The point is the damned government created this ridiculous market and you are having too much trouble understanding the issue.
Posted on 11/26/2008 6:37:38 AM PST by IbJensen
The use of ethanol and other renewable fuels supposedly helps gasoline burn cleaner creating less pollution. It also reduces America's reliance upon foreign oil.
Last Monday the Environmental Protection Agency increased the amount of renewable automobile fuels required to be sold in the United States next year from 7.8 percent to 10.2 percent of the 138.5 billion gallons of gasoline projected to be consumed. This mandate mainly directs that higher levels of ethanol be mixed with gasoline.
The higher standard is required by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, a law that requires the increased use of renewable fuels each year in order to reach an annual use of 36 billion gallons by 2022. While burning cleaner gas is an admirable goal, the federal government's ethanol mandate has ensured that the American corn industry has consumers and businesses in a stranglehold without producing quantifiable benefits. In fact, some scientists now argue that there are few, if any, environmental benefits to using ethanol.
According to an April Hudson Institute report, "The Case for Ending Ethanol Subsidies," by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, "converting undeveloped land to cropland - in order to grow more corn and facilitate bio-fuel production - releases a massive amount of carbon dioxide. Only if bio-fuels are made from waste products or grown on abandoned agricultural lands does the production process actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
In addition, since ethanol separates from gasoline in the presence of water, the blends of ethanol and gasoline that we put in our cars cannot be transported through traditional petroleum pipelines. Instead, ethanol is shipped by rail, at greater cost than gasoline and mixed with gasoline near the point of distribution. That is why the 10 percent ethanol-gasoline blends are not available all over the country, only in major metropolitan areas.
Meanwhile American taxpayers subsidize the ethanol industry with $3 billion every year. These subsidies are given to corn farmers and ethanol producers no matter what the price of corn is on the market. These are extremely high because of the EPA requirement for biofuel usage. So many corn farmers have become wealthy from this two-tier system of subsidies and federal environmental mandates which inflate the price of corn on the open market.
Food prices around the world have risen dramatically in the last few years because of this system. Corn, beef, milk, butter, tortillas, gasoline and many other basic food commodities have become more expensive than ever because of the artificial government intervention in the market. This increase in food prices has hurt the world's poor more than anyone else but even middle-income American consumers have felt the pinch at the pump and the grocery store.
And then there is the question of energy independence, which is both an economic and a national security issue. Relying upon bio-fuels, predominantly ethanol, to make ourselves independent of foreign oil is a false hope. It has far less energy density than traditional gasoline, meaning nearly twice as much ethanol is required to equal the energy output of gasoline. We simply cannot convert enough of the land required to make ethanol into cornfields. There isn't enough land in America to do so.
Instead of releasing new federal mandates for ethanol consumption, Congress and EPA ought to overturn our artificial dependence on bio-fuels and begin building clean nuclear-energy power and coal plants, drilling for oil and natural gas in Alaska and off our coasts, and building more traditional petroleum refineries. Then we seriously could discuss the possibility of energy independence while working to clean up air pollution.
I didn’t know that turning one’s business product into a saleable item was wrong. The corn is feed-grade and the products are fuel and livestock feed. I don’t get the objection—look around at the population out there—30% of the public looks like they are fattened for slaughter for cryin out loud.
You are wasting your breath. Urbanites want food very cheap or free—there is no other option with the overfed public.
Milk prices have gone up because of USDA regulations requiring the milking parlor to be labratory clean. They require expensive testing of milk before it can be loaded on a truck to go to the dairy. Milk prices have gone up because farmers are shifting to more profitable processes that don’t require a 24/7/365 day a year committment.
When my granddad milked his cows we marched the cow into a stall in the barn. Fed it some corn and hay so it would stand still. wiped off the nipples with a soapy cloth, and squeezed the milk into a bucket on the dirt floor. We poured the milk into a couple 5 gallon cans that were picked up daily. No refrigeration was required. no filtration. And when the guy picked up the milk in his unrefrigerated tank truck, he would always throw out a piece of bubble gum or hard candy.
