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Corn Shortage Hampers US Ethanol Production
drdread66 writes "A nationwide corn shortage brought on by last year's drought has started to curtail ethanol production. While this shouldn't be surprising to anyone, it raises public policy issues regarding ethanol usage requirements in motor fuel. Given that the energy efficiency of ethanol fuel is questionable at best, is it time to lift the mandate for ethanol in our gasoline?"
The ethanol industry has a history of abuses stretching back all the way to the Clinton years.
Most economy textbooks don't include the most important facts about how ethanol is critical to our economy.
Perhaps tellingly, several diplomats were barred from the country for agreeing with these claims.
Rich and powerful bankers have aggressively invested in and exploited ethanol, despite the danger it poses to ordinary citizens. Chances are they took a hint from Wikileaks.
Ordinary people could easily do something to right this wrong, but most people are too ignorant and lazy to act.
Next time you're in a major US university's library, try having the library fetch you their collections of prominent publications about sex. Don't be surprised when they say those books have been "checked out" since the Clinton years. Somebody doesn't want you reading them!
No moral person can in good conscience stand by while these injustices persist!
... As long as we can drive around cars! Cleaner burning cars too!
Screw the ethanol. This probably means all the goods that contain high fructose corn syrup will go up too.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: No, it is, in fact, way past time.
Next question?
Least efficient way of making the stuff. The tractors burn more diesel harvesting the stuff than the energy it will produce. Greenwashing at its finest. There are better ways of producing ethanol like from legitimate byproducts with the help of industrial waste heat but that's not what they're doing in the USA. Far too many people on the ethanol subsidy gravy train over there.
Kill the corn subsidies, period. They prop up the house of cards that hold the corth ethanol and HFCS industries that would otherwise not exist because they can't survive in a real capital market.
The sooner these tax-payer-subsidized industries get the rug pulled from under them, the sooner things like cellulosic ethanol and other *real* technological innovations can come to fruition.
It never should have happened in the first place. Ethanol uses absurd amounts of energy to produce because you have to boil water from it
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm)
This is not something we can tech out of. It's always going to be wasteful and one of the worst possible fuel choices for vehicles.
Getting drunk on our fuel and making a TV show for it!
Corn ethanol is and probably always will be a handout to the farming states. It takes more oil to grow the corn for ethanol than we save from blending ethanol into our engines.
The rest of us are screwed over by this. It would be better for the economy and the environment to just calculate out how much profit the farmers are getting and just hand out yearly checks for that amount. But that would be socialism and we can't have any of that.
or grow it in (private) space. Problem. Solved!
Like 99.9% of government laws and regulations, we never should have had a mandate of ethanol in gas. Its bad for cars, makes no economic sense, and is actually less green (you've got to use more oil to make corn-based ethanol than it will save)
If we are going to use ethanol, it makes sense to use sugar like Brazil. Unfortunately the US has a pretty terrible climate for growing sugar except in a few key areas, and those few key areas have lobbied for massive tariffs on the importation of sugar, making it cost-prohibitive to import sugar from the areas of the world where it makes sense to grow sugar.
The US farming industry is a mess. Honestly, unless you are a factory farm, you're almost better off to buy an unproductive piece of ground, make a half-assed effort of farming it, take out crop insurance and live off the proceeds of that.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The cost to manufacture corn ethanol is approximately equal to that of gasoline, after all of the subsidies given to the growing of corn. Hemp ethanol is significantly cheaper and does not have subsidies. Hemp ethanol manufacture estimates a cost of $.50 per gallon. There are ethanols that are viable replacements for gasoline. Corn ethanol is not one of them.
Corn shortage should affect food supply, not methanol production. Biofuel from corn is the most cynical thing humans have invented.
no, I don't have a sig
Ethanol in gasoline has always been about large producers bribing congress to force its use and increase their profits. It is a terrible idea from a practical point of view. Now that renewable energy is cheaper than fossil, it will be interesting to see how congress reacts . . . with all the petro money going their way to maintain our dependence on the fossil fuels.
Of course we know how they will react from experience. Just like with "health care reform," where we are forced to pay twice as much for our health care as the best in the world . . . for the crappiest health care in the industrial world . . . congress will side with the wealthy and screw us again. Bet on it.
http://PoiesisResearch.com/Handbook.php
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/23/736941/warming-driven-drought-pushes-crop-prices-to-record-levels-as-we-burn-40-of-corn-crop-in-our-engines/
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
With a fucking CORN COB.
There is finally a local gas station that sells ethanol-free gas. Suddenly, my truck's mileage jumped from 18 mpg to 20 mph. The stuff was actually wasting fuel! It may be a great idea in Iowa, but it sucks out here.
