They saved a lot of gas but didn't get far
Posted on 04/15/2008 11:40:52 AM PDT by stockpirate
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.
But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So why don't the poor countries grow their own food?
I guess it's because they have bad economic policies that prevent them from growing enough food for themselves. Our bad economic policies (ethanol) still allows us to grow enough food for us, just not for everyone else.
I wish we'd stop the ethanol thing so food in the grocery would be cheaper for me. But these other countries: go grow your own food. And reform your economies, put in property rights, so that people in your countries want to grow food. Don't blame us.
This is the ‘New Direction’ the Dems promised in 2006.
IMHO, it’s not going very well.
Our own price increases are the problem for us too.
And we do need to change this policy.
Once that happens, they have to restart their Ag. programs to contend with the new prices.
Ie. Haiti. The IMF forced them to drop their tariffs on Rice, then they import our subsidized rice. Now it has gone up in price. They cant afford it. And they have no rice producing fields.
Idiot career politicians. Repeat after me, “Coal into oil, coal into oil, coal into oil....”
Only freaking fools would endorse the ethanol insanity!
Perhaps if the U.S. government stopped paying farmers NOT to produce, they’d be plenty of food and the prices would be lower.
They scare me too, but the ethanol buck stops at President Bush’s desk and McCain is pandering right along with the liberals. When the government “mandates” anything disaster is sure to follow, though the ill effects of this bad policy have been particularly quick, seems to me. A perfect storm of stupidity. This article highlights so much special interest influence on this issue a blind man could see it. Heck, even the New York Times can see it!
I wish the government would remove the tax subsidies for bio-fuels and would end mandates for their use.
The government needs to quit trying to force the use of bio-fuels, or try and artificially make them economically viable.
Btw, I don't advocate asking government to give our freedom back.
We should simply inform them that we're just taking it back.
Start with McCain-Feingold.
“Only freaking fools would endorse the ethanol insanity!”
Or, in other words, our illustrious lawmakers and bureaucrats. It is a shame, and should be a crime, that the congress and the Ag. Dept. have been able to pull this scam off in front of our very eyes. I maintain that we’d all be better off if all our elected representatives were replaced by random individuals selected from the phone directory. No way we could be worse off.
Sugar cane is a far better source of ethanol than corn, and unlike corn there is zero nutritive value to sugar. You have to pull nutirents out of your body to digest that higly alkaline substance.
If it were a food, feed lots would give it to cattle as a main source of comestibles, and they don’t do that at all. Though I have seen hog farmers feed out of date candy bars to feeder pigs but hey, those animals will eat anything. The important thing about sugar cane is that it can be grown in tropical regions, giving nations in those areas a potential cash crop to buy other goods such as imported food.
Most of the failed crops around the world seem to be wheat, rice and beans. Potatos should be pressed into duty here, as they can be grown almost everywhere and need little in the was of water.
Very well stated. I fear that this 225+ year-old Constitutional Republic experiment in liberty and freedom for all is quickly approaching end-of-life. We've been buying incremental socialism by-the-drink since the end of WW2, with our freedoms steadliy eroding. Government at all levels has assumed way to much power, more than ever intended by our Founders and the documents they wrote.
I believe in my heart that if King George had offered George Washington the scope of government we see in DC and state capitols today, his reply would have been continued cannon and musket fire.
The only difference between today's candidates for president is the volume in which they will continue to sell government solutions (gallon=McCain, semi-truck load=Hillary/Barry).
I normally won’t mash any NYSlimes link, but I did this one.
I’ll note the last two paragraphs indicate muddled thinking by this expert who simply ignores the effect of substitution of crops being grown. But I’ll reserve my main comments in these following observations, which are so indicative of the faulty way these bureaucracies do analysis:
“The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted late last year that biofuel production, assuming that current mandates continue, would increase food costs by 10 to 15 percent.” A recent “analysis”, done when they had all data about the worldwide crop failures, a known very strong world economy with all its factors, and all the mandates and subsidies for ethanol in place.
So, what has occurred since “late last year”? Corn has gone from $4.00/bu to over $6.00/bu. Other crops have been similar. See especially the ten-yr charts here: http://www.fabsites.com/FabFutures.html
How is it that these bureaucratic wonders have missed their predictions of a 10-15% change - in an environment that all pertinent inputs were already on the table? Simple: they have no clue as to how systems actually behave.
If they miss their predictions when all the factors are known by so much after only a few months, how can anybody possibly believe that they can accurately forecast “global warming” 50-100 years out - a far more complex system that is not even close to being fully understood, using science and computer technology that is stretched to the limit to even begin these analyses?
People are starving and dying now because of this miscalculation. The numbers dying now due to this stupid drive to burn food will be dwarfed by the economic problems with resultant dead people visited upon the world by the moronic drive to end a couple degrees of “global warming”.
“I wish we’d stop the ethanol thing so food in the grocery would be cheaper for me. But these other countries: go grow your own food. And reform your economies, put in property rights, so that people in your countries want to grow food. Don’t blame us.”
I am personally opposed to any kind of assistance to these kind of places. I have become immune to pictures of babies with bloated bellies because all government and private do-gooders have accomplished nothing. Fattening the leaders bank accounts does not count. I’ll use my resources to keep my own family fed. Heartless? You bet!
At $6.00 per bushel, give or take $.13 of the price of each 1 lb. box of corn flakes is attributable the price of corn.
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