Posted on 07/26/2007 8:47:56 AM PDT by Uncledave
If the farmers could ever get together and limit their production, they could all be wealthy. The other problem is that there are too few buyers and too many sellers. There is a reason why I am not a farmer today.
Please don’t confuse the opposition to ethanol with opposition to farmers making a living. It has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that Ethanol is a net energy loser.
If and when Ethanol or any biofuel becomes a net positive in the energy balance I will support it 100%. We just aren’t there yet.
- By legume carryover you mean you rotate corn and soy?
- Is this hog manure you put on your fields?
Also you probably have good soil, have built it up. Marginal soil will need that chemical fertilizer boost. Though most soils can be built up but it takes time
You are a no till grower? Do you use less pesticides with no till?
“The truth is you can’t. So you claim that that I am a knee jerk naysayer. LOL”
Read’em and weep. There are plenty of others, including many peer reviewed .PDF files.
http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Wang2005.pdf
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf
http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_rooster.html
“How does Corn at 66% and Soy at 26% equal 33%? No wonder you are confused you can’t add percentages. You are the one comparing apples and oranges trying to confuse the issue.”
Note that I said “about 1/3”. It’s a quick and dirty estimate from remembered statistics. I wasn’t trying to generate a peer-reviewed level of accuracy.
“So from 50 bushels to 200 bushels in a hundred years is comparable to Moores law?”
Given that any single “experiment” in improving corn takes a minimum of one year (time to raise a crop, y’know”)—YES.
“Maximum acreage efficiency has nothing to do with total acreage. And you call me dumb?”
If you don’t increase the maximum acreage efficiency, you can’t reduce the total acreage. The two are joined at the hip likc Siamese twins. So you ARE dumb. And worse than dumb—you’re too stupid to even check facts.
overproduction without a market lowers the price.
It don’t matter from what kind of land the surplus comes from. only the farmer knows if the land he produces something on will make a profit, commodity trader willing.
As I have repeated myself over and over.....Food prices are kept artificially high because the middle men and refined, value added end of the food chain is always able to add higher costs of doing business into their final selling price. Farmers cannot add on higher costs if commodity brokers set the final price they are paid. The difference here is dollars to pennies. Grocery gets the final dollars. Farmers get the first pennies.
“Thousands of acres is nothing. Where are you going to get the water for your millions of acres? LOL”
A big LOL! Some areas get rain and do not need irrigation like the deserts of Kalifornia. Those States should never have been inhabited because water is not abundant. How can agriculture in arid regions be profitable when water has to be brought from dams and shared with millions of people watering their lawns where lawns never grew before??
So now I have been instructed to figure out myself the cost of production LOL I live right in the middle of it.
I see first hand the development and the jobs coming to areas that have been losing population for the past half century. This may not be development around a gold mine.
But for farm land, developers have different visions and they don’t involve shopping centers or paving over everything.
My take is that even if we get a one or two percent net energy gain from ethanol, we are still doing better than waiting for environmental, government partnerships to drill for oil in ANWR, build new refining capacity, or increase coal mining. Energy must come from all sources and be regionalized for optimum efficiency.
Frankly. I see California ethanol production as a waste of energy when they have more localized sources like oil and nuclear that do not require irrigation.
Environmentalists have curtailed the wide use of manure for fertilizer. it contaminates the water.
Every problem related to energy is environmental.
“There is no conspiracy on the behalf of commodity traders to gouge consumers.”
You could have fooled me. These are the same people who brought us record oil and gas prices based on the sky is falling speculation. You can take that to their bank!
You hit the nail right on the head!
City folk have no clue as to how farm economics have changed over the past 50 years.
All they know is what they pay at the grocer.
Support your local farmers market.
As a rule of thumb, a mature brood cow will generate 100lbs. per day of manure, which contains maybe 3 - 5% nitrogen. I will generally plant pure alfalfa, take hay for a couple of years and then rotate it into pasture or directly to corn.
No-till farming isn't the same as "organic" farming. There are several herbicides which substitute for tillage passes, although triazine herbicides , which are the most common corn herbicides, tend to injure alfalfa after corn, so I don't use them much.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf
Interestingly it proves my point. Did you even bother to read your source? How dumb is that.
If you look at table 124 it clearly states that each MJ of Biodiesel fuel requires 1.21414 MJ of energy to produce. The whole point of your reference was that it didn't use as much fossil fuel to make a gallon of biodiesel as it does to make a gallon of diesel, because the entire gallon of diesel is fossil fuel.
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; * switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and * wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and * sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In assessing inputs, the researchers considered such factors as the energy used in producing the crop (including production of pesticides and fertilizer, running farm machinery and irrigating, grinding and transporting the crop) and in fermenting/distilling the ethanol from the water mix. Although additional costs are incurred, such as federal and state subsidies that are passed on to consumers and the costs associated with environmental pollution or degradation, these figures were not included in the analysis.
“Maximum acreage efficiency has nothing to do with total acreage. And you call me dumb?”