While the overwhelming majority of corn turned into fuel ethanol is not human consumable, it is used as feed for livestock. The economic implications have already hit. Food prices are rising, as producers get squeezed. End consumers don't want more expensive meat. This goes the entire way up the stack, with pricing accordingly.
Not only that, but every acre of ethanol production corn is one less acre of food for human or animal consumption. So, veggies and starches go up as well. Not as much as livestock feed prices, but quite a bit.
Gets better. You need to grow the corn in advance of pouring it into a gas tank. Makes sense, right? Which means you'll have a minimum of one year of higher food prices across the board, as that is how far in advance (minimum) that corn production is locked in. It would be more intelligent to scale things back down slowly, but I doubt it'll happen. Worse, the EPA wants to move to 15% ethanol. Which is VERY bad for small engines not built for it. That's a couple billion dollars of motorcycles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, generators, etc that may be damaged by higher ethanol rates. This sort of thing needs to be planned out a decade in advance, ideally.
Only the corn lobby, politicians accepting campaign donations and "environmentalists" made out on this one. Yes, some less bright environmentalists pushed for it as increasing "renewable" energy. Just because something is technically renewable doesn't mean we should do it. Burning food in our cars isn't the ideal solution. The environment and everyone in the US buying food took the hit for them. Thanks guys.
I'd rant about synthetic hydrocarbon fuels pulled from atmospheric carbon and cracked water (to provide hydrogen and oxygen), but I honestly don't feel like it at the moment. Back to programming the firewall.
Big Corn state's Iowa Caucus is the first vote for president. Therefore I contend, the corny ethanol policy. Why? Lazy me. Party rules? A law that prevents the other 49 from being first? A Corn Dictus.
Cellulistic ethanol should be the source, not a food source.
neither should our vehicles.
who came up with this legislation anyway?
Oh, so now it's a problem.
The fact that we the first world are plundering resources from poor countries.
Corn here. Palm oil instead of food there.
Time we start caring.
Privacy is terrorism.
Should be 'A nationwide corn shortage brought on by ethanol mandates, as designed by the people who imposed them'.
Bioethanol made from corn in the US releases more CO2 equivalent per joule than either gasoline or diesel and is basically subsidised pollution. Anything that reduces the ability to pollute on this scale is a good thing. The USA is looking increasingly insane to the rest of the world, which isn't to say we don't think that you're batshit bananas already.
I doubt any one change would do the trick. The farm lobby is generally just very powerful, both in terms of lobby and social status.
So, we make less net-energy negative fuel... And release less of this energy as heat into the atmosphere. Thanks for letting us know! Is there any downside?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It's what cars crave.
I drive one of the most common cars in the U.S., a Honda Accord with with a 2.4 liter 4 cylinder engine. I'm lucky to have a station nearby that sells ethanol-free gasoline, and I originally switched just to test, but over the long term, I'm paying 1-2% more for ethanol-free gas, but have have gotten 5-7% better gas mileage. Adding 10% corn-based ethanol to gas makes it cost more to drive the same distance, and adds to fossil fuel pollution by itself while being used and additionally throughout it's production cycle from corn stalk to your tank....
The concept was that by establishing a market for ethanol as a fuel, it would then justify investment in other technologies to generate ethanol. The bootstrap would significantly reduce the risk of developing those technologies. Now is the time to cut the subsidies for Corn based ethanol production and to push the alternatives.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
"...Given that the energy efficiency of ethanol fuel is questionable at best, is it time to lift the mandate for ethanol in our gasoline?"..."
Every time someone uses fossil fuel instead of my highly profitable ethanol a kitten dies. Won't somebody think of the polar bears? Our children will never see snow in their lifetimes!!!
In the olden days, if you wanted nearly pure ethanol, you would first use simple distillation it to remove most of the water. Arguably, this is boiling the ethanol from the water. This gets you to about 96% purity, but it is impossible to remove the last 4% of the water with simple distillation. To get to nearly pure alcohol, you would add benzene or cyclohexane to the 96% pure mixture and continue boiling. The benzene from a three-way azeotrope and removes the last of the water by boiling. In this procedure, the pure alcohol is what is left over after the water, benzene and some of the alcohol is boiled away. You literally do "boil the water from it".
These days, molecular sieves are employed to remove the last of the water.
At least we got a good tee shirt out of it.
