Well let’s see now on this:
1. First, corn used for ethanol feed stock is still available for use as livestock feed (in fact, distillers dried grains are more easily digested than the unprocessed corn was to begin with).
May be now, but my point is will it be in future? See http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=2189
Quote: Far worse is yet to come, as this year’s ethanol mandate of 9 billion gallons expands to 12 billion in 2010 and to a whopping 36 billion in 2022 – an amount that would consume more than today’s entire U.S. corn crop.
2. Second, there are approximately 32 million “conservation reserve” acres in the US which consists of arable land the federal government presently pays the owners not to farm.
This may also be, but I wonder if the issues like water usage and other items will allow all of this land to be returned to farming? I also wonder if the crops best suited for making ethanol can be grown on these lands? Lastly, I wonder if one can make money in today’s environment(see #4 below)?
3. Third, corn yields are steadily increasing each year and will continue to do so.
No argument here, but I don’t think they will exponentially increase yields as required under 1. above.
4. Fourth, there is a very transparent pricing system for corn, and other farm commodities, in the US. New crop corn prices in the US are lower than they were last year, indicating that corn buyers are having no trouble meeting their demands.
I happen to go to church with an individual who has been tasked with finding a buyer for a defunct ethanol plant that was built a short 5 years ago. So far, he has found no buyers and has told me ethanol production economics sucks, even with the government subsidies. If the corn prices were so great and attractive, I wonder why he is finding such a tough time to find a buyer?
I am not against farmers, but see no reason to expand a failed program touted to “Save the environment” when it doesn’t and “Make us independent of foreign oil” when it doesn’t do that either as it uses more energy than it produces.
I am for making responsible economic sense of our resources, and turning corn into ethanol does not pass the sniff test.
That’s why Bush needs to be blamed for expansion of energy idiocy.
Dittos.
Completely wrong. I get tired of debunking this bullshit, but there seems to always be another idiot that will repeat it. The fact is that producing corn ethanol DOES have a positive energy balance. Multiple peer-reviewed studies prove that. I've posted those facts over and over again. But I'm willing to do so again if necessary.
I don’t mean to sound smug, but you’ll notice that the doom and gloom economic predictions made in the article your reply was based upon were made in September, 2008.
While near term corn prices traded in the $5 to $6 range in September ‘08, and your author predicted they would skyrocket higher, near term corn prices are now trading in the $3 to $4 range, having closed yesterday on the CME at $3.762.
36 Billion bushels of corn, by the way, would be sufficient to produce over 100 billion gallons of fuel grade ethanol. The US only uses a total of about 64 Billion gallons of gasoline in a year.