If you don’t increase the maximum acreage efficiency, you can’t reduce the total acreage. The two are joined at the hip likc Siamese twins. So you ARE dumb. And worse than dumb—you’re too stupid to even check facts.
Do you even read what you write. Are you implying that you have to reduce the total acreage to increase maximum acreage efficiency? LOL
So to summarize. We put more external energy inputs into biodiesel than we get out of the biodiesel. What is confusing the issue is that it takes less diesel to make a gallon of diesel (since it is 100% diesel) than it does to make a gallon of Biodiesel. Your sources are playing semantic games.
Pasta isn’t made from corn! Why would the price of that rise?
Makes me ill.
Hmm. So you're mad that Kelloggs gets a markup for processing it?
I suppose you're mad at dairy distributors, too.
I just prefer cornflakes with milk at breakfast to gnawing on raw dry corn kernels and hot unpastuerized, un-homogenized milk.
I am not mad at Kelloggs. Value added profit is good capitalism.
What I am disappointed at is the idiots on here who think farmers are making too much money and that somehow ethanol is making the cost of food go up.
Those who use the arguement that ethanol is taking food off the table for hungry people are just socialists engaged in class warfare. They believe that farmers should work for free and give food away as an entitlement to an already fat, lazy nation. They argue that if a farmer makes a profit from food that he is taking advantage of the hungry. That is a big crock of BS propaganda from our fiends at the United Nothings.
They just don’t understand how value added products compared to raw materials.
None of the farmers I know, know if they are going to make a profit. All that they can control is how much they plant of a product. In the spring no one knows the price or production that fall, by the way that is the reason for the commodities market so that the smart farmers can lock in a price.
As I have repeated myself over and over.....Food prices are kept artificially high because the middle men and refined, value added end of the food chain is always able to add higher costs of doing business into their final selling price. Farmers cannot add on higher costs if commodity brokers set the final price they are paid. The difference here is dollars to pennies. Grocery gets the final dollars. Farmers get the first pennies.
You are missing the big picture here just like you don't see it in Biodiesel. The big energy cost of biodiesel is in the conversion process not the raw material process. In fact it is the same for crude. Crudes raw cost is quite low, stick a pipe in the ground and it comes out free ^_^ But then it has to be sold and shipped, then refined and shipped again and then sold again to someone who then sells it to the consumer. And of course the Government likes to add a little tax to the mix all along.
If the farmers all got together (like Opec) and demanded a reasonable price they could all be rich, but they are either too stupid or too greedy or both.
Those States should never have been inhabited because water is not abundant.
Maybe you should go crawl back under the stone that you crawled out from under. Irrigated farmlands are the most productive in the country.
My take is that even if we get a one or two percent net energy gain from ethanol, we are still doing better than waiting for environmental, government partnerships to drill for oil in ANWR, build new refining capacity, or increase coal mining. Energy must come from all sources and be regionalized for optimum efficiency.
I would agree with you if ethanol was a net gain, but it is a 40 percent energy loss. It makes economic sense only with subsidies and cheaper energy substitutions. Energy from coal is cheaper than energy from diesel.
Frankly. I see California ethanol production as a waste of energy when they have more localized sources like oil and nuclear that do not require irrigation.
You are in exactly the same boat except that you don't require irrigation. Irrigation though, is just a tiny fraction of the energy cost.
Here is the reality of the situation. A farmer grows an acre of soybeans that is capable of producing 2500 lbs of soybean that can be converted to 60 gallons of biodiesel. Sounds good doesn't it? Well here comes the reality. The farmer uses about 8 gallons to plant and grow the crop, then crushing and cleaning takes about 12 gallons. The big energy hog is the conversion process, that takes about 48 gallons. Then add another 4 gallons or so for hauling the stuff around for a grand total of 72 gallons.
The only silver lining to this whole thing is the fact that most of the energy doesn't have to come from expensive diesel, it can come from cheap coal or nuclear power. Biodiesel is simply a way of converting the cheaper coal or nuclear power into diesel and it could help cut down on our foreign oil dependence.
Ok then! We agree!
I see this argument used against Exxon, big Pharma....even big fast food! And I see a lot of populists on this board every day enjoying it whenever they can "stick it to the fat cats." Many of them no worse than the DUmmy socialists like Hillary, saying, "I wanna take those profits and..."
I guess you're too lazy to click through the links, which lead to papers that do. The Wang reference quite clearly shows the ethanol efficiency in multiple graphs, as well as giving reference numbers to papers that do contain data. At least some of these can be reached through Google. I'm not going to do ALL the work of find references for you.
"If you look at table 124 it clearly states that each MJ of Biodiesel fuel requires 1.21414 MJ of energy to produce."
You must have missed these "minor" points:
"One MJ of biodiesel requires an input of 1.2414 MJ of primary energy, resulting in a life cycle energy efficiency of 80.55%. Biodiesel is only slightly less efficient than petroleum diesel in the conversion of primary energy to fuel product energy (80.55% versus 83.28%)."