We used to make fresh butter and drink the milk. Nobody got sick. Now they have all these standards required pre processing that are just expensive overkill. I know several dairy farms who have quit, including a brother in law. Why?
Can’t afford the expensive government regulations. Concrete floors and cool storage are not good enough. They want the walls painted white, and hourly temperature readings on the coolers. A certain kind of light. Wash the floor after every cow is finished. Sterilize the equipment. Have a tv for every cow....ok thats not true, but you should get the point. It isn’t about the corn the farmer feeds the cow that adds cost to the milk. What the farm gets of the overall price of a gallon of milk is very small. Yet they assume all the risk. Nor do they get a pension for processing the milk like the dairy workers get.
Oh and I suppose all the cheap milk being imported from China has nothing to do with higher milk prices when domestic dairys can’t compete? And what was that deadly chemical in Chinese milk that American farmers would never find in their milk???
Yeah and the urbanites like the Democrats. They better treat farm state residents with some respect or they might just go hungry. We know how they vote.
The corn is fed to the cow long time before it hits the store. The farmer gets $1.00 a lb, corn feed included.
Show me where corn makes the price of beef go from $1.00 a lb on the hoof to $8.99 lb for a steak.
Show me where corn fed pork goes from .59 lb on the hoof to $3.99 pork chops when the corn input was at the farm level and included in the $.59 lb market price?
Most hay ground is unsuitable for corn production because it is hilly. It was never corn ground in the first place. What got lost?
Corn is fed to dairy cows before they produce milk. The milk is sold from the farm for $.15 to $.20 cents a gallon. Where did the corn cause the milk to go from $.20 cents a gallon at the dairy farm to $3.99 a gallon at the store?
If chinese milk is cheaper than US milk, where is the price break? Don’t overlook the deadly chemical contamination of Chinese milk either.
Obviously you KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT FARMING. And you obviously believe oil company propaganda, and probably have never researched either aspect of sound economics, or how government interferance makes the cost of EVERYTHING GO UP.
I have been by that plant at Eddyville many times Lived in Ottumwa. They do great things there with the corn, locally grown. I understand even some plastics are in part made from ingredients derived from corn.
People don’t seem to understand the economics of transporting grain hundreds of miles when it can be converted locally.
The human digestive system does not process corn efficiently compared to other food grains. Now the corn starch is a different case. Corn starch is used in soda and many other things. Consumption of soda has contributed to higher demand for corn.
Corn is not a surplus as it is sold to ethanol refineries. Some, not as much as before the ethanol scheme cooked up hy the central government geniuses, now go to things like chicken feed. Consumers of eggs know that at $1.99 per dozen which is up over 100% and tht is due to the government ethanol craze.
Sorry, wrong answer. There is still a surplus of corn.
The USDA estimated that the 2008 harvest will bring in 12.020 bushels of corn from 78.2 million harvested acres, for a yield of 153.8 bushels per acre. Of the total corn supply for 2008, 13.659 acres, 39 percent will go toward feed and residual (5.3 billion bushels), 29 percent for ethanol and co-products such as distillers grains (4 billion bushels), and 10 percent for food, seed and other domestic use (1.335 billion bushels). Ethanol production will return approximately 1 billion bushels of corn back into the system for livestock feed, Dickey said. Approximately 14 percent will be exported (1.9 billion bushels), and the marketing year will end with 8 percent (1.124 billion bushels) in ending stocks for the following year.
"Ending stocks" means excess. Have you checked the board price on corn lately? You may have been paying much higher prices earlier in the year for your eggs due to hedge fund trading and higher transportation costs. However, that party ended months ago.
Why don't you ask The Grocery Manufacturers Association;...the people that started the Soviet-style anti-ethanol propaganda campaign earlier this year, why they haven't lowered their prices?