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/biofuels-causing-world-hunger-one-fill-up-at-a-time-t7438.html
The only shortage is in intelligence, what is needed is a shortage in greedy bastards trying to squeeze out every penny from the unwitting public. Corn is not the only producer of ethanol. The issue is not the origin of fuel but in the efficient use of it. This administration had the big three auto makers over a barrel (excuse the pun), but instead, paid them off with big fat bonuses all the while the consumers, ie taxpayers got the shaft. We can put man in space, put spacecraft out to the edges of the solar system, joyride on Mars, and yet, 25 to 35 miles per gallon is the best we can do. If you cannot see the logic of a situation, look at the money and where it's going and where it ends up.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
It was always a bad idea. Ethanol has a low energy density, binds with water (requiring energy to separate out), can only be blended in low amounts with gasoline without destroying existing engines and the corn variety is probably net energy negative given the energy inputs.
If you want to drive a bio- or alt-fuel industry, it would be much better to have an ever-rising stored-carbon tax (i.e., a tax on the amount of stored "fossil" carbon release per unit of energy). We could then import untaxed bio-ethanol from places where the economics and fuel cycle makes more sense (like Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane and bagasse). You could even make the tax rebatable on the few carbon-negative alternatives out there - Cool Planet Fuels supposedly has a carbon-negative fuel cycle that outputs high-octane gasoline and biochar at an unsubsidized $1.50 a gallon that is going into production this year.
Maybe we should think about encouraging corn growers with subsidies to ensure that this does not happen again.
Des that mean that 2013 will be the year of sugar cane on the desktop?
Fuck Ethanol
Simple Evidence that Corn for Fuel is NOT WORTH IT: One of the knocks on ethanol is increased distribution costs. Yet when and if used for fuel at the point of production there are no distribution issues. Yet why is it than none of the corn to ethanol plants actually run on ethanol? They all run on fossil fuels.
It seems to me that being a citizen of the US is largely irrelevant to the political system. Unless of course you're part of the 1% seeing as you can just buy the politicians with "campaign contributions"
The article is ignorant or a troll, and most of the comments prove that democracy doesn't work. Most people are lazy and do not find out beyond the talking points what ethanol is even used for. So here, for the lazy masses,
1. ethanol (eg. from corn) as fuel is pretty stupid. E85 gas is stupid.
2. ethanol as gas additive replaces MTBE - a persistent carcinogenic pollutant. You need 5% ethanol to replace MTBE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether
So what do you want? MTBE? Leaded gasoline? Or ethanol which is clean burning??
So yes, I'll support 5% ethanol gasoline. It is the better of two evils. And if some greenies don't like that, then why don't they start protesting to ban fossil fuel cars and only allow electrics on the roads?
70% of corn grown in the USA goes to be feed for livestock
This *includes* the "waste" from ethanol plants, which is full of proteins. Feedlots (where most cheap meat comes from) rely on ethanol plants for their cheap feed.
And no, ethanol does NOT receive subsidies anymore, not for a few years. Ethanol plants use corn because they can sell fermented "waste" as feed. If they used other stuff, they would have to pay for disposal of waste.
So, if you have a problem with ethanol plants from corn, you certainly have a problem with meat in the first place. If you have a problem with ethanol and no problem with meat, then you are quite ignorant of the issues.
HFCS soda tastes worse than sucrose soda.
Well, duh! HFCS is thanks to corn production subsidies and because USA places large import duties on cane sugar. So USA gets shit HFCS while rest of the world gets cheaper cane sugar.
Ethanol has become the biggest boondoggle of our century. I live in a corn production State, and I have to say, the federal subsidy has got to go.
First problem – land prices. High production areas have reached the astounding prices of $15K per acre. That's 3 times higher than just a few years ago. Talk about a balloon waiting to bust.
Second problem – Game production. As a hunter, I can honestly say that wildlife has taken a dramatic turn for the worst. The farmers lust for corn wealth, former wetlands and game production areas have been slashed, burned and turned into field. There is very little cover or nesting area left.
Third problem – as more an more corn goes to produce ethanol, other products that rely on corn also compete for that commodity. Corn sweetener, corn feed, all have skyrocketed. So you and I pay huge prices for milk, cheese and meat... all courtesy of ethanol production.
Forth Problem – Wrecked vehicles. Cars require a minimum of 87 octane for both performance and running correctly. Ethanol is so corrosive, any vehicle not designed to run it will literally have it's internals melt out. The Governor of my state (South Dakota) has APPROVED 85 octane ethanol to increase ethanol consumption and benefit farmers. The problem is that 85 octane voids manufacturer warranties and is not compliant with federal standards. Again, you and I pay higher prices in automotive repair because of ethanol.