"As with the petroleum life cycle, the stages of the life cycle that are burdened with the feedstock energy overwhelm all other stages. Had the soybean oil energy been included with the farming operation, soybean agriculture would have been the dominant consumer of primary energy. This is analogous to placing the crude oil feedstock energy in the extraction stage for petroleum diesel fuel.
What this basically means is that they have included the "feedstock energy" of the soybeans arbitrarily in the "costs" column--which they should not have done, as the included solar energy captured by the soybeans is "free". If you state it as they have done, it automatically means that ALL the ratios will be <1.
"In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:"
Your link refers to the Pimentel study, which is, frankly, bullshit. Look at the meta-study table in the Wang link--it clearly shows that the Pimentel model is WAY out of line with all other studies.
"Do you even read what you write. Are you implying that you have to reduce the total acreage to increase maximum acreage efficiency? LOL"
No, I'm stating specifically that in order to reduce total acreage, you have to increase maximum acreage efficiency. You've got it exactly backwards, just like every other point you've tried to make.
Irrigated farmlands are the most productive in the country.
At what cost? What happens when the water from the dams runs out in the western states? I guarantee that lawn watering and agriculture will be the first users of water to be cut off. Ask the people of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Some fish was deemed endangered and some bureaucrat cut off their irrigation water. Just like that. Screw the farmers.
One farmer I know lost his ass when prices bottomed out and interest rates were high. His quote”I would have had more fun losing the money in Las Vegas”.
Yeah there is no guarantee that any crop is going to produce. There is no price guarantee. That is why a farmer should get a good price when times are good to make up for the times that are not so good.
Problem has been that there have been low prices and bad times and hundreds of thousands of farms have gone bankrupt. Now farmers have found a local market for their grain, have invested in ethanol plants as shareholders, and now have some leverage to actually recoup production costs. Can you begrudge them making a honest dollar?
Maybe you don’t like their product. But you don’t have to buy it. Just don’t tell others what they can or can’t use like the anti smoking nazis.
You arent going to convince me that ethanol is bad or not feasable. I fill my tank every chance I get with a 10% blend of ethanol gas. We run fine. Truck does the job it is supposed to do. I see no difference in fuel mileage.
You aren’t going to convince me or the millions of other satisfied ethanol users that we should stop.
Until people get their heads out of their asses and start electing competent leadership, we are never going to solve anyting energy related. The government will not change unless the people change. And that isn’t happening.
No I don't begrudge them making an honest dollar, but when it is subsidized they are effectively stealing from me to line their own pockets. I think the phrase is legalized plunder.
Until people get their heads out of their asses and start electing competent leadership, we are never going to solve anyting energy related. The government will not change unless the people change. And that isn’t happening.
Nukes and coal and shale gasification are the only way we are going to become energy independent. You're right though, competent leadership is hard to come by. I truly believe that we have the best leadership money can buy.
No they didn't include the feedstock energy of the soybeans. That is my point, they left that out. Let me quote your favorite source Wang.
"In producing ethanol from corn, wastes and energy crops, low-grade fuels like coal and natural gas are effectively transformed into high-quality liquid transportation fuels. About 84% of the energy consumed in producing corn-based ethanol comes from coal and natural gas, while only 16% is petroleum based. Thus, corn ethanol represents a very efficient way of increasing U.S. gasoline and diesel supply. Because of increased supply, ethanol acts to depress the price of gasoline and fuel oil."
What the biofuel people are really doing is converting cheaper domestic sources of fuel, primarily coal and natural gas into a diesel replacement. I don't have a problem with that except that it is expensive both in terms of money and energy
Your link refers to the Pimentel study, which is, frankly, bullshit. Look at the meta-study table in the Wang link--it clearly shows that the Pimentel model is WAY out of line with all other studies.
The reason the Pimentel study disagrees with some of the other studies is because he included energy costs like fertilizer that the other studies neglected to include. To quote your Wang source again.
"According to USDA, fertilizer accounts for about 45% of the energy required to grow and harvest corn. Pimentel ignores publicly available information supplied by the U.S. fertilizer industry trade association regarding the energy efficiency of the U.S. fertilizer industry and instead assumes that it performs like a third-world industry in accordance with a UN FAO world average analysis. He thus assumes a pound of U.S. fertilizer nitrogen requires 33,500 Btu to produce today, while the U.S. industry actually used only 22,600 Btu in 1987, according to The Fertilizer Institute."
The 11,000 Btu balance difference is still not enough to make ethanol a positive energy source. According to the MIT report ethanol is at best a break even energy source. Why not just be honest and admit that it is welfare for farmers?
No, I'm stating specifically that in order to reduce total acreage, you have to increase maximum acreage efficiency. You've got it exactly backwards, just like every other point you've tried to make.
What in the world are you gibbering about? I simply made the statement that farmers try to maximize their acreage efficiency. I don't know of any farmers who try to make their farms less productive unless they are being paid by the government not to grow something. Is that your point or do you even have a point?
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