Rapeseed (nobody really grows rapeseed anymore, by the way. Genetic engineering, and Canadian marketing savvy, have given us canola) does fairly well on dry, marginal land; it does not do particularly well on moist, fertile soils suited to corn. Crop practices in the third world bear almost no relation to crop practices in the US. An average acre of cropland planted to corn in the US will yield 160 bushels per acre (almost twice to figure from 30 years ago and probably 80 bushel less than in 30 years from now.)
As you point out, most subsides related to agriculture are intended to inhibit production and thereby keep prices artificially high. If these subsidy programs actually worked, they would increase, not decrease, the cost of producing ethanol. They generally don't work that well however. The average US farm family receives less than $50 per month in what might be called subsidies. The recipients of the breathtakingly huge subsidies are few, politically connected, and don't really farm all that much to begin with.
I prefer to use these long term averages, because they yield more conservative predictions. Using modern peak productions numbers to predict the feasibility of future energy farming is fraught with peril. But using long term worldwide averages yields predictable results that are easily achievable and still show the feasibility of farming energy. And it leave room to be pleasantly surprised when energy farming is put into practice. It also predicts yields that are closer to what is achievable when the crop is grown to maximize the energy out to energy in ratio instead of just the total crop yield.
(nobody really grows rapeseed anymore, by the way. Genetic engineering, and Canadian marketing savvy, have given us canola)
Please. That's like saying nobody grows apples because we now have Golden Delicious. Canola (CAnada Napus Oil Low Acid) is rapeseed. It's still Brassica napus. Calling it Canola is just a clever marketing ploy because Americans get all squirmy when they hear the word "rape" in rapeseed.
You are correct when you say there are modern genetically engineered cultivars of rapeseed that yield massively higher amounts of oil per acre. However, there are other economic issues than just crop yield associated with these cultivars, the most significant being the fact that most of them are patented and highly regulated. The screwy patent enforcement for genetically engineered plants often cause farmers to get sued into oblivion simply because pollen from a genetically engineered field blew (or was carried by bees - the little buggers simply have no respect for patent law) into their own unregulated fields and fertilized their unregulated crops. I prefer to avoid all the sticky patent gobbledygook (and Monsanto legal bastardry) and just rely on numbers from unregulated open cultivars.
As an aside, did you know one of the "intellectual property genomes" Monsanto most often sues over is for a variety of rapeseed that has been genetically engineered to be impervious to Round-Up? I don't know about you, but I think that's more than a little scary. God help us if Monsanto accidentally puts those genes into a dandelion.
As you point out, most subsides related to agriculture are intended to inhibit production and thereby keep prices artificially high.
Definitely. Most subsidies are serious roadblocks to the development of farmed fuels. When added to other government incentive programs for growing farmed fuels, the economics of farmed fuels become so muddled it's often impossible to tell what's economically feasible and what isn't.
The problem with subsidies is that they attempt to maximize farmers profits by controlling the supply side of the supply demand equation. This works for food crops because there are only so many mouths in the country to feed. Profits are not the same thing as market price, though, and where fuel crops are concerned, farmers profits are harmed by limiting the supply (especially when you're trying to jump start a farmed fuel market), because profits from fuel crops are maximized by lowering the consumer cost, thereby increasing the demand and fuel crop consumed. In other words, farmers will make a hell of a lot more money selling billions of gallons of oil as BioDiesel at $1 a gallon than they will get from selling only thousands of gallons of oil as BioDiesel at the subsidy inflated price of $5 per gallon.
Am I the only one who thinks a taxpayer funded government incentive program that helps BioDiesel producers buy vegetable oil at a subsidy inflated $5 a gallon and sell it as BioDiesel at $4 a gallon is economically insane? It's better to just eliminate the subsidy and let the BioDiesel makers buy their vegetable oil at the free market $1 a gallon, and sell it at $1.50 a gallon as BioDiesel. A lot more oil and BioDiesel will be sold at free market prices, and everyone would make a hell of a lot more money (except for the terror funding Arabs that is).
The average US farm family receives less than $50 per month in what might be called subsidies. The recipients of the breathtakingly huge subsidies are few, politically connected, and don't really farm all that much to begin with.
Definitely. Subsidies exists to fatten corporate farm pockets. The individual family farmer gets a pittance. And farmed fuel prices remain artificially high.