It's quite interesting to drive through corn country. New mansions have erupted from the prairies paid for courtesy of you and I. I have no problem with anyone making a living. I have a problem with subsidizing an occulant standard of living way beyond anything previously seen. Corn previously ran from 2-3 dollars per bushel. This year corn sold for $8 dollars per bushel with an average production of 130 bushels per acre. Considering a typical section 640 acres', that’s $600K + per acre in revenue. That explains all the new shiny vehicles and fancy motor homes beached along side these rural estates.
I thought the Republicans were against socialism. I can thing of no greater example of socialism than farm subsidies.
Corn cultivation is intensive agriculture, and destroys soil viability with continued, and persistent cultivation.
This problem is self-resolving, if you are willing to accept the ultimate outcome.
That being, the corn growing states will eventually not be able to grow corn anymore, period. (No, adding chemical fertilizers wont do dick.)
"Up to 10% ethanol" vs gasoline.
Do the math... that's about 12% difference in miles per tank.
I.e. it takes about 2% more gasoline to drive 300 miles.
I've run the test four times in two different Honda elements (2000 model and 2008 model).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is a good example of why the Government needs to keep out of business. These laws have unintended consequences and when there is a legitimate and immediate need for a change, it can take the Government years to react. Let the economy dictate this action of industry. When it is feasible for this to happen, it will. Wanna talk about CFL bulbs and how they are working for you? Not!
Politicians for this, less miles per gallon and more price per gallon.
Perhaps the terrorist are right.
Also raises the question of why the gov pays farmers to keep land free from producing more product. Yeah, yeah, price propping, got it. And now there is a shortage.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I see a lot of whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining in general agreement that corn ethanol is bad. Do something about it.
Create a petition on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ . There's no ethanol petition right now.
Sign the petitions on change.org. There are several http://www.change.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=ethanol
Contact your congressional representatives. http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
Or, stfu. I'm just saying...it blends.
... in the state of Iowa was on line, Iowa would be a net importer of maize in a *normal* year. Something is wrong with this picture.
OK, so I can't type today.
What does this mean for whiskey and alcoholics?
I have no idea why this got down-voted, as it's completely true. Not only does my state fight hard to hold its caucuses before any other state, it also gets a disproportionate number of electoral votes, just like the other rural states. (Wyoming gets 2.5 times as many people in Washington per capita as California).
Adding to that, the winner-take-all system in most states means that unless you're a swing state, your vote simply isn't worth fighting for.
This geography-based voting system is simply a messy kluge from a pre-industrial age, and should be fixed. But since current political groups get their power from the current system, it's in their best interest to leave it alone.
Global warming is a farce, fake stupid group think.
Making bad fuel from potential food is something only the EPA and Troughting Demo-rats could contemplate.
The planet is cooling, not warming
There is enough shale gas for at least 1500 years, by which time, even at modern lamebrain rates fusion will be perfected
Only renewables that don't work are Green
Grow up, MFG, omb
But you will never see that on the news about it.
A 10% ethanol add-on to normal gasoline will drop the mpg of that vehicle by 20%.
...preferably stored in oak barrels before delivery to my local convenience store.
The question is not about biofuel in gasoline. The question is that is is high time we switch to something else than burning carbon. One day oil reserves will be depleted. If at that time the climate happens to still allow human life on earth, we will have to choose between biofuel and food. I would prefer having food.
Even Al Gore, who championed the corn-to-ethanol nonsense, has admitted it was just to try to gain votes in the 2000 election.
If we're going to make ethanol, there should a.) be NO subsidies and b.) the feds have no business mandating squat about it. Drop the extra tolls on imported sugar and let refiners figure out what works best.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Technically, corn ethanol subsidies have already ended, so the whole deal about lobbyists and congressmen and farmers paid by the government is moot. However, now the President has mandated corn ethanol via the "Renewable Fuel Standard" which is an EPA executive branch mandate, so now instead of the government shoveling money to farmers for ethanol, government mandates a guaranteed demand instead.
In order to fix this problem now, we have to convince the EPA to adjust the Renewable Fuel Standard to get anything accomplished.
Suppose the "farm problem" is one of bumper crops and overproduction and farmers driven into debt slavery. So you take some of the "excess" corn production, turn it into ethanol to stretch the supply of gasoline, make some animal feed as a byproduct, and support farm prices. I know the Libertarians will be all over me like a pile of bricks, but there are all kinds of social, political, and cultural reasons why we don't have "efficient" markets in the ag sector.
So we have this drought, blame it on Global Warming, blame it on Natural Cycles, blame it on Divine wrath for our social tolerance, but we have this drought and a reduced supply of corn.
