Posted on 03/18/2007 10:46:42 PM PDT by thackney
Paul Hitch has spent his entire life raising cattle and hogs on a stretch of the Oklahoma panhandle he says is "flat as a billiard table." His great-grandfather started the ranch in 1884, before Oklahoma was a state, and now Hitch, 63, is preparing to pass the family business on to his two sons.
But he worries that they'll face mounting pressures in the industry, particularly because of the soaring price for corn, which the business depends on to feed the livestock. In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged.
"This ethanol binge is insane," says Hitch, who's president-elect of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (NCBA). "This talk about energy independence and wrapping yourself in the flag and singing God Bless America—all that's going to come at a severe cost to another part of the economy."
The ethanol movement is sprouting a vocal crop of critics. While politicians including President George W. Bush and farmers across the Midwest hope that the U.S. can win its energy independence by turning corn into fuel, Hitch and an unlikely assortment of allies are raising their voices in opposition. The effort is uniting ranchers and environmentalists, hog farmers and hippies, solar-power idealists and free-market pragmatists (see BW Online, 02/2/07, " Ethanol: Too Much Hype—and Corn").
They have different reasons for opposing ethanol. But their common contentions are that the focus on corn-based ethanol has been too hasty, and the government's active involvement—through subsidies for ethanol refiners and high tariffs to keep out alternatives like ethanol made from sugar—is likely to lead to chaos in other sectors of the economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
A large proportion of the corn from which ethanol is being extracted is left over to feed to cattle. They thrive on it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's wrong to set up a system in which the production of fuel directly competes with the production of bourbon.
Somebody needs to set those Brazilians straight before this gets out of hand.
EXACTLY, and because there are so many ethanol plants going on line there is a glut of it and the cost in many areas has dropped to $60 ton. The whole thing balances out. Corn way up ... DGs way down. DGs are so concentrated with proteins, vitamins an minerals it must be mixed with normal rations and increases the productivity of beef cattle as much as ten percent. All this BS about cost of food going up because of ethanol production is just that... so much BS.
Hey, weren't you one of the 300?
Well, there's fuel, and then there's FUEL...
Good idea, but it was a matter of first things first. Let's face it. We had mountains of corn...literally. We've been shipping it out of the country in the billions of bushels for decades to feed other country's hogs. Selling it for a pittance, and having to heavily subidize farmers because of it.
Better to add value to it at home, which is what we're doing.
I'm happy to report that I am neither on my shield nor a thespian.
every gallon of ethanol produced,
is 2/3 of a gallon of petroleum
that no longer needs to come from the middle east.
if the US does not turn corn into ethanol,
and exports the corn,
someone else will turn the corn into ethanol.
[I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's wrong to set up a system in which the production of fuel directly competes with the production of bourbon.]
Bloody well right.
Glad to hear it. "Come home with victory or come home on your shield." Spartan mother's admonition to their sons before battle. :-)
Use barley and other grains instead.
It must be a sweetheart deal with Ohio and it's mainly corn producers, ie someones getting they pockets lined.
Just as I can't see why a hog producer is squealing about corn prices for feed stocks. Most hog producers don't even use corn, at least not at any of the super barns around here.
Corn isn't the best for nutritional value, produces more stinky waste, and is always more expensive than other feed stocks, which are barley based blends, which include crops such as peas, lentils, soy beans, flax tailings, and waste from the human food markets, such as day old bread/ bakery waste, eggs, milk, vegetable and other products with expiry dates, all of which is gathered up by feedstock companies and mixed into cheap pigslop.
Plus, it isn't such a bad thing that commodity prices are going up, perhaps farmersw will make enough money actually growing crops and we can get rid of all those subsidies.
If the stuff is worth it a market will appear for it.
And all the subsidies now. Every single one of them.
L
When it comes to the ethanol scam, ADM comes to mind.
Building a better, high performace engine is certainly one of the nice things about ethanol, But I don't think you understand the reasons why.
You are dead wrong in thinking that you will get better fuel economy, as you need to burn more ethanol than you would gasoline.
The reason you can develop more power is because ethanol has a higher detonation point , allowing you to raise compression ratio's back to what they were when they used to build good motors.
You need to open up/ replace fuel jets in carberators with bigger ones however, as it takes more ethanol to produce the same amount of power at temperatures that don't melt your valves and pistons.
So, although you will have a very clean running engine, not only will you be paying much more for a gallon of ethanol E85, you won't get as far down the road with it either. (But it would be a little more fun)
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