Posted on 04/11/2008 9:51:22 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
Energy: The world's poor are learning what happens when government subsidizes the burning of food. It's time to end this madness and let the market decide if any biofuels make sense.
For most Americans, the rising prices at the supermarket are definitely an annoyance, but hardly a threat to life and health. It's a different story in countries like Haiti, where food inflation has led to real hunger and, last week, to riots.
News reports say the poorest Haitians are trying to get by on cookies made with dirt, vegetable oil and salt. Food riots also have roiled Egypt and led to a general strike in Burkina Faso in West Africa. The high cost of corn, wheat, soybeans and other basics of the world's diet could soon start bringing down governments.
It already has set back the fight to reduce global poverty. World Bank Chairman Robert Zoellick estimates that "the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years."
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I gardened in sandy soil and it was somewhat challenging. I grew great corn, tomatoes so-so, cucumbers nil, herbs fabulous and zucchini seems to flourish everywhere, lol. We were also on the coast so had to contend with dampness, but a generally mild climate. I recommend LOTS of soil amendment.
P.S. I just saw on another thread that potatoes grow well in sandy soil and, as a matter of fact, I did well with another root crop: rutabagas.
But it wasn't enough. Now ethanol is being touted as a solution to imported oil and global warming. It's a fraud.
And the price isn't being driven up by speculators. It is supply and demand and there is an artificial, government mandated demand.
I want price supports stopped now.
I want ethanol subsidies stopped now.
I want ethanol mandates stopped now.
The oil price will drop because we will use less oil if we aren't using it to farm and distill ethanol.
Not if it comes at the needless expense of other people.
Low crop prices have come from more efficient farming practices, not some conspiracy to screw the farmers. When you can grow more food with less labor there will be fewer farmers. 100 years ago about half the population was in agriculture. Today it is less that 5% simply because of mechanization.
Sending Billions to Africa is a needless expense. Perhaps if this mass starvation thing happens the ethanol critics predict then we will save billions upon billions as all the people we support overseas who can’t feed themselves will stop being a problem.
The yearly NASA budget is a needless expense and the government spends more on it than Ethanol.
Your low labor in farming due to technology actually fits the ethanol supporters that there isn’t a foreseeable limit on crop production. Yields per acre can double or triple because of a new genetically enhanced seed or if a new pesticide is effective.
If the price of corn is high then the farmer will spend more for better yields and to overproduce. Short term shortage = long term surplus.
I tried researching oil used for farming in the United States. Agriculture oil use isn’t enough for the US Department of Energy to track separately. All energy used in the USA such as Natural Gas, Electricity, Gasoline, Diesel, LP, etc plus all the energy inputs for farm chemicals such as fertilizers came to farming using 2% total of the energy produced in America.
How much of a drop you think we would see in price?
That's total energy. Includes electricity and propane etc. We're talking about how much gasoline is used for producing ethanol. That would be about 4.8 percent of US gasoline consumption in 2007.
If we stopped wasting gasoline to produce ethanol we would save a lot of money since, according to a 2005 report issued by the Agriculture Department, corn ethanol costs an average of $2.53 to produce, or several times what it costs to produce a gallon of gasoline. That doesn't leave much room for taxes or profits.
Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2005) — In 2004, approximately 3.57 billion gallons of ethanol were used as a gas additive in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). During the February State of the Union address, President George Bush urged Congress to pass an energy bill that would pump up the amount to 5 billion gallons by 2012. UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek thinks that’s a very bad idea.
For two years, Patzek has analyzed the environmental ramifications of ethanol, a renewable fuel that many believe could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels. According to Patzek though, ethanol may do more harm than good.
“In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution,” Patzek says. “It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit.”
Ethanol is produced by fermenting renewable crops like corn or sugarcane. It may sound green, Patzek says, but that’s because many scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.
Patzek’s ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later, Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.
“Limiting yourself to the energy balance, and within that balance, just the fossil fuel used, is just scraping the surface of the problem,” he says. “Corn is not ‘free energy.’”
Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.
Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.
“One farm for the local village probably makes sense,” he says. “But if you have a 100,000 acre plantation exporting biomass on contract to Europe , that’s a completely different story. From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece .”
If ethanol is as much of an environmental Trojan horse as Patzek’s data suggests, what is the solution? The researcher sees several possibilities, all of which can be explored in tandem. First, he says, is to divert funds earmarked for ethanol to improve the efficiency of fuel cells and hybrid electric cars.
“Can engineers double the mileage of these cars?” he asks. “If so, we can cut down the petroleum consumption in the US by one-third.”
For generating electricity on the grid, Patzek’s “favorite renewable energy” to replace coal is solar. Unfortunately, he says that solar cell technology is still too immature for use in large power stations. Until it’s ready for prime time, he has a suggestion that could raise even more controversy than his criticisms of ethanol additives.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that if we’re smart about it, nuclear power plants may be the lesser of the evils when we compare them with coal-fired plants and their impact on global warming,” he says. “We’re going to pay now or later. The question is what’s the smallest price we’ll have to pay?”
Adapted from materials provided by University Of California - Berkeley.
