Posted on 02/02/2007 4:34:02 PM PST by blam
Gas tanks could guzzle half of U.S. corn yields
Janet Raloff
In his Jan. 23 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for ramping up production of biofuels, such as ethanol from corn, to help cut U.S. dependency on foreign oil. A new report describes an ethanol-industry expansion already under way that is poised to boost corn-ethanol production by 160 percent within 2 years.
However, such an increase may carry a high cost, says the report's author, agricultural economist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
The 116 existing U.S. ethanol-fuel distilleries now use 53 million tons of corn. The 90 distilleries under or planned for construction would boost that demand to 139 million metric tons of corn, half of the projected 2008 U.S. harvest.
U.S. farmers produce 40 percent of the world's corn and export 55 million tons. Brown argues that any change in the crop's availability for food and feed will propel world grain prices—including those of wheat and rice—"to levels never seen before." He explains, "These three crops compete for much of the same land."
the ethanol bots will either dismiss this or not see any problem with it.
A lot of alarmist claptrap, but even if it's true, so what? The wealth stays in this country, while our foreign debt declines dramatically. Farmers in Iowa and South Dakota get America's energy billions, instead of some goat-plugging sand-chaser. What's not to like?
and it costs more energy to produce than it provides.
How well I remember the rice paddies of Illinois...
We are going to starve the Mexicans...;-)
Rush as reported several times this week that studies show that ethanol produces MORE smog than regular gasoline.
We're Doomed !
I'm all for useing food as a weapon. IOP every time OPEC meets and decides to raise oil prices we should be meeting and raiseing food prices right along with them. If you notice almost all of the oil produceing countries can not feed them selves.
I'm no ethenol bot, but it seems like this doesn't factor in increased production, or ethenol generation from grasses and other emerging methods.
Oh sure, we all knew that! We are either going to die of Global warming, global freezing, hurricanes, tornados, meteors, or slooooooow poisoning. I've given up caring how I will die. One way or another, we will all meet our Maker.
I think its because we grow corn.
I suspect the peanut growers will push peanut oil. The producers of other ag products will probably look to get in on it as well, figuring out how to turn their byproducts into something marketable. Where I live the almond growers have been doing it for years, there is a power plant up the road that burns, or did burn at least, almond waste as its primary fuel. Not sure where it stands lately.
Sugar is probably better, and you can imagine the sugar growers in the Gulf Coast will be trying to figure out how to get in on it as well.
Look folks, use logic here: corn is of limited nutritional value anyway, and you can prove it to yourself:
Next meal, eat a can of corn. The whole can.
Watch your bowel movements. You will see that corn again my FRiends. This is a universal law at work.
Now if the human body cannot digest kernels of corn, and if those kernels exit the human body mostly in the same shape they went in, that ought to tell you something.
Stop trying to digest corn, and use it for something more useful, i.e., ethanol.
What could be simpler? ;)
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