Do you suppose, we could make some minor exceptions, some minor exemptions to the mandates, so more of the corn goes into (largely animal feed, but sorry vegans, I like my meat) the food supply and a little less of it goes into the tank?
I mean, one of the reasons for the ethanol thing is to level out market swings on the farmers, but with the ethanol mandates being sacred environmental writ, the folks at the EPA and the USDA and in Congress up to the President, that these folks are on such complete ideological auto-pilot about bio-fuels that there cannot be a mild adjustment to prevent one class of farmer (grain) being hated by another class of farmer (cattle, pigs, chickens) along with consumers?
But it seems everyone is "so Herbert" to borrow a Star Trek expression that there is no flexibility on the use of corn for fuel in a corn-short year?
Yup. I agree completely. I'm running an old Ford('88 F250 Diesel), and it can literally run on just about anything with a little adjustment - 20% gasoline? Sure. Waste Vegetable/Meat Oil? Yup. Biodiesel? Sure. Old engine oil: I know it works mixed in.
That is one of the reasons i love my old Ranger, while it won't run on all the stuff yours will run on frankly it isn't picky about gas or octane, I could probably run moonshine and it wouldn't care.
But as they keep raising the required MPG there isn't gonna be many that can tolerate like the old vehicles can and that is gonna lead to a LOT of burnt motors and cars ending up scraped before their time. I have a friend that is a mechanic at a small shop and he says they are seeing a LOT more burned rings and other problems that can be traced back to ethanol running too hot in those engines. Our old Fords have big old cast iron blocks, take a lot of heat those can, but these little lightweight motors just can't tolerate it like we can.
if I had my way I'd ban ethanol and instead put that money into building a "peoples car/truck" that got at least 40MPG and ran on diesel, then I would subsidize the poor to get them moved over so we can get all those used cars that suck gas off the road. If we were to do this we could then look at alternatives like switchgrass or biodiesel or any number of choices while at the same time cutting our gas usage by more than half (average MPG in the states thanks to the poor driving old cars is just 14MPG) and helping the poor keep more money in their pocket. It would be a win/win but of course that is why it'll never happen, no way to hand out lots of kickbacks like you can with ethanol.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you don't force people to burn ethanol for fuel, then the entire corn economy will collapse! I guess people don't eat enough corn to keep the high-priced industry execs in personal jets.
The only reason for the original inclusion was to subsidize the corn industry (not necessarily the farmers, either). Fuck them all with a rake.
and especially the fact that they tied it to corn. it wasn't stated as just ethanol but corn based ethanol was how they worded it because it was a subsiding for the corn lobby. DUMP it NOW.
The people that really care about fuel quality -- the hot rodders -- like ethanol. The following quote is about E85 (85% ethanol) -- "When it comes to using E85 I can’t tell you enough how nice it is to tune for cars with this fuel. Burn temperatures are lower, initial octane rating is much higher than gasoline at ~105, and it’s not uncommon at all to gain 40bhp+ by using E85 alone with no other changes aside from tuning." This is from a professional tuner's article on a popular Volvo site (http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=54435). Both ethanol and methanol are very high octane fuels which burn extremely well in piston engines. They don't have as much energy per gallon as gasoline but for power output in an engine tuned for them they are better.
Plants are sitting idle because of corn prices, not availability. There are plans on the books for at least two new ethanol plants in Iowa alone. Elevators and farmers with on site storage are sitting on billions of bushels of corn. Ethanol is a high volume low margin business, and when corn is above $7 a bushel you'll see this stuff happen.
The vast majority goes to feeding animals.
Some goes to human consumption (including sweetner).
Some goes abroad.
Whatever can't be sold by any other method gets turned into ethanol.
If anything, the poor crop will have increased the amount that isn't suitable for sale.
The only people opposing ethanol usage in motor fuel are the OIL indistry. The people who also push for import quotas on sugar products from south America. With massive trading on the commodoties futures market, this is what's caused the 'shortages' ...
AccountKiller
Storing H is hard.
Using solar power or nuke power to create amonia from water+air is far easier to store and old tech.
And theres bazillions of water and air, you can create it faster than corn.
How much land do you need to supply 100% of USA?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
How the hell can it be a shortage when they still put corn in damn near every food product produced in the USA?
Perhaps now that people are on to the corn lobby and trying to switch foods to real sugar they are turning to manipulating the ethanol market to make more money.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Land that is used to grow food should never be allowed to produce corn or other crops for fuel. It is a path to disaster. It raises the price of food and in many cases it is simply a back breaker. Mexicans rioted over the price of corn when their traditional meals were priced beyond their ability to pay. We do not need to export these types of crops just to raise the cost of food either. Keep it all here!
wow just wow. It shows that like everything else people can have passionate opinions without knowing the least bit about something.
