Posted on 11/02/2006 6:59:01 AM PST by thackney
One could argue that there was a shortage of corn before this year's harvest even began. As of Oct. 1, 105 ethanol plants dotted the U.S. landscape, with a combined ethanol production capacity of 5 billion gallons.
The Renewable Fuels Association tells us there are 42 more plants under construction and 7 plant expansions underway. Those efforts will add 3 billion gallons to the U.S. ethanol production capacity. Looking further down the road, there are more than 300 business proposals for additional ethanol plants. If those are built, it would add more than 20 billion gallons of ethanol.
Keith Collins, USDA chief economist, says in 2010 90 million acres of corn will be needed to fulfill ethanol, livestock and export demands. He says corn prices would need to be in the $3.10 to $3.20 range to attract that many acres to corn. Corn futures for 2007 are pushing close to those levels, indicating that the price signals have begun to entice a substantial increase in corn acreage. "But where will that acreage come from?" asks Chad Hart, Iowa State researcher.
"The last time this country planted more than 90 million acres of corn was in 1944. In 1932, over 113 million corn acres were planted," he notes. "In that year, Texas was the sixth largest and Georgia was the tenth largest corn producing state, with nearly 10 million corn acres between them. So a historical analysis would indicate the possible return of corn acreage in the Southeast and Great Plains."
But the prospects for more corn acres in the Southeast and western Great Plains is much lower today. Large amounts of land planted to corn during those earlier decades is no longer in agricultural production. In 2006, Georgia corn producers planted 280,000 acres and Texas had 1.75 million acres. Total cropland in Georgia is now less than 5 million acres.
Due to population and land use, the upper Midwest and the eastern Great Plains are the mostly likely candidates for expansion, says Hart.
One potential pool of acreage is in the Conservation Reserve Program. However, it appears that only 7.7 million acres are scheduled for release, much of which is more better suited for wheat than corn. "So while some CRP land can be brought into corn production in the short term, CRP acreage will only be part of the shift," he notes.
The most likely source of new corn acreage will come from shifts in crop rotation from soybeans to corn. That raises the question of whether the two-year rotation between corn and soybeans will disappear -- which also will reduce annual yields. Hart believes a three-year rotation -- two years of corn followed by one year of soybeans-- could surface.
"Given the crude oil price outlook for the next several years, ethanol’s expansion is apt to continue for some time," says Hart.
As Collins points out, ethanol plants can compete for corn even at record high corn prices. Other corn users, such as livestock producers, other processors and the export market will feel the pinch. Certainly more corn acreage will be found, where that will occur, whether it will be enough, and what else will be displaced, is a long and evolving scenario.
You write in a response to the posed question:
No, where will the water come from, for all that corn???
You wrote: The sky, generally.
The problem the astute writer points out is that about 4 gallons of treated groundwater are used during the production cycle for just a single gallon of ethynol; he is not talking about the water needed for just growing the crops.
In Minnesota plants have been built before anybody realized the plant would use up the greater part of the available ground water supply; in addition to having to deal with this massive amount of contaminated water that has to be cleaned before it can be allowed to enter the water chain again.
yikes...thanks...i forgot the <sarcasm off? tag ...
I think that paying farmers not to plant acreage should be a thing of the past.
You write:The plants won't be worthless, they will be worth less, and the front end of the plant (the conversion part) will have to be retooled to take advantage of new technology. This of course, will trash the capital value of the corn-based facility and force the shareholders to pony up yet again to protect their investment.
You miss the fact these plants have all been built in the wrong place for cellulose based ethynol production. Retool all you want then pay transportation costs for the raw materials to get to them? I don't think so.
link to argonne lab,
look at,top-right graph on page two,
liquid energy needed to produce ethanol,
one-tenth of product, or something like that
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf#search='ethanol%20btu'
copy-paste, not sure if working right, use the whole link
With corn, of course.
...bon apatite'!
Nam Vet
You should actually try reading the link you posted.
As you can see, the fossil energy input per unit of ethanol is lower—0.74 million Btu fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of ethanol delivered
Also the information contained in the link about gasoline is incorrect.
are you capable of understanding what the word
--> liquid <-- means ?
it means, kinda watery
coal, natural gas, are not liquids
liquid is not necessarily 'fossil'
oops, meant, energy inputs such as coal,
are not necessarily liquid
who gives a flying f''' about 'fossil',
as long as it doesn't come from the a-rabs
The website is that of the National Corngrowers Association. The somewhat edited version of the ANL presentation material has significant flaws, as does the original material. The gasoline energy balance includes the primary energy of all fossil material inputs in addition to the energy required to refine and produce the final product.
The ethanol balance uses only the energy of the finished energy input materials. This is absurd. One of these things is not like the other. Note that the commonly-accepted energy return for gasoline is a 10-1 ratio.
Also omitted from the ethanol balance is a large energy credit taken for a non-energy co-product, DDGS ("dried distillers grains with solubles"). Without this credit, the original USDA paper reports a 6% positive energy balance.
More fatal is the universally-ignored impact on net productivity. One must divide the gross ethanol production by 16.7 to get the incremental energy production. When one considers that U.S. annual gasoline consumption is 143.9 billion gallons (10/27/2006), or the equivalent energy of 219.7 billion gallons of ethanol, one can see the limitations of an ethanol energy economy.
There is not enough arable land in the U.S. to supply even an E10 transportation economy, assuming we were willing to forego food production. The current lust for fuel ethanol would vanish without the 51 cent per gallon subsidy.
Of course you are correct and ethanol is a great big scam levied on the taxpayer and consumer all to buy the GOP more farm votes. It is disgusting. And don't even get me started on sugar subsidies.
jas3
fossil has nothing to do with this,
the idea is to cut the a-rabs out the deal
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