And another point, if corn growers determine that they can sell their product for more money to people who want to....say, use it for artwork...destroy it in a giant bonfire...or throw it in the ocean to feed fish...who in the hell are you to even have an opinion about it?
For some reason, you people think that you are entitled to cheap food; and that farmers should be forced to provide it at a minuscule profit.
Try China for that, and see how it works out.
Please don’t cite the facts. Too confusing to the urbanites demanding to pay the same for food that was paid in the 1960s. Everything else can inflate, but don’t ever allow food to keep the same pace. Any overfed urbanite will scream all the way the bathroom scales. There is enough stored fat on the human population in the US to feed the world for a year.
I need a cheeseburger.
Pay for it.
I don't know for which branch of the central government you toil, I would imagine some cabinet post underling. It is most telling when you refer to posters on FR as 'you people.'
Entitled to cheap food? Hardly.
Many of us here believe the villain to be your precious ethanol when we know that just over a year ago we paid $.89 for a dozen eggs. Now the price is 1.99. I cite that as one example, there are many, many others.
When I tour U. S. farm belts and see field after field planted in corn, where before there was wheat, along with other dissimilar crops, and then talk to farmers I get the idea that those crops are earmarked for the gas tank.
I see that more corn is being grown in gulf states. Our fishing areas there have been contaminated by the affluence associated with chemicals used solely in the growing of corn. There are large areas that have been contaminated to the extent that they are official 'dead' zones. Our gulf fishing business have been decimated with employment in this industry being reduced by 70%.
Don't throw that old 'hedge fund' canard at us, because that's what the bureaucrats in Washington are dishing up, and like global warming, they are calling the contrived data 'facts.'
Let me correct myself. We only understand surplus corn when it is dumped on the ground to rot and nobody make any money on the rotting pile.
Do you have any idea how long a bushel (56 lbs) of corn lasts one laying hen? We are talking pennies a day in consumption. The egg farms are selling their eggs to wholesalers for $.03 to $.04 cents each. Where in the markup from $.04 each, or $.48 a dozen to $1.99 does the corn add to the cost, when the corn is included in the initial input margin of the producer?
Out of the 56 pounds of corn in a bushel used in ethanol, the high protein distillers grains are averaging just over 30 pounds of feedstock returned to the livestock feed. Mixed with ground up whole corn, the distillers grains make leaner, meatier chickens, and healthier laying hens that produce excellent eggs for being mass produced. I fail to seewhere the loss of value added processing results in waste.
Even the process for a box of corn flakes will result in a 30 to 40% loss from raw corn to finished product. How can that be considered wasting food? Try eating it for satisfactions sake.
I would say the increase of the minimum wage raised the price more than the cost of corn. The shipping bill added to the cost. The profit margins of wholesaler to retailer added to the cost. Government regulations on chicken farms caused some farmers to quit because they can’t recover their costs. That results in less supply. Price goes up.
It’s all about supply and demand. If a product fails to deliver satisfaction it dies. I have consumed ethanol based gas for over 30 years. Never had a mechanical or fuel system failure related to ethanol on 3 trucks totalling over 500k miles. I am completely satisfied with the product.
How much are you willing to pay for my corn? Then you can do whatever you want. But as long as it’s mine, I get to make the decision. Thats what the American farmer will tell you.
I suppose that this means that we will soon be importing ethanol. Since many of the US ethanol plants have been going out of business in recent months there will be a shortage and we will need to burn someone else’s food in our gas tanks.
Liberals should leave the economy alone; all they ever do is screw it up with mandates.
I don’t see any urban dwellers contributing to fat pension funds for the farmers. For farmers their pension is the bankrupt social security pension. Yet it is ok for the farmer to buy that truck or tractor and contribute to those pension funds and perks like health insurance etc for the city folk.
