Pigs or chickens left to their own devices will eat all sorts of stuff that city folks would probably prefer not to know about; but just because a pig will dine on cow manure and chickens consider pig manure a delicacy, hardly makes cow and pig sh*t a human food.
Impact On Water Supply Three Times Higher Than Once Thought ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2009) — At a time when water supplies are scarce in many areas of the United States, scientists in Minnesota are reporting that production of bioethanol — often regarded as the clean-burning energy source of the future — may consume up to three times more water than previously thought. Annual bioethanol production in the U.S. is currently about 9 billion gallons and note that experts expect it to increase in the near future. The growing demand for bioethanol, particularly corn-based ethanol, has sparked significant concerns among researchers about its impact on water availability. Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires the use of 263 to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump. But these estimates failed to account for widely varied regional irrigation practices, the scientists say. The scientists made a new estimate of bioethanol’s impact on the water supply using detailed irrigation data from 41 states. They found that bioethanol’s water requirements can be as high as 861 billion gallons of water from the corn field to the fuel pump in 2007. And a gallon of ethanol may require up to over 2,100 gallons of water from farm to fuel pump, depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn. However, a dozen states in the Corn Belt consume less than 100 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol, making them better suited for ethanol production. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090413102225.htm
The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report titled “Water Implications of Biofuel Production in the United States”. The paper outlines impacts and limitations on both water availability and water quality that would follow the pursuit of a national strategy to replace liquid fossil fuels with those made from biomass. COMMITTEE ON WATER IMPLICATIONS OF BIOFUELS PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3285
In some areas of the country, water resources already are significantly stressed. For example, large portions of the Ogallala (or High Plains) aquifer, which extends from west Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming, show water table declines of over 100 feet. Deterioration in water quality may further reduce available supplies. Increased biofuels production adds pressure to the water management challenges the nation already faces.
It is equivalent to “mining” the water resource, and the loss of the resource is essentially irreversible.
Existing and planned ethanol facilities (2007) and their estimated total water use mapped
with the principal bedrock aquifers of the United States and total water use in year 2000.(Source USGS) Click to enlarge. http://www.theoildrum.com/files/ethanol_and_water.JPG
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.
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
