Occaisionally I read really geeky sites like Slashdot, Boing Boing, and Kuro5hin. Recently I found a Slashdotted (you’ve arrived when you’ve become a *verb*) article about the rising price of corn and biofuel production. It’s kind of alarming.
I’m very interested in Terror-Free Oil and greater oil independence for our country. NPR had a story on it this week. I’m a big fan of biodiesel since I live close enough to the Pentagon gas station to buy it regularly. But in the back of my head, I’ve been a little worried about ethanol production in the US. I don’t have all the facts and I find what few facts I know to confuse me.
1) The US pays farmers not to farm to prop up agricultural prices.
2) Ethanol in the US is made with corn. In Brazil, sugar cane waste.
3) Corn is animal feed.
4) Corn is human feed.
I mentioned something about the problem of corn prices rising because of the supply of corn going to make ethanol and someone at work countered with fact #1. Basically he reassured me that I shouldn’t worry about a lack of supply of corn. In the case of Mexico, as cited in the article, that could actually present a problem though. I’m not reassured at all. If we start making this transition, we’re going to end up probably monocropping the entire American Midwest with corn.
Ever read about the Irish Potato Blight and the ensuing famine it caused? Potatoes turned bad overnight in the ground. I don’t want to be chicken little here. But I think we should tread carefully and try to consume less oil overall instead of trying to figure out how to expand the supply and potentially jeoparodize our food supply. (What would I do without tasty corn-fed, feed-lot beef?)
Please don’t make me connect the dots to personal finance. I’m not sure what the configuration is just yet.
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It’s actually more efficient to make ethanol from switchgrass than from corn. Pres. Bush alluded to this in his State of the Union – he mentioned exploring “grasses” as a source of ethanol. So don’t worry too much. Iowa’s corn farmers want us to make ethanol from corn, but you can actually make it from many other things, and we will if the price of corn is too high.
BD – Monocropping that doesn’t seem like a good idea either. I realize that any biomass will do. I’ve heard of pig manure (out of a research uni in NC somewhere) as a source of fuel.
It’s just that if we’re not careful, we may have a lot of unintended consequences, like FURTHER GLOBAL WARMING from continued use of carbon-fuels. Fine. It’s not made with fossilized carbon anymore, but it’s still carbon burning and getting into our atmosphere…
Grass fed beef is much, much tastier than corn-fed. It’s also more expensive.
There are many different agricultural products that can be used to make ethanol. I think the US should proceed with a two-fold approach: 1. reduce our dependence on fuel by creating more efficient cars, manufacturing processes, etc. 2. Pursue forms of alternative fuel.
I think that ethanol should be used as an alternative rather than a replacement technology. This should reduce the mono cropping idea to some extent; I think a lot of money should be spent not in technologies such as Ethanol but a complete alternative to using oil at all.
US News and World Report just did their cover story on this very subject, and I kind of had a question about ethanol. If plants like switchgrass yield more ethanol, why aren’t we using them instead of corn which already has 80 million uses?
Making ethanol from corn just doesn’t make sense. If it actually produces any more energy than goes into making it (which is debateable) the surplus is very small. Without subsidies and now with the high corn price it doesn’t make sense financially either.
I’m not entirely sure that I’m in favor of any “solution” predicated upon “don’t make us change our habits or our lifestyles” and allowing people to expect automobile-centric culture to continue indefinitely.
I suspect that no solution that involves massive agricultural surpluses (which, historically, have been driven by use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, as well as fossil-fuel dependent farm machinery) is particularly more sustainable than just chucking the oil directly into the cars… in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Michael Pollan shows how much of our present agribusiness-supported lifestyle is dependent upon corn, and in turn upon oil…
I was just researching ethanol imports last week. There was an article in the WSJ about how Brazil is going to be the biggest importer of ethanol … i’ll have to dig up that article.
it’ll be interesting to see how imports and how much power Congress gives to Bush on signing new trade agreements will affect this.
reducing our dependence on foreign fuel is one thing. replacing it with a food source is another.
Corn is the the staple feed of chicken and pigs – which means those prices will go up. As will the price of corn – Mexico is already seeing this.
As more and more farmers start planting corn to sell to the 170 new ethanol factories, less and less cotton and soyabean will be planted, which will raise the prices for these crops.
What should you do? buy far out cotton futures contracts and move closer to work!!!!