Posted on 09/30/2007 1:31:12 PM PDT by neverdem
NEVADA, Iowa, Sept. 24 — The ethanol boom of recent years — which spurred a frenzy of distillery construction, record corn prices, rising food prices and hopes of a new future for rural America — may be fading.
Only last year, farmers here spoke of a biofuel gold rush, and they rejoiced as prices for ethanol and the corn used to produce it set records.
But companies and farm cooperatives have built so many distilleries so quickly that the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it have not kept pace. The average national ethanol price on the spot market has plunged 30 percent since May, with the decline escalating sharply in the last few weeks.
“The end of the ethanol boom is possibly in sight and may already be here,” said Neil E. Harl, an economics professor emeritus at Iowa State University who lectures on ethanol and is a consultant for producers. “This is a dangerous time for people who are making investments.”
While generous government support is expected to keep the output of ethanol fuel growing, the poorly planned overexpansion of the industry raises questions about its ability to fulfill the hopes of President Bush and other policy makers to serve as a serious antidote to the nation’s heavy reliance on foreign oil.
And if the bust becomes worse, candidates for president could be put on the spot to pledge even more federal support for the industry, particularly here in Iowa, whose caucus in January is the first contest in the presidential nominating process...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No civilization ever achieved anything by burning its food.
Unless you're a bovine, you don't eat the corn used to produce ethanol. And the dried mash that remains after the sugars are extracted is still a highly-sought animal feed.
We are not "burning our food."
I ‘ve seen this ‘don’t burn our food’ a thousand times here on FR it seems.
Not one has asnswered the question of what to do with our enormous supluses of food stuffs. This years corn crop is going to be the largest in the entire history of the world, a sea of corn, much of it piled in the streets of small towns.
The rest of the world is too stupid to use our capitalist model, and as a result they are constantly on the verge of starvation.
I say, let the stupid people starve. Let’s burn our food.
They apparently did only half the job. They produced the ethanol and forgot to ban imported oil. Imported oil is still available and still a relative bargain.
BTW, I agree with you, we aren’t ‘burning our food’, but I really like the luxurious sound of it.
Just as the world is awash in oil, America is awash in foodstuffs.
Let’s burn some!
And what did they do with all this (bovine) food before they started burning it for fuel? We are using farmland that could be used to feed humans.
And the dried mash that remains after the sugars are extracted is still a highly-sought animal feed.
The sugars that are converted to alcohol are food. They didn't throw it away before the government mandated that we burn it.
Ethanol mandates are madness. We are not "burning our food."
paging liberal lawmakers. something “must be done.”
More stories on the same topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904477/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904378/posts
I would suggest that farmers stop growing so much corn if they can't sell it.
more:
(comments and more data)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904477/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904378/posts
using food is mighty dumb anyway.
Correct. The corn they convert to ethanol is not the sweet corn that you buy at the supermarket.
In my area, acreage that has not been farmed in years was planted in corn. Also, field corn, the type used for animal food, has NOT replaced acreage that was used for human consumption in areas like Iowa and Nebraska. They raised mostly cattle, corn, and soybeans.
I would like to see a nice big glut of ethanol and biodiesel carry us towards energy independence while we perfect hydrogen technology and build a few hundred nuclear power plants.
If we want to end dependence on foreign oil, we should embargo oil from countries that are potential enemies. Then let the market decide what we should use for fuel. And we should end regulations that restrict development.
Thanks for the links.
It's corn that could be used to produce animal feed and sugars for other foods. It is food. We should not be using agriculture to produce food. It is a huge waste of money and resources. There is no way that ethanol would survive in the market if it weren't subsidized or mandated.
I eat bovine. :)
They used it to grow feed grains, corn that is used to feed cattle. If you're not a steer, you didn't eat the grain they grow on that acreage. It WAS being used for feed grain; it is STILL being used for feed grain.
The sugars that are converted to alcohol are food.
Yes, food for CATTLE. Humans don't eat feed grain. The principal nutrient for cattle is protein, which is not affected by the ethanol extraction process.
They didn't throw it away before the government mandated that we burn it.
Nobody "mandated" any such thing. Farmers are free to produce corn that they sell for ethanol, or that they feed to cattle. Or the ethanol distillers are free to sell the dried residue for feed stock, which they do regularly.
Obviously you've never been to a family BBQ.
Not to mention that scientists in England have demonstrated that bio-fuels produce as much green house gases as fossil fuel. So, what’s the point?
Try to tell that to the hate-ethanol, all-corn-is-the-same crowd. These are people who have never seen a farm outside of Captain Kangaroo, but presume to tell the agribusiness sector about abstract market forces.
I don't believe there is that much good unused farmland to grow enough corn to make a dent in our oil imports. But if you throw enough taxpayer money at something or pass draconian laws that require us to do something stupid, like burning food, you can get people to do anything.
We are not talking about market forces. We are talking about government forces that force us to burn food.
And yes, the cost of bovine flesh has gone up because the cost of the grain to feed them has gone up, mostly because now ethanol producers are fighting for some of that supply.
So now a farmer can actually make a couple of bucks on a bushel of corn. Far better that than some illiterate bedouin making another Rolls Royce payment on my back.
To be accurate, we are burning part of it.
Good...I am sick of my 2 cynical farmer friends screaming about what a killing they are making by ditching all other crops for corn.
