading in her car for a SUV competition or compensation for a disability?
For the typical family - does the extra room to be able to fit both parents, the kids, and the equipment in the back on the way to the camping trip or little league competition, a full set of groceries competition with the joneses?
I'd argue that in many ways it's compensation - fuel milage laws have pretty much killed the full size sedan. The only ones left are generally MORE expensive than a similar interior cubage of SUV. The population is changing, and getting into a higher built SUV is often easier for people than a car.
I don't read AC A human right
Been there. There was a Dilbert cartoon about a "kybard" once.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
While ethanol is a polar molecule and in it's pure state does have a lower vapor pressure (due to intra-molecular forces), when it is blended in gasoline the molecules become separated. This reduces (or eliminates) the attractive forces. In this situation, the lower molecular weight results in an increase in vapor pressure. Hence, 10% ethanol will increase the vapore pressure by 1 or 2 psi (at 100F). Because of this 10% ethanol is often used in winter blends.
Whenn you get to somewhere like > 50% ethanol the polar efect dominates and you start reducing vapor pressure.
Sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to put a good deal of thought into it.
Of course my description was simplistic. It's a one paragraph explanation of a complex system, as is your rebuttal. It is also a defense of a system I do not support myself. The point is that your original post is a strawman. The situation is quite a bit bigger than "Free Market Good, Subsidies Bad", or the common "Farmers cannot compete, they want welfare". If you propose a replacement for a system, the first step is knowing what the system is intended to accomplish and what the consequences are of removing it. Too often we thrash back and forth generation by generation undoing things we find distasteful without ever really considering the underlying problems. Solving them takes careful thought, not just idealism.
Anything which acted to stabilize the produce market would keep prices at or above their current levels for the simple reason that raising food costs money. They are not "artificially high" since lower prices are not sustainable. If anything, they are artificially low, since food prices have been prevented from increasing even though production costs have expanded markedly, wiping out savings, increasing debt, and decreasing access to health care among farmers. Farmers are literally being forced to choose between going to the doctor to have recommended tests or buy seed. In fact, if you read any of the serious arguments against subsidies such as the arguments in the UN and WTO, it is that the *low* prices are destroying foreign markets.
More mechanized farming increases production, but is hitting diminishing returns regarding decreasing per unit cost, especially as it begins to degrade soil, increase pest resistance, diminish aquifer levels, increase fossil fuel usage and so forth. A lot of high production techniques are hitting the Red Queen Syndrome stage where they are fighting problems of their own making. You especially see that with cattle ranching here. So, agribusiness has the ability to break the market by flooding it with product, but not actually sustain lower prices, which leads us back to the point that if availability increases, the market collapses, unless some stabilizing force intervenes (which need not be subsidies). For US farmers, their biggest cost is simply that they live in the US.
If consumers don't pay for food, who does? Part of the current solution is to tax (ideally the rich, but we know how that works) to pay for farm programs to keep prices down for the poor. I don't think that is really the best approach, especially since assistance programs are usually based on a price index which accounts for food costs. Part of the rationale is to keep US produce competitive against foreign markets with lower costs of living, something which has both economic and strategic importance. Tariffs could accomplish a similar effect but still amount to market regulation and are forbidden by NAFTA, etc. I have serious issues with the meddling in the corn, rice, and sugar markets, which has encouraged monoculture, abused marginal cropland, and wasted fresh water here.
Depending on foreign markets for food would be disastrous for a number of reasons, including the fact that food is one of our principle exports right now and is one of the few things balancing our deficit. There is just not much that we have right now that the rest of the world wants. Farm land is a principle resource. Another reason is that the rest of the world does not like us very much right now and dependence offers political leverage especially since it also increases dependence on transport which further increases dependence on fossil fuels. Our food supply right now is uncomfortably dependent on foreign oil as it is. Yet another, is that food supply is volatile and foreign markets will feed themselves first. Insurance and futures help but have limited value. People cannot eat insurance. They can eat surplus production and food reserves. Warfare, disease, drought, flood, etc., can all disrupt supply, sometimes catastroph