They want to feed the hungry....fine, let them all become missionaries or join the peace corps. Do it with their own money, not taxpayers.
But the small engine repair shops are booming from all the damage caused by ethonol-laced fuel.
Ethanol can be manufactured from natural gas and coal 30% cheaper than corn based ethanol. We can use our coal and gas reserves to cut down on foreign oil, lower the price of fuel for everyone, and divert our food to food uses.
Worse than forcing consumption of corn ethanol is to force blenders to buy cellulosic ethanol - and then penalizing them when there is no cellulosic ethanol on the market, forcing gas prices higher yet since consumers ultimately pay for the non-existent fairy dust.
Does any one have any hope of getting this crap out of our gas?
. . . major field crops — at least two of which, wheat and cotton, appear pretty much unaffected by the dry weather anyway.
Anecdotal evidence for this - we just drove through L.A. (Lower Alabama for those of you not familiar with the South) last Sunday. Definitely saw a few fields of burned-out corn that simply was gone, not going to be a crop this year. Saw lots of healthy looking cotton as well in the same areas.
What an article filled with absolute freaking bald faced lies.
First off, those higher corn prices have come with higher input prices for fuel and ammonia, so the profit isn’t that great. And higher land prices add to that with higher property taxes and capital costs for farmers buying/renting land to farm. The wealth-hate in the article is obvious even if it is misplaced.
The byproduct of ethanol is DDG. It is used as both animal and human food, and if the stillage is kept out as it should be, it is a fine product to feed to animals as it is high in protein and lower in carb and fat than corn.
The paranoid delusion rantings about the supposed farm lobby juggernaut seem hilarious in light of the fact that somehow, despite all their power, the blending and import subsidies expired unceremoniously. The other credit they mention, I doubt most farmers know about it or can take it, as their corn goes direct to market and not directly to ethanol production.
I hate mandates as much as the next person, but don’t cloud the issue with a bunch of other ideologically driven BS.
A local farmer said that's all he grows now....corn for the ethanol plant....no beans, no eating corn, no grains....
We are a stuck on stupid. People have always asked...What if we have a drought....Well, we're going to pay for it.
When's the lst time you had a GOOD cut of beef??
Where’s the link?
In so far as I know, I don’t use any ethanol in my diesel car which gets me 27-30 mpg in pure city driving so I speak from a neutral viewpoint!
Frankly, I am afraid that this is one of those situations that would be called a conspiracy if it were not for the fact that it was almost all out in the open! You have big corporations, Archer-Daniel-Midland for one, that love another market for their corn and you have farmers in almost every state who feel the same way. We have bipartisan politicos who think that ethanol would be US profit replacing foreign oil imports and see little down-side risk from this operation but boosts to their popularity and campaign contributions.
Now we see that, unlike oil, there is a the potential for things like the current drought that materially change the availability of an agricultural product. We see that corn, as an ESSENTIAL multi-species food product, has an impact when there are non-elastic demands set by law for use in non-food industries like motor fuel. We also see that, unlike the early rosy projections of a natural alternative to evil oil, ethanol has a much greater environmental cost than was initially realized let alone the fact that ethanol is detrimental in its fuel use.
So, what do we do now? Logic states that corn is far better used as a food source than as a fuel additive. So, that means that the laws mandating use of corn as a fuel feedstock should be removed. Continuing research into non-food ethanol should continue along with research on engine design to better use such ethanol.
Anyway, I plan to start eating dirt as it seems to be the only thing that is not about to skyrocket in cost over next year!
There are some problems both ways with this.
First of all, ethanol is b.s. and a huge waste of corn.
However, food stamps are completely different from any other form of welfare, so should not be lumped together with largesse. This is because American agribusiness is downright surreal at times.
Even at the height of the Dust Bowl, when tens of thousands of farms were wiped out from Texas all the way to Canada, those farmers outside of the Dust Bowl region were still producing too much food for America to eat.
Combined with deflation, where there was not enough physical currency to buy anything, crops became worthless, with wheat down to 25 cents a bushel, and corn being burned for fuel. It cost more to transport to market than it was worth. At the same time, in other parts of the US, people were starving.
FDR’s response was to send government agents to every producing farm with orders to *destroy* food. With some of the excess given to charities to give out in soup kitchens.
In perspective, one of their first acts was to kill and bury six million pigs. This is the scale I’m talking about.
And ever since that time, American agriculture has been made into a fascist economic model called a “public private partnership”, which means “semi-nationalized”. The government tells farmers what they are *allowed* to produce, but leave it up to the farmers to actually produce.
A problem with this model is that in every part of the process, the government has to inject money. Vast amounts of money, to keep production and prices stable.
Yet part of this is to insure there is never shortage, always surplus. And the government buys up this surplus and expensively warehouses it until it rots. Every year.
This warehousing is so expensive that when Reagan gave away the “government cheese” surplus, it actually *saved* the government millions of dollars.
And importantly, it had little or no effect on the price of retail cheese. And this is vitally important.
Most of the food that people who buy their food, buy, has been processed. They much prefer that over bulk food they have to cook.
So optimally, people on food stamps should get most of their food in an unprocessed form. Flour, sugar, produce, and raw meat, which they have to cook themselves. Were it done this way, every single person in the US that wanted free food could get it, and it would not effect the price of processed food one bit!
But the processed food manufacturers have lobbied long and hard so that people on food stamps could get their food as well. So when people on food stamps buy processed food, of course it pushes up the price for everyone else.
Finally, when there is talk of “welfare reform”, invariably somebody tries to lump food stamps together with cash payments as something that should be cut back.
First of all, hunger is a crappy motivator. Second, do you want to spend *more* money storing surplus food than it costs to give it away? And third, by giving away excess, of just those foods that are in excess, it stabilizes prices so the government does not need to pump more cash into the system.
So what needs to be done?
First of all, the situation could be de-federalized to a great extent. Give the states block grants and the ability to set their own rules, as well as emphasizing foods that state produces over “imported” foods. If a state produces an abundance of apples, in addition to food stamps, the poor should get the state overflow.
Lots of taxpayer money saved. Poor people eat, though their cash welfare payments can be seriously reformed.