Range Fuels expands funding for cellulosic ethanol project

Ethanol producer magazine ^ | May 12, 2008 | By Bryan Sims

[Aut Pax Aut Bellum]

I am holding out for : Free Range Fuel, trendy and environmental!

[TheBattman]

You mean like corn COBS and corn STALKS?

hehehe...

[Doc91678]

I’m all for it.

[o_zarkman44]

“I would far prefer to see farmers get a healthy price for their crops, and have get rid of the ag-welfare subsidies”

Right on. I agree with everything you posted.

Government has subsidized agriculture for years because the mantra of cheap food is universally appealing. I think the realization that giving away food aid to the starving people of the world has done nothing to help the perennial problems in Africa and elsewhere. Also there is pressure by the EU to remove subsidy on food to level the export price playing field.

I am located in Central Missouri. Right now we are in the midst of a record rainfall for the year accumulation. I guess that offsets the two years of drought prior.

Farmers are getting hit from all sides. Diesel, fertilizer, seed, herbicides, and machinery are all highly inflated. It is hard to predict what the actual cost of planting will be with the daily dime price hikes. Farming is risky business anyhow. Especially for small farmers who rarely have any carry over of income from year to year. They have to borrow money for production usually. There are no guarantees that a crop will grow. The forces of nature are in complete control.

[o_zarkman44]

Back in the horse and buggy days the economy was locally controlled. There was no need to commute to the city because all needs were met locally. People were employed by the local bakery and the local dairy and many items were manufactured locally. The items that weren’t came by train or wagon before that. UPS ( jokingly) delivered once a week so people made do and waited.

We have been overcome by the luxury of being able to remove ourselves from one community and work in another.
That luxury has a tremendous cost. Not just the fuel we consume, and the cars we drive, but also the demise of the small town local economy that knew how to survive without government aid and unemployment benefits and paychecks written in the next county.

I realize we can never go back to those days willingly.
But people need a refresher course in self- sufficiency.
I feel sorry for the people in the big cities who have no recourse for basic survival if the SHTF.

[mamelukesabre]

THe only way to realize increased benefits of economies of scale is to build bigger factories with larger distribution areas. And also bigger farms and bigger population centers. There’s no way around increased shipping distances. This can still be done with animal power...up to a point. But I’d say we left that point sometime around WW2.

I was actually thinking about how to reduce the reliance on motorized vehicles in a modern economy after posting on the subject. Immediately, one thinks about NYC where a good portion of the population have never even had a driver’s license. In large modern airports they have those electric sidewalks that are basically conveyor belts for people to walk on. NYC could conceivably develop a sturdy outdoor variant of that for their sidewalks to lessen the need for taxicabs and subways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdK2y3lphmE

Add something like this to motorized sidewalks in a NYC-like environment, and a human can go a long long way with no vehicles and very little physical effort. A one hour walk to work everyday could be effortless and enjoyable.

[o_zarkman44]

I can agree with you on most of what you say.

But the part that concerns me is, concentrating population, manufacturing, and agriculture into large scale production facilities makes us much more vulnerable to chemical and biological attacks, as well as strategic military and infrastructure. Putting all eggs into 50 or 100 baskets (population centers) is an unmistakable risk.

If production of food and industry is wide spread there is a good chance a potential attack will not take out everything. Yes the distribution cost over a wide area is unavoidable, but a strategic necessity.

We should learn one lesson from urban disaster ala New Orleans. When a population center looses law enforcement, electricity and transportation simultaneously, the result is anarchy. People living in large population centers have no clue how delicate the balance is, or how they would survive an extended power outage and transportation disruption. They are complacent that a few cans of tuna are adequate for survival and forget the atm card wont work at the grocery store when the power is out, but nothing perishable can survive more than a few hours without refrigeration.

I am not convinced that economies of scale are the best solution for national security.