How stupid for a country to burn their food for fuel. We deserve what we sow.
For more than 50 years we've had mountians, and moutains, and mountains of surplus corn.
I've asked this question probably 5 dozen times, would you be so kind as to be the first to answer?
What shall be done with these mountains of surplus?
see my tagline, 2010 crop looks like it could dwarf all prior surpluses.
People have burned surplus grain as fuel for a long, long time. Corn compares favorably with pellet wood stove fuel in terms of BTU/lb, and if you want you can burn corn directly in a stove. Many people in the midwest now have corn burning stoves.
The resulting cost of heating a house is a lot cheaper than propane or natural gas. You get about 7,000 BTU/lb of corn, and there are 56lbs in a test weight bushel of corn. Corn is running under $4.00/bushel.
That’s 7,000 BTU * 56 lbs/bu = 392,000 BTU for about $4.00. That’s pretty cheap, as alternative fuels go. You can do better right now with natural gas, IF you have it, and if your utility isn’t boosting the tariffed cost of NG too much above $5 to $6 per decatherm.
Many places in the rural midwest do not have natural gas service. They have to rely on propane, and propane prices shoot up in the winter. You can keep propane costs low if you have a big tank (like 2,000 gallons) and you fill up about now in the year.
We grow millions of bushels more corn than we and our farm animals can possibly eat.
Corn is a complex feedstock that we are processing into hundreds of different products. Not only all the corn based foods and animal feeds that America and the world can purchase and consume but pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, plastics and cosmetics, and yes, fuels too. As fast as we can develop new uses for corn, we flood the markets. We can grow millions of bushels more corn than we do today.
Here are the products now being processed from corn in the 1.5 billion dollar http://www.iowabiocenter.com/ just up the road a piece from me.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Corn Syrup
Dextrose
Crude Corn Oil
Corn Gluten Meal
Sweet Bran®
Acidulants
Citric Acid
Anhydrous Citric Acid
Liquid Citric Acid
Sodium Citrate
Potassium Citrate
Glucosamine
Natural Vitamin E
D-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate
Mixed Tocopherols
Phytosterols
FFA
FAME
Ethanol
Monosodium Glutamate
Feed Grade Threonine
Feed Grade Lysine
Cyclodextrins
Were we to quit processing corn for best uses, we would have to put millions of acres of corn ground back into federal subsidies to not grow crops on it, and we still have 30 million cropland acres sitting idle that we currently pay farmers billions of dollars to not grow corn on.
larry