Posted on 12/04/2015 5:03:28 AM PST by thackney
Obama continues the Mandate, just a slightly lower value today than the 2007 law required.
Cruz wants the Mandate gone.
Thanks Balding.
I can’t remember the last time I had to eat yellow field corn.
Most don’t realize local hog farmers and cattle growers sure miss the brewers grains produced by these closed alky plants locally as they were a valuable source of high quality animal feed.
Most of our fuel alky comes on boats from Brazil anyway now (they make it from sugar manufacturing waste) thanks to deals by Bush Jr , very little is not imported. Cargill and the other bigs are who keep the subsidies flowing.
Farmers are usually mentioned just for the bad optics.
Anyone can get online and see just how much the locals get from the fed and state govt. programs. It’s not that much, but folks love to paint in broad strokes.
Clinton and fellow Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have all called for a strong EPA Renewable Fuels Standard, particularly for more support for advanced biofuels, as have Republicans Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie. But Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have attacked the mandate as a threat to free markets, while Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and John Kasich have been harder to pin down on the issue. Rubio just last week said that he would not have voted for the program, but that he doesn't believe the policy should be repealed now that farmers and fuel producers have made investments based on it.Partisan Media Shills alert.
Sweet corn is the corn we eat. The importation of that corn happens in our winter time, when we can’t grow enough to meet demand.
I don’t know how much sweet corn we import, but it may be a very high percentage.
Number 2 yellow corn Is used for livestock feed, and that dwarfs sweet corn by a big number. A thousand times? Ten thousand? I can’t even make a good guess.
Here is another fact, our corn surplus continues year after year, since at least the 1950s.
No matter how much we convert to meat, how much we burn in our cars and homes, we always end up with, quite literally , mountains and mountain of too much corm
It’s piled into mountains next to nearly every small community elevator across the Midwest each fall. each elevator spends huge sums of money to prepared for the river of corn that comes their way.
these mountains have been built every year ince I was little, but they keep getting bigger and bigger ever year.
Whole industries build equipment to help built these mountain, and to clean them up and load them into trains that are miles and miles long. One train after another.
Also see post 82 by garryowenartillery.
Good information there too.
The distillers grains left over from ethanol production are very valuable.
And while it’s easy, and PC, to blame farmers, ethanol distiller, etc. for this mess, the financial answer aren’t that black and white.
Governor Walker had the nearly perfect answer. In short, gradually get the government out of this completely, and let the market decide. No government involvement at all, especially not setting fuel blending standards.
No one knows for sure, but I think there would be a pretty strong corn/ethanol industry left if things were decided using the financial and scientific methods.
http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2013/05/brazilian-ethanol-implications.html
It's a long read but illustrates your description of government intervention, particularly the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and blending standards using imported Brazilian alcohol.
A lot of our fuel ends up being Brazilian alcohol mixed with low octane Venezuelan “gas product” that was boated halfway round the world into Galveston or NOLa, then trucked or piped to all parts,thusly contaminated to hell ... then the resultant poor performance is blamed on corn ethanol and the subsidies.
The oil lobby has done a good job of controlling the narrative about ethanol. The "burning our food" trope is but one example.
I like CNG for the big trucks, soy bio-diesel and as much ethanol-gas blend as your tune-up can handle. I know one big John Deere farmer who squeezes 28,000gals of soy oil for his diesels every year. The rolled beans also happen to be an excellent dairy cow feed.
I didn't know any of that.
I'm obviously going to have to do some reading.
Thanks for the link
The streets and parking lots around our grain elevators here will soon be used as extra storage...as in mountains, during our typical yearly corn glut. Google image "corn mountains" for an idea.
“Farm Lobby” ethanol as you describe is usually exported anyhow, as it's generally produced by the same tax evading multinationals that elect our pols and they see that it commands a higher price.
Much of the ethanol we burn is forced upon our market by the economic hitmen of Wall Street who own the foreign debt of countries like Brazil and Venezuela... who then pay it off through negotiated trade agreements. These trade products end up in our fuel tanks. No way it's gonna be unadulterated fuel if you're boating it up here to pay off greedy Gringo Central Bankers in El Norte. They're gonna spit in it just like your taco down the street.
Bush2 negotiated the last round of ethanol agreements and the result has been described as a “conveyor belt” of tankers bringing crappy Venezuelan and Brazilian products to Gulf ports in the US. I suspect your engine damaging fuel probably began that way direct from some third world sh*thole.
I've walked the Ford production line on tour, Flex Fuel vehicles differ only by the addition of a sight glass device to determine computer settings based on ethanol content, that and the badge on the back is all. It's been that way for years. Chevrolet exports trucks to South America that differ only by broader engine computer ranges to allow for richer fuel settings, and to my understanding have been so since the advent of early 90s fuel injection.
If you own a vehicle that can be "damaged" by ethanol, it's probably time you traded up.
Garray, you are making a rational argument with an engineer who specializes in crafting emotion based arguments.
Odd an engineer would forgo rational thinking in favor of emotions, but is takes all kinds to make the world go around.
I suggest moving on, I am going to.
She wont be able to resist calling me a coward of some sort.
Bwahahahaha
“Farm Lobby†ethanol as you describe is usually exported anyhow
. . . . .
No.
Exports are only ~5% of US ethanol production.
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/#renewable
Talk about a broken clock.
I agree, IF we are allowed to get the oil and natural gas out of the ground! Personally, I think natural gas should be our main motor fuel.
If it should be, it will become so...without benefit of any governmental subsidy or mandate.
It will warrant all the necessary capital investment on its own account.
It's all political.
Study Shows Ethanol Produces Worse 'Global Warming' Pollution Than Gasoline
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