Posted on 10/27/2007 11:33:03 AM PDT by BGHater
It’s a money grab. Gives the ex-tobacco growers their money back for the long-term.
OK, but remember that the principal by-product of ethanol, distillers wet or dry grains, is, itself a valuable feed ingredient. The only nutrient removed from the corn is the starch.
Your tag-line is good. You probably already have this but I’ll post for the sake of post-erity. :^)
http://home.comcast.net/~nhprman/trhyphenated.htm
Isn't it interesting that the United Nations has never ruled on a "right to energy"? After all, without heating oil, for example, people freeze to death. Without gas and diesel, fire trucks and ambulances don't get where they're needed. You can have all the food in the world, but unless you've got some way to truck it from the field to the market, it's going to rot.
So if we produce plant matter that can be used for either food or energy, and we produce far more than we need for food, while maintaining a crippling deficit in the production of energy, how is it morally or legally wrong for us to convert that surplus food into energy?
Or are we somehow obligated to produce free food for the rest of the world, while that world charges us exorbitant prices for our energy? If so, can someone point out the root of that obligation?
Then what is done with it?
Exactly, Just like MTBE, and gasoline fuel storage tank replacement. It never ends, manipulations to defraud the defrauders who defrauded the guys who defrauded Joe Sixpack.
Maybe. Who is buying the oil? Who is buying the food?
We have a Winner!
I thank you, Teddy thanks you.
It’s used as a livestock protein feed; principally for dairy and beef cattle, but also for chickens and pork.
I have no problem with your stand but feel that using a food staple in replace of oil could get bad. Maybe I’m wrong but greed and payback is very real in this world.
Why?
Who's buying the oil? Everybody. Who's buying the food? Half the time, nobody. The government subsidizes farmers to grow it, only to have it given away to worthless third-world parasites or welfare mooches here at home. In cases where it is actually traded like a free commodity, increased demand is good for farmers, good for our balance of trade, and good for our energy future. I can't imagine what's so wrong with that.
Unless you happen to be in the oil business ...
And we can’t just take acres out of government subsidized soil banks and grow more corn?
Ok, then tell me this. Why did the price of corn triple in Mexico? Is it to bring the poor up to their (sellers) level?
How about less people in the world. That takes care.
What scarcity? Show me a scarcity in any grains. There’s no scarcity in grains. Grains have gone up in price, just like gasoline and diesel fuel, but if you’ve got the money, you can get all you want.
What people don’t seem to want to understand is that we’re in a commodity boom cycle. Since 1984, we’ve been in a commodity down cycle — and people, having short memories, thought that oil would be $20/bbl, gold would be $300/oz, corn would be $2/bu... forever.
Well, in 1999, the new commodity boom cycle began. These cycles last usually between 16 to 18 years. Commodities take a run up to a new plateau in prices, which finally encourages new production to come online, which then forces prices back down, and inefficient producers out of the market.
This is what happens to US domestic oil production. This is what happened to many family farms in the 80’s. This is what happened to a lot of copper and gold mines.
All these malthusian whiners are full of manure. Biofuels are a way of removing surpluses from the world markets and turning them into something useful, rather than just turning them into stuff that is ultimately detrimental to the producers — consistently low prices that are below the price of production, which causes them to ask for more subsidies, which creates more over-production, which causes them to ask for more subsidies....
Consistent oversupply with prices below cost of production is also detrimental to the consumer in the long term. The typical American would be much better off if we removed high fructose corn syrup from the market and put cane sugar back in. People’s caloric intake would drop significantly.
Coal bad.
Wood bad.
Nuclear bad.
Hydroelectric bad.
Bio-fuels bad.
Don't even think about laying on a rock in the sun like a lizard to get warm. Skin cancer.
See post #6
The price of corn went up in Mexico because of the confluence of US ag subsidies, over-production and NAFTA.
Long story short: US farmers were sold a bill of goods on NAFTA. The bill farmers were sold was that it would “open export markets” — one of these being Mexico.
Well, in Mexico, there’s some industrialized farming, but nowhere near the level of corn infrastructure you see here in the US. We can grow corn... boy, can we grow corn.
The surpluses and “carry-over” in corn kept the price absurdly low for years and years — below the cost of production. The US government kept making farmers whole enough to hang on, but then started helping farmers find more outlets for the surpluses — one of these being Mexico.
US corn went down to Mexico, where the low price of our corn undercut their local farmers... who hung it up and then started heading north for the border, because they had nothing else to do as a job. There’s tons of illegals you meet in the US ag industries who know what they’re doing because they used to be farmers — their own boss — in Mexico. We, with subsidized corn and NAFTA, put them out of business.
But exports to Mexico (and other places) STILL didn’t clean up the surpluses. Did I mention how we could grow corn?
So along comes ethanol and $80/bbl oil and $3/gal gasoline.
NOW we finally cleaned up on the corn surpluses. And the Mexican market suddenly sees two results:
1. The price of corn, here in the US at elevators, went from about $2/bu to about $3.50/bu.
2. The cost of transportation down into Mexico, usually via truck because they don’t have much of a rail system, skyrockets as diesel fuel goes from $1.50/gal to $3+/gal.
And as a result, you get high priced corn in Mexico, because their corn farmers were put out of business.
This is yet another of the wonderful results of “free trade” and economists’ dogma.
True, but not directly for humans.
The important thing here is to address efficiency, and the most efficient way to feed people is to provide all have not nations with their own capitalistic food farm program to the best of their resources. Educate and train them to be efficient capitalist farmers, not give away food that undercuts the local farmer and taxes some citizen somewhere for the giveaway.
Likewise, fuel efficiency means mostly petro pure fuels properly refined for efficiency and pollution control. Eventually moving to massive nuclear power sources for stationary and some mobile needs.
None of this will come from the UN.
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