Corn ethanol only uses 1/3 of the corn for fuel, the starch part of the corn. The fat, protein, and fiber are all recovered and used as a high protein animal feed called dried distillers grains with solubles. THis has been shown to take animals to markets faster, and the said animals also have much healthier for human consumption levels of omega 3 to omega 6 fat levels.
Yellow corn grown in the US is not used for human food consumption generally, only around 3% is used as such, all the rest is used for industrial uses such as adhesives, fillers, binders, fuel, plastics, animal feed, and many many more. As for energy usage, you do have to realize that 1/3 to 1/2 the energy of a corn ethanol plant is actually used to process the animal feed. THis is no different than an animal feed mill, which many of these facilities are located near. If you were to take out of the equation the energy used for feed prep, these facilities would be much greener than ethanol from Brazil. As it is, these facilties, even with feed energy usage counted in, still get 2 btu's out for every btu put in. Simple, easy to find out facts here people, do just a wee bit of digging. Also another tidbit, yellow corn is not used as a human feed stock in Africa, Latin America or elsewhere, white corn is the preferred human consumed corn.
Also corn oil comes from these facilities that can also be used for feed uses, or for bio diesel production. Along with CO2 capture from fermentation for dry ice production or for liquid CO2 production for flash cooling in the meat processing industries. These plants allow people in the midwest to now be more competitive with ranchers in Texas. The land in the midwest is simply too expensive to just let cattle graze on it. Then with subsidies in the late 70's through 90's farmers actually sold corn for less than what it was worth. THe us picked up the cost to make sure farmers kept raising corn, then sold the corn to Texas cattle ranchers at prices well below what the corn cost to raise. Now they complain that they aren't getting subsidies, but hide this whining by saying corn ethanol is raising beef cost. Then why are cattle heards in the midwest increasing so fast? Dried distillers grains sells for less per ton than corn, yet has 3 times the protein of corn. Don't let the big food companies that received millions of federal money each year lie to you, they are just upset they aren't getting welfare anymore. Speaking of welfare, big oil takes more taxpayer money than any other industry. Biofuels, especially corn ethanol receive no subsidies today, none. Look up the tax code, actually do some research, even though BP may want you to believe corn ethanol gets tons of federal $ its simply not true. What is true is BP receives hundreds of millions of dollars or more each year in free US taxpayer money.
Wake up people, quit drinking the HUGE Corporate Freebie Kool Aid.
I don't know why the public would settle for the payoff that encouraged our government to force US to use food as a fuel additive. We shouldn't worry about Corn Ethanol shortages, we should worry about how using corn for fuel takes away frow the corn used in the majority of food in the supply chain. If you ever wonder why the prices have inflated on beef, poultry, swine, dairy, and millions of other products that need corn and soy... food as fuel is your answer. Instead of focusing on Butanol and Isobutanol produced from processing dead foliage and other trash... you short sighted Democrats focus on forcing us to use something we already need for something else.
Under no circumstances should we be sacrificing viable foodstuffs to create a very inefficient fuel. Using surplus or left-overs should be fine, but we really need to knock this off.
This is why we need to go back to the apportionment as laid out in the constitution, 1 Representative for every 30,000 people. It would increase the number of representatives to almost 10,000, but each representative would represent a smaller number of people, and each would represent roughly the same number of people. Also, with 10,000 people, it would be much harder to buy votes. Also, the electoral college would balloon to be a much more representative sample, and we could even go so far that each seat was an individual vote, inside of winner-take-all for the whole state. This would also take politics away from Black and White to shades of grey, allowing for better, more inclusive, and less reactionary laws to be enacted, that are actually within the purview of Congress.
Ethanol was added to gas to reduce emissions and to stretch limited supply. How did it reduce emissions? By making cars run leaner. See when this was first done cars ran carbs and really crude EFI. The alcohol made the cars run leaner than straight gas and it also provided some octane bump so crappier gas could be sold. Trouble is we don't run carbs any more and the EFI on most of the cars running around is smart enough to recognize the leaner mixture and richen it up. Emissions benefit out the window and we all see the MPG hit from this stuff. Alcohol is a terrific fuel for max power - if you jack the compression ratio and boost to the Moon and run it rich as hell. Economical it sure isn't and the exhaust is damn near noxious. For commuter cars built to to be able to run on straight gas compression ratios and boost must be kept down to allow for it, no benefit from the higher octane and other benefits for power that alcohol can offer. Build a car that can only run on high percentages of alcohol and you might see some benefits power wise (and tuners DO this) but forget MPG. Alcohol simply contains LESS BTU per gallon than gasoline and is a poorer fuel per gallon for normal HP applications. All those "flexfuel" capable cars are giant compromises running around. The only way to get anything decent out of something liek that is to slap a turbo on it and a fuel sensor to jack boost up when there's decent octane, anything naturally aspirated is screwed. Even if you do this you won't see an MPG benefit to speak of IMO but certainly higher HP when flooring it.
