Just keep the ethanol production where it's supposed to be, and there won't be any trouble...
Posted on 02/03/2010 2:39:46 PM PST by PilotDave
The average annual rainfall in Minnesota is well over 1 Million gallons per acre per year, so to the logic of your article that means that each bushel of corn requires about 7,500 gallons of water. That’s not the greatest logic.
Chuckle, I was hoping someone would point that out, and you did it fine!
I used to raise hogs, 15,000 a year, so I know something about pig $hiT.
You must have some financial interest in corn-based ethanol. You are repeating the typical misinformation that the left uses to justify mandates and subsidies for politically favored energy production.
Ethanol is a product that few want. Remove the ethanol mandates and the market will collapse. The ethanol mandates keep getting worse. The ethanol producers and farm state legislators have lobbied furiously to force ethanol on the population. To make matters worse, this same lobbies vociferously for tariffs on less expensive Brazilian ethanol.
Corn-based ethanol is an economic and environmental disaster. It is the poster child of energy boondoggles, a boondoggle that will not go away despite abundant evidence of the failings of corn based ethanol.
Just keep the ethanol production where it's supposed to be, and there won't be any trouble...
No, you are wrong, field corn is used for humans and livestock.
Field corn is the predominant corn type grown in the U.S., and it is primarily used for animal feed. Currently, less than 10 percent of the U.S. field corn crop is used for direct domestic human consumption in corn-based foods such as corn meal, corn starch, and corn flakes, while the remainder is used for animal feed, exports, ethanol production, seed, and industrial uses. Sweet corn, both white and yellow, is usually consumed as immature whole-kernel corn by humans and also as an ingredient in other corn-based foods, but makes up only about 1 percent of total U.S. corn production.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February08/Features/CornPrices.htm
First of all, (even aside from sweet corn) most corn intended for human consumption is white corn while animal feed is yellow dent. But even where a food processor in the US wants yellow dent, it doesn't purchase it on the open market from a grain elevator. The purchaser will contract directly with the grower, or intermediary, to specify the genetics, cultural practices, herbicide uses and the like. Depending upon, say, whether the processor intends to makes oil or meal or starch or syrup, it will want different characteristics in the corn kernel which it can control by contract.
Also, certain types of genetically modified seed are permitted in corn intended for animal feed, but not human food ("Starlink" for instance) which requires that the grain be segregated.
Thanks for this.
So, the main point here is that a very small portion of the US corn crop goes directly into the food supply. The rest of it - 90 percent - goes to animal feed. Humans then consume animal products.
This is the situation we have now. Ethanol production merely inserts an additional step into the corn-to-animal feed process by extracting some of the starches in the corn kernel. The remainder - again the great majority of the nutritional value of the corn kernal - goes exactly where it's going now - to animal feed - in the form of brewer's grain. Brewer's grain, by the way, is a high-demand product. Everybody wants the stuff as animal fodder.
It is clear, then, that the impact of corn-to-ethanol on the food supply should be minimal and quite manageable.
It's really important to keep in mind that we're already growing the corn. and feeding it to animals. We're only talking about inserting an additional step into that process. So when we calculate the additional impact the ethanol production process has on the system we should only count the resources that go into the process at the alcohol-extraction phase. Anything else would obviously be double counting.
The people against corn ethanol use this fallacy a often. For example, one argument above states that the impact on water resources is too big to justify using corn ethanol as fuel, but it counts all of the water use "from field to pump." But that's celarly double counting, because we're already growing the corn for animal feed, so whatever stresses growing the corn places on water resources is already there, no matter whether we insert the additional step of extracting some of the starches in the corn kernal and turn them into ethanol. Corn-to-ethanol isn't placing the stresses on the system, the corn-to-animal fodder process is already doing that.
The question is not total system stress from the corn crop - again, because we already have a huge corn crop that isn't going away - but rather how much additional stress the ethanol-production process places on resources.
When viewed in this more correct way, it seems that the additional stress on water resources is minimal. As far as energy resources, like I said above that could be a real problem given the huge amounts of energy that boiling off the alcohol requires, but that problem is largely addressed in closed-loop systems - i.e. those that use methane from the corn itself (in the form of manure) to fuel the process (see my post above).
Fuelling more of our economy with ethanol seems like good polciy to me. It allows our farmers to extract more value from the corn crop that already exists and that is one of America's great competitive advantages. Nobody raises corn like US farmers, so it's something we already do and well. Corn-to-ethanol would allow us to source much more of our fuel domestically, which would help address our trade imbalances and help us stuanch the flow of our dollars to corrupt Middle Eastern states. It would help us in the fight against terrorism by reducing their funding from these same states. It would be a great boon to national security.
And, by using closed-loop systems, it could be done in a way that wouldn't stress the system unduly.
It makes all sorts of sense to me. We already subsidize oil produced abroad lavishly in the form of our military presence in the Middle East and in myriad other ways, why all the fuss about some directed tax breaks for our farmers to help us acheive a measure of energy independence?
According to your logic then, increased ethanol production would have no effect on the price of corn.
The past 10 years of deathanol production... 
The 10 year price of corn.... 
Facts are stubborn things. BTW-Your closed loop pig/energy farm is a joke too. No way methane from pig poo creates nearly enough energy to distil ethanol. They mostly burn fuel oil to do that because of the BTU's required.
That doesn't follow at all. Corn prices will naturally go up, at least for awhile, for the simple reason that corn has become more valuable.
That is, we're adding a value step to the process - i.e. extracting part of the corn's starches for fuel instead of simply running them through a hog to produce pork. We've added value to the corn crop, and thereby increased demand.
Like any commodity, prices will eventually go down as farmers respond to the new market conditions.
I said that it wouldn't affect the food supply much, and that's true. If anything, we'll be producing more food, as increased supply of brewer's grain finds its way into animals' mouths. But corn prices will go up for a major US export, and I see that as a very good thing. Don't you?
Facts are indeed stubborn things, and the fact is that you're wrong about this. Closed-loop systems that use manure and part of the waste from the distillation process cover 95% of the additional energy costs caused from distillation.
http://www.wikicover.com/Closed-loop_ethanol
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