And the city folk have the audacity to complain about food prices going up 5% while the price of that truck went up 10%? They price themselves out of a job and want farmers to bail them out when they make the smallest portion of the food dollar? It’s about time for you urban dwellers to send some of your union wages back to the people who provide you with your basic food. You are pretty fat and lazy so obviously you have plenty to eat. If food is costing too much try laying off the potato chips and snack crackers and try preparing real healthy meals rather than tv dinners.
“talk to farmers I get the idea that those crops are earmarked for the gas tank”
Crops are earmarked to the highest bidder. You are free to make a bid if you don’t like who they sell to.
We’re already importing natural gas.
The point is the damned government created this ridiculous market and you are having too much trouble understanding the issue.
“The point is the damned government created this ridiculous market”
That sir, is the one thing I can agree with you on.
Government is the enabler or disabler of many a free market enterprise. They control the permission slip. Free enterprise does not determine where we can drill for oil in America.
The one thing for certain is that the 10% ethanol blend in my gasoline keeps 10% of my petro dollar somewhere in America. And the other 90% of that $900 billion sucked out of the country to foreign oil producers is a huge contributor to the economic collapse.
Paul M. Weyrich — Luddite author of “The Population Bomb”.
Time to Zot.
Whoops, come to think of it, it was Paul Erlich.
The Bum Rap on Biofuels
American Thinker | 5-13-08 | Herbert Meyer
Posted on 05/14/2008 3:59:06 AM PDT by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2015711/posts
Campaign to vilify ethanol revealed
ethanol producer Magazine | May 16, 2008 | By Kris Bevill
Posted on 05/17/2008 9:22:13 AM PDT by Kevin J waldroup
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017389/posts
Nope. I spoke specifically about marine and aircraft engines, not new automobile engines. Everything I posted about ethanol use in aircraft and marine engines is absolute truth and it's being widely reported by not only the AOPA and the EAA, but the FAA, too, with scientific data to back it up. Several boating organizations are also warning of the pitfalls of using ethanol in marine engines. Do some research. Here is a direct quote from the AOPA regarding ethanol use in aircraft:
Ethanol deteriorates seals in aircraft engines, harms fuel bladders and hoses, and attracts water, which promotes rust that can damage cylinders and pistons. It also can lead to problems in electric fuel pumps and cause inaccurate indications on fuel gauges, according to studies by the FAA.
The rest of the article can be read here:
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/region/2007/071129or.html
Pilots regularly "sump" the tanks in the aircraft to determine if there is water in the fuel prior to flight. This involves drawing a small amount of fuel from the lowest point in the fuel tank, aka, "the sump." Aircraft fuel tanks have these sump drains installed and are mandated by law for this very purpose. Sumping the fuel tanks is part of the normal preflight inspection of the aircraft prior to flight. The problem with ethanol in auto fuel that is inadvertently used in aircraft is that it hides the moisture. Sumping the tank won't show whether water is present in the fuel if ethanol is present. Regardless of the source of water in the fuel this is a life or death issue for pilots that run auto fuel in aircraft. The same could be said for those who operate in blue water environments in boats.
A simple ethanol tester sold by the EAA, among others, is nothing more than a test tube with graduations marked on the side for gasoline and water. You put a predetermined amount of gasoline and water in the tube, shake, and wait 10 minutes. If the separation line between the gasoline and the water disappears, i.e., the ethanol absorbs the water, then there is ethanol present in the fuel. Graduations are marked on the side to show whether the concentration is 5%, 10% or greater. Essentially, what happens is the amount of fuel in the test tube appears to increase.
Further, most reciprocating aircraft engines that are currently flying are not suited to ethanol use whatsoever. The carburetters on thee engines do indeed have seals and needle seats that are affected by ethanol. The same is true for fuel tank bladders and some types of synthetic fuel lines. Don't take my word for it. Read what the FAA, AOPA and EAA have to say about it. Ask any A&P mechanic and you will see that I am right on all counts.
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