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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.
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.
and the CO2 sequestered
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Of the tortilla crisis in Mexico.
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Corn isn't especially good for this purpose, but I believe this claim is false. Berkley's study computes the whole process at a 1.3x net fuel gain.
-Dave
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.
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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."
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!
"Corn isn't especially good for this purpose, but I believe this claim is false. Berkley's study computes the whole process at a 1.3x net fuel gain."
Now compare that with the 10x net fuel gain of canae...
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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".
However, there are producers out there who will supply you with free roaming beef if that's your taste.
If you really want to fix things, start controlling the number of people on the planet. We're eating up resources at a prodigious rate, technology is helping, but not fixing it.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
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?
I'm not sure how that would work, exactly. Corn turns into germs? Either way, point is, demand for beef is (x). You need (y) cattle with (z) growth rate to fill that demand. Corn gets them there, grass doesn't.
The cow's rumen is not set up to digest corn. Introducing mass quantities of corn into the rumen causes the rumen to acidify (normally it is neutral). This causes several problems including massive ulceration. Essentially a feed lot cow is sick and dying the whole time it is there as it is being fattened. The other issue with the acidified rumen is that it means a cow's stomach is now chemically similar to a human stomach (strongly acid). Now you have an environment for E. Coli in the cow, which previously did not exist. This is why E. Coli in beef has become a problem. THe natural barrier to E. Coli infection transmission from cattle to humans has been removed by feeding the corn to the cow.
A properly managed intensive grazing system produces healthier cattle and, if properly rotated with other livestock (range chickens for example) can be significantly more productive, in terms of calories produced, per acre than modern corn farming. It is also less energy intensive. I think it takes something like 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy through corn farming. MIG (managed intensive grazing) can do it on less without pesticides, herbicides etc.
See the book "Omnivore's Dilemma" for what appears to be a fairly balanced treatmwent of this subject.
man, I feel like mold.
Corn based ethanol is a very bad way to go. Biodiesel is better. It still takes petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, and petroleum fueled tractors to grow it and then there's all the water required to process the corn and coal used to power the ethanol plants. Then you can't transport ethanol in the same infrastructure as gasoline because of water. It corrodes pipes and sucks up water. The energy density is lower than gasoline.
Butanol does have it's own problems but is far more promising biofuel than corn based ethanol. Butanol can use the same transport infrastructure and car engines require almost no modification to burn pure butanol whereas an ethanol engine would. It along with biodiesel can make a viable alternative for biofuels.
Conservation and fuel efficiency should be the first step in reducing our dependency on foreign oil while we look for viable alternatives including mass transit.
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Furthermore, it's not that simple. Burning ethanol is a very, very wasteful process. Worse than gasoline. And the process releases more CO2 than gasoline. It's likely that if we standardized on ethanol for our motor vehicles, that 1) we would not be able to grow enough corn to produce all of the ethanol needed, and 2) we would be putting out more CO2 than the growing plants could absorb.
If I were you, before I went around advocating for ethanol, I'd do a bit more research first.
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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
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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.
Corn is not what cattle evolved to feed on. Corn causes a nasty condition in cattle called acidosis which is not good for the animal or for the people drinking its milk and eating its meat. Corn has been used in animal feed in recent decades to fatten them up before slaughter because it has more calories than grass. But 'grain finishing' is like you eating nothing but candy bars and vitamin pills. In a very short time, your health would suffer.
Corn is typically genetically modified and contains traces of herbicides and pesticides. Corn subsidies have hurt the small farmer while enriching ADM (Archer Daniels Midland). Corn subsidies have the tax payer paying into ADM's bottom line whether we eat their foods or not.
Grass-fed beef and dairy contains much higher levels of vitamins, enzymes, and essential fatty acids. Grass-fed beef and dairy is the natural, healthy way to farm. As for digging through snow banks to graze on grass, you should look up the words 'hay' and 'silage' to learn how that problem is handled. Furthermore, beef cattle are slaughtered in the fall. You don't have to feed them when they are in your freezer.
Huh? Libertarians are against all forms of welfare, whether for people or companies. In particular, you won't find a single libertarian who likes Con-Agra, or Archer-Daniels-Midland. They both suck at the government teat.
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--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...
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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
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