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.

Comments

Consumer Reports

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Consumer Reports

[rtshrubber]

The summer blend is simply a formulation of "gasoline" that has approximately the correct vapor pressure for the high temperatures found in the summer months.

For gasoline to burn, it needs to get into the gas phase. For this to occur at the rate necessary to support combusion in the engine of a car, the mixture known as gas must have a sufficiently high vapor pressure. Since the vapor pressure of any liquid increases as the temperature goes up, gas must be formulated to have a "high" vapor pressure in the cold winter months. In the summer when the temperature is high, "gas" must be formulated such that the vapor pressure of the mixture isn't too high such that the gas evaporates before it enters the cylinders of the engine.

Adding ethanol to gasoline is one way to accomplish this. Ethanol molecules have strong intermolecular attractions (forces that bind neighboring molecules together) due to hydrogen bonding. As a consequence, mixtures with ethanol will have a lower vapor pressure than mixtures without ethanol at the same temperature.

Diversion of corn to ethanol is also a cause

[wiredog]

Of the tortilla crisis in Mexico.

Re:Lobbies not environment

[bigdavex]

Corn alcohol requires large amounts of energy to produce so it actually increases the use of coal and oil.

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.

Ethanol is not renewable

[Tofof]

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

[hsmith]

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!

Re:Business advice

[phoenixwade]

How about we let the cows eat grass like they were intended to? Because you produce more cows per acre when you feed them feed as compared to free roaming the cattle. then here is that little thing about feeding bessy during those Wyoming winters. It's a little difficult for the cows to get to the grass when they have to dig through a few feet of snow.
    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.

Re:Business advice

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw your post had gotten modded as 'informative'. But then I remembered that Slashdot is a community of computer geeks not farmers.

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.