Biden has instructed American farmers to grow a type of corn used to make alcohol...to lower fuel costs. My understanding is this type of corn is not good for human consumption.
Never underestimate Joe’s capacity to f*** things up. (B. Obama.)
“””Biden has instructed American farmers to grow a type of corn used to make alcohol...to lower fuel costs. My understanding is this type of corn is not good for human consumption.”””
That is true in that the corn used to make ethanol is not the sweet corn we enjoy eating.
Too the extent farmers plant ethanol corn instead of corn for eating means a higher price for eating corn. It also means higher meat prices as the ethanol corn is not available to feed the cattle, pigs, and chickens.
When Biden increased the ethanol content of gasoline from 10% to 15% all it did was to make food more expensive.
Biden has instructed American farmers to grow a type of corn used to make alcohol...to lower fuel costs. My understanding is this type of corn is not good for human consumption.
Regarding the type of corn. Yield has been the mgt goal for quite a time and is an important one. Quality is a different factor and changed quite a bit.
Yellow number two dent corn is used for ethanol and animal feeds and corn products like corn flour, corn oil and corn masa. Yellow number two dent corn when wet milled for ethanol production yields corn oil as a by product. The wet meal is then fermented into ethanol and the mash still contains all the original protein plus more protein from the yeast cells. This product is known as distillers wet grains it is high quality cattle feed as cows can easily digest the proteins which they need and their four chambered stomachs can turn the cellulose seed coats into sugars just like if they ate grass. DDGS is distillers dried grains with solubles This is the wet mash pressed into feed cakes and the reduced juices loaded with the original minerals from the corn added back in. It’s top quality cattle feed. Cows do better on DDGS vs whole corn since the high starch content of whole corn messes up the PH balances of the rumen. So no growing corn for ethanol doesn’t take food away the byproducts are 100% used for animal feeds sheep, goats, cattle and hogs all get DDGS as a protein source with the rumen animals capable of using it also as a carbohydrate ssource. DDGS is cheaper by the ton vs soybean feed and also cheaper than whole yellow dent corn the distillers want to get ride of it. Overall DDGS lowers the cost of meats due to its cheapness vs other feed sources. America has 9 million plus acres of farmland the Federal government pays farmers to not grow on a portion of that and America has surplus nearly every year so there is no lack of land to grow things on. Farmers chase profits like any other industry so if corn is where the money is then that’s what’s grown if it is soy then soy is grown it’s a commodities gamble every year for farmers. They are under no obligation to grow any specific crops for human food or animals the market sets the prices for the various commodities and they farmers chase the markets. Fertilizer is expensive this year so lower yields or crop rotations will be used this will lower supply which will increase prices in the market to signal to the farmers to invest in more expensive fertilizer to go after the higher market price production will then increase until a new equilibrium is established.