You've used that phrase in almost every post on this thread. You've learned your mantra well. It is not even close to accurate, but it's senseless to interrupt a man when he's praying.
we are indeed burning the resources it takes to grow and produce our food.
And cattle are food.
Nobody "mandated" any such thing.
Sure they did. State, local and federal governments have mandated "oxygenated fuels". That pretty much means ethanol.
If it made any economic sense to grow corn to use as a combination ethanol and cattle food, we wouldn't have had to mandate it by requiring gasohol.
Why not DRINK the ethanol, instead of wasting it in cars? LOL. It is CHEAPER to make ethanol fromm natural gas...just not politically correct.
It takes the same resources, yes. But the corn being grown for ethanol is not corn that humans consume. True, many of the byproducts of that corn (high-fructose syrup, for example) are consumed by humans. But the corn itself is generally not used for human food. It is converted into protein via the livestock production process. And the Distiller's Dried Grain -- the dried mash left after the ethanol extraction is done -- is still highly useful for an animal feed.
we are indeed burning the resources it takes to grow and produce our food.
We are converting some of corn's sugars into ethanol, which produces energy. That same energy would otherwise have to come from oil produced by countries that hate us and want us dead. Ethanol benefits American farmers and distillers. Oil benefits arabs and al-Qaeda.
I'll burn every stalk of corn I can find if it would put those lice-ridden camel drivers out of business. The fact that it benefits America's domestic economy is just a boon.
Or ethyl-tertbutyl ether. Or methyl-tertbuytl ether. Both are commonly used oxygenates. Ethanol is cheaper.
Some? How much is some? I'm guessing closer to "all".
We will never, ever stop being dependent on foreign oil until it is embargoed. Saudis pump it out of the ground for five bucks a barrel. Ethanol will never compete with that. The only sane way to do this is to embargo Mideast oil and then let the free market decide if it makes sense to burn food.
Are you sure that's what you meant to say?
Make corn whiskey instead and export it to Russia so they can continue to drink themselves to death.
“we are indeed burning the resources it takes to grow and produce our food.”
The “farm problem” which is the reason for the government farm program, has been as long as I can remember (I am not young) and as long as my father farmed (since about 1920), a matter of overproduction. From the modern farmer’s point of view, there has never been an adequate demand for his product. FDR’s approach was for the government to buy the surplus and destroy it to attempt to improve the price to the farmer. Within the last few years, the government proposed the same approach to what was viewed to be an excess of cranberry production.
Venezuela exports nearly as much to US as the Saudis which represents at most 15% of our crude imports. Mid-East (SA, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait) oil accounts for less than 25% of all our crude imports.
This monthly and YTD info is available from the Dept. of Energy website.
No I meant to say "We should not be using agriculture to produce fuel. It is a huge waste of money and resources".
I don't like the idea of being too dependent on those countries either.
We can only dream that this is the end of ethanol. Even if we literally burned all of the food for human consumption it would only slightly lower our imported oil needs. And that is using generous estimates for energy return on investment..Using less generous estimates, we would actually have to import more oil then before. As ethanol is energy negative.
Ever wonder why the big oil companies are so keen on ethanol? One study I saw showed it took 1.3 barrels of oil to make 1 barrel of ethanol.
THAT'S exactly what they are doing, selling everything they grow.
What has caused a lot of bitching is WHO it is they are selling it to.
Farmers aren't dumb, if no one is going to line up to buy the corn they won't plant it.
I say, let the farmers grow the corn and keep on selling it to the people who will burn it.
BTW, I noticed you avoided answering the question I posed about what to do with our huge surpluses.
I say BURN ‘EM!
That's a problem for the people who own the surplus not my problem -- and not the government's problem. But if someone wants to pass a law requiring that I buy their surplus and burn it, then I have a problem with that.
You don't solve a problem of surpluses by buying the surplus and burning it. It's like paying one guy to dig a hole and paying another guy to fill it in.
Well, you can, and I think that's what pisses so many Freepers off.
What the farmers have done is joined togather in a co-operative manner, built ethanol plants and are 'burning' their otherwise surplus corn.
I know it isn't really burning, as there is a lot of value left over to sell after 'burning' for ethanol, but I like the luxurious sound 'burning our food' makes as it rolls off my tongue.
The rest of the world should be so wealthy.
In fact, I will go so far as to assert that 99.9% of our Freepers would vote to do so, if we only had the opportunity. We can't vote on it, and we are faced with what we have, including a decades old 'cheap food' policy that has kept the AMerican Farmer, the most productive farmer in the entire history of the world, on the governement dole.
Imagine that, the MOST productive, most inventive, farmers that have every lived, reduced to begging to be on the governments teat.
They now have found a loophole, who can blame them for trying to escape?
Certainly not me, as I farmed for more than 20 years, then moved to the city, only to discover that city folks only work half as much to earn twice as much. And those who are willing to work as hard as a farmer does, and are willing to risk the millions that farmers do make 10 times as much. PLUS, they normally have a annual vacation.
I can only relate it to heating your home by ripping the studs out of the walls and burning them, along with the furniture.
Pssssst. We were using that oil BEFORE we started making ethanol. Now we're using it to make an oil substitute. And the value of the feedstuff is almost intact.
If burning American-produced ethanol means "the terrorists have already won," then I must have the meaning of "victory" confused.
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