I’ll answer some of your questions.
Ethanol is made of field corn, bred specifically to produce ethanol. It is not eatable by humans, well, it won’t kill you, but you would never take a second bite.
The residue, called distillers grain, is very valuable as a feed stuff, and is most efficiently fed to beef animals, although hogs and poultry do well on it too. Beef just have a better digestive system for the grain.
Because it has been ‘predigested’ during the distilling process it is more easily converted to meat than regular corn.
Summary:
Governor Walker had the best ‘solution’ to the ethanol question. Not the one he was endlessly attacked for here on FR, but his real one, the one that came from his lips.
I think it was brilliant.
Essentially he called for a gradual elimination of government subsidies to grow the corn. AND, most importantly, a gradual elimination of federal fuel blending standards.
This gradual change would prevent wholesale farm bankruptcies, which would put our entire food supply at risk.
The end result would be ethanol would stand on it’s own, with the market dictating how much ethanol would be produced, and at what price. NO government money involved.
The end result would be a much smaller ethanol corn crop and a much smaller amount of ethanol produced.
No one knows for sure, but because of the high value of the distillers grain, I think we would still have a fairly large ethanol industry.
I read the thread for the more personally applicable comments on toilets and light bulbs, I confess (I already know what we know about Roberts and ethanol destruction of all our engines - car, boat, lawn mower, rototiller, weed eater, etc.)
Now I’m curious - humor me, as I sometimes don’t know if a question is stupid - do you mean that vodka is made from “distiller’s grain”? I know what distillers are and I know vodka is useful for more than getting cat stains out of the carpet and ants off the sink. What is “distiller’s grain”? I know, I know, off topic. *sigh*
Oh, baloney. My family, friends and I grew up eating field corn. Nothing wrong with it. We had family and friends come and get bushels of it to eat.