As an added bonus alcohol is corrosive and while many brand new cars can handle it (maybe) many BOATS and mowers cannot at it's current levels and cars are showing some issues too. This gets better - they want to INCREASE the amount of alcohol allowed to be dispensed at the pump for normal commuter cars. Think there are issues now? Just wait and see. MPG will go DOWN further and you know damned well prices won't follow.
Then there's the fact that we make this stuff from corn which is a feedstock and food. This is fine when we have a surplus of the stuff floating around but right now we don't. We'd be better off selling surplus to countries that need it or finding other uses I think. Mind you I'm a gearhead and love the power potential of things like E85 with a honking big turbo but the ideas that this lowers emissions and somehow has benefits is a joke. Alcohol has octane but you have to flow much more of it and it's not economical at all while it's trying to eat up your fuel system.
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" As ethanol produces the same amount of CO2 per gallon as does gas its much lower energy density results in MORE CO2. We need to stop burning the stuff and quit adding it to gasoline. burning ethanol actually produces 54% more CO2 as global warming pollutant than gasoline due to the fact that ethanol has lower fuel efficiency." Add to that burning it releases a lot of VOCs, some of which are carceneogenic and the plants that produce it are turning out to be major polluters. (pollution from making) http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-508006.html (Pollution from burning) http://www.intota.com/docs/ethanol-pollution.asp
E10 can cause more smog (much like with the other "answers" for "oxygenated" fuel) in older engines because it's not tuned/tunable for it.
E10 causes your engine that's capable of burning it to burn more fuel, which offsets any gains from it.
E85 doesn't run well in most of the "flex fuel" vehicles because they're designed to burn Gasoline first and foremost- you need to design an engine for E85 only, and they have their OWN issues including lack of available fuel everywhere.
We need to QUIT doing bullshit boondoggles that are claimed to be "green" and making it look "cheap" because we're wasting taxpayer dollars to subsidize it (Like the Ethanol production we're discussing here...)- we need real answers and they're not forthcoming from the Government and won't be.
" As ethanol produces the same amount of CO2 per gallon as does gas its much lower energy density results in MORE CO2. We need to stop burning the stuff and quit adding it to gasoline. burning ethanol actually produces 54% more CO2 as global warming pollutant than gasoline due to the fact that ethanol has lower fuel efficiency." Add to that burning it releases a lot of VOCs, some of which are carcinogenic and the plants that produce it are turning out to be major polluters. Now add all the pollution from growing and harvesting the corn which is hard on the land and takes lots of chemicals as well as a very large subsidy to even make it viable economically . (pollution from making) http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-508006.html (Pollution from burning) http://www.intota.com/docs/ethanol-pollution.asp
That magic word. It doesn't take a million years of intense pressure in geological formations to produce it. Also, mass ethanol production is very new compared to gasoline, they are getting better at it. I'm from Indiana and they used to pay farmers to NOT FARM. Now they make RENEWABLE FUEL. I tuned my GTO to run e85. It ran great and smelled great and no carbon build up. All you have to do is adjust the timing and fuel tables. Not that hard... It works with our current infrastructure. It works with our current vehicles with some very minor computer tuning. Reading this forum you would think you all work at EXXON because you read from their script word for word. Did I mention it is renewable?
Have you heard of hydroponic farming? No soil is used at all. Pure sand can also be used to hold the plants up and fertilizer is added to feed the plants. All soils used to grow crops will be depleted if the mineral nutrients removed by the harvested crops aren't replaced.
Subsidies are socialism when they don't encourage something else useful. Lets remove the corn requirement to the subsidy.
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umm there's something called crop rotation....
Nobody grows corn every year in their field, that would be stupid. Most rotate between corn and soy every other year or so.
Republicans 53.8% of the seats on 48.0% of the vote
Democrats 46.2% of the seats on 49.2% of the vote.
How would making the seats an individual vote stop that applying to the presidential election?
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Legumes, (if not tilled under, then allowing the field to fallow for a year to compost) only add nitrogen, which coupled with more intensive agriculture the next year, will only accellerate the depletion. To hold homeostatic, rotation must be every 3rd year, at the minimum.
The issue is with the cation carrying capacity of the soil, which is diectly tied to soil humus levels.
Levels which have been consistently shown to be on the decline.
Again, the problem is self-correcting, if you accept the ultimate outcome.
Why, yes I have!
Hydroponic gardening requires a controlled, and artificial environment. It also requires calibrated nutrient solution, and and needs constant monitoring.
Congratulations! You just increased the cost of a bushel of corn several hundred percent, and made corn based ethanol into a 100% straight up boondoggle! Issue with subsidies obfuscating the real costs resolved! Corn is now too expensive to even subsidize!
Again, self-resolving over time, if you are willing to accept the consequences.
Corn is actually quite easy to grow. I know, I have done it. The field in front of my house has been in constant cultivation for almost one hundred years. This land is north Florida sand. We grow our winter crop, potatoes, harvest those in May then plant a cover crop of sorghum-suden grass and in late summer plow that under to rebuild organic mater. The last three years corn was planted as the second crop and harvested in early fall. We have irrigation but summer rains usually provide enough water. This brings added income for the farmer and the stalks are chopped up to prepare for the next potato planting. Right now the potato plants are a few inches high and hopefully there won't be a frost this weekend. Millions of acres in the south can be double cropped this way as long as corn is more then $3 a bu. Farmers know how to take care of their land. It would be uneconomical to grow corn in a greenhouse but adding nutrients to poor soils is feasible if the return is enough. My land will scarcely grow weeds but add the right fertilizer and 150 bu corn is possible.
The fact that it "Scarcely grows weeds" is a directly contrary statement to your previous one, "farmers know how to take care of their land".
The reason the soil "scarcely grows weeds", is because of soil humus depletion, from the "100 years of continuous cultivation." There have been many studies on this.
One such digest, dated 1941! (warning, PDF)
This has been known about for a VERY long time. Nitrogen fertilizer accelerates soil humus depletion, by giving decomposing microbes a boost.
Note how the linked digest cites (correctly) that both potatoes AND corn are soil depleting! Fancy that!
Part of my land was cleared by me from virgin forest. Mostly sugar sand, the new land is no more fertile then the old part of the field. If you put back what you take out every year a good yield can be had every year. Organic fertilizer programs and low impact hand cultivation make rich fertile soils but finding that much organic matter and the hand labor to apply it is not going to happen.
Forest soils are not rich. Grassland soils are.
Building up soil can take centuries. It only takes decades to deplete.
Proper soil maintenence regimens involving proper crop rotations, incuding fallowing the field on a regular rotation and employment of green manures will mainain a productive plot between plantings. It means you have to divide your plot into a productive, and several unproductive sections, however. This makes economists and moron politicians very upset, because they demand production, see you have sections of your fields that are lying fallow, and don't comprehend why you do this, nor do they want to. (Proper crop rotation would involve a cashcrop, like corn, followed by an undisturbed fallow field of grass that is allowed to grow tall with only minimal hay harvesting, that gets tilled under in the fall, followed by a low disturbance legume, like alfalfa, which nitrates the soil and hastens natural composting of the grass straw tilled under the year before. Minimal harvesting of the alfalfa followed by winter tillage, then return to the cash crop. The hay and alfalfa production runs return carbon biomass and nitrogen compounds to the soil, and undo the damage caused by growing corn. Such a rotation should resupply the soil with sufficient organic matter to keep it healthy.)
Again, the situation is self resolving, if you accept the ultimate conclusion. The nitrogen source for nitrate fertilizers is also a finite resource, that is already dwindling; hence the mandate for ethanol. This system cannot persist, even with subsidies.
Unfortunately big government does what it wants to and is mostly ran for corporate profits. Stop mandating ethanol production and ban corn fed beef production. That would take millions of corn acres out of production. The cellulose ethanol mandate has yet to produce a commercial process even though producers are fined because they aren't using enough cellulose ethanol. Stamping your foot and demanding cellulose ethanol be created doesn't auto-magically make it happen.
Farmers have ten to fifteen thousand dollars an acre invested in corn land. Letting half of it lie fallow each year is economically unpopular or even imposable if money is owed on the land purchase. Having bureaucrats telling farmers what they can and can't grow usually results in food shortages. Of course we could collectivize the farms but that usually doesn't go well either.
The military probably has huge stockpiles of potato powder that they feed the troops. Raid it, and find out where they get it from, and use it. Probably it'll eventually increase the cost of 'French Fries' at McDonalds, which would be no bad thing, in my not-so-humble opinion. Regards, Graeme C.