Thanx a lot!!!!
Corn, zucchinni and potatoes would be great. I love zuchinni, and the price of corn will probably be going up more because that’s what they use for ethanol.
Senator McCain wants to use ethanol for fuel.
You can tell him what you think, and here’s the contact info.:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Contact/
To me it seems immoral to use food for energy, especially when we have so much UNTAPPED oil in our country.
Where did you get the 4.8 of US gasoline consumption figure?
Farmers don’t use gasoline they use diesel except for a few farmers with 1940’s Massy Harris tractors and their pickups. Same with the trucks and trains that transport the materials. They use diesel not gasoline.
Here is the figures on oil imports, I don’t see a farm related spike for planting or harvesting nor for the increase in the production of ethanol.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mttimus1m.htm
The biodiesel folks believe they can provide enough biodiesel for farm use and with coal to diesel plants starting up I don’t see much need to worry about the so called need to import oil to create ethanol.
Since gasoline use is much greater than diesel use and we use home produced natural gas and biodiesel to make ethanol I don’t see much demand on oil imports to make ethanol.
I heard one study says that when the government subsidies and tax credits and the use of the military to protect the supply the true cost of gasoline per gallon is $5.
No American boy is going to die to protect the corn fields of Iowa like they are dying to protect the oil fields of the Mideast. The governor of Iowa isn’t some crazed dictator who is sponsoring terrorism with the ethanol dollars.
“””I want price supports stopped now.
I want ethanol subsidies stopped now.
I want ethanol mandates stopped now”””””
From blathering Dan above——He figures
that if all is stopped, ethanol will be no
more and farm products will drop. Just suppose that
would happen to Corn, wheat etc, and the good old
days prices should make a great big
drop back to 2 buck corn, 4 dollar wheat, etc.
Then what do we do,THERE IS NO SUPPORTS,as per Dan,
and low, great, everyday, rock-bottom,
don’t-you-love-em, prices that are 1/2 to 2/3 cost
of production. Farmers are such drag on society,
belong to the wrong voting block, give greenies
to hard a time, hell we don’t need
them at all..........and it don’t matter as food
is made in the backroom of the store.And of
course with farms not using their 2% of the
energy, oil prices will drop, hahah, oh wait, we
got rid of some supply so big oil has same
prices as always. Consumers who are used to
present prices of fuel won’t have no changes to get
used to, so everything is hunky-dory, haha
You monkey around like Dan’s suggestions and the
price supports to keep farms from turning into
brush,weeds,bugs, etc, and our diets consisting only
of bananas, caviar, will be 25 times as much as the
4 billion tax credit BIG OIL gets for using ethanol.
Nonsensical ideas......
Swiss- and a lot of ethanol plants are powered with
waste wood and other wastes. Wood chips for
boilers are a third of natural gas, other wastes
cheaper.And beautiful sight is a havested corn
field, with stalks/roots to rot down to replenish
the carbon and organic matter, with deer, turkey,
and geese, small critters... all feeding.Ed
"In the United States, ethanol is the primary biofuel in use. U.S. ethanol production now makes up about 3 percent of U.S. annual gasoline usage."
That was written in July 2006 based on 2005 figures. But US ethanol production increased by 60% since 2005 so the figure is derived from that.
I don’t see a farm related spike for planting or harvesting nor for the increase in the production of ethanol.
No you wouldn't because:
1) The fluctuation in gasoline usage can vary much more than 4.8 percent in a few months and the increase due to ethanol production occurred over years.
2) A higher demand in one sector that drives up the price is going to reduce demand in another sector that is more dicrectionary. (people use their RVs less when prices are high)
The biodiesel folks believe they can provide enough biodiesel for farm use...
Great. Grow crops to make fuel to use to grow crops to make more fuel. Great for the farm lobby.
...and with coal to diesel plants starting up
Why not just use the coal to make diesel fuel instead of using coal to make fuel to make corn to make fuel? Is this trip really necessary?
I don’t see much need to worry about the so called need to import oil to create ethanol.
Of course not. We will run out of farmland long before that.
No way will we run out of farmland, There is 30 million
acres in CRP crap and twice that much unused,
That adds up to as many acres as whole corn crop.
And we aren’t raising food to exclusively make fuel,
there are other products worth more than ethanol.
It is a kind of by-product, just like milk has
butterfat removed for other dairy items, and the
meat on cattle isn’t the only thing used.
Biodiesel developement will help.So when
system is built up so biodiesel takes over 2%
of energy needs, equivalent to fuel farms,then
farmers raise soybeans, processors take out the
biodiesel to raise all crops, that still leaves
soybean meal and products for food, as well as the
other crops all raised, including corn.Sounds great
and dummies hollering about using oil to raise crops
won’t have a holler. Now will the percentage of
energy, biodiesel and ethanol has replaced help
drop price. Not really it’s only moderated prices,
as it still goes back to the fact, that present high
prices are caused by speculating money.Ed
Their purpose is to create uncertainity. That way it is much easier for them to influence the election of big government, control freak, liberals. People want something done, and they want it done NOW-—no matter what the long term consequences!
If so, why does the government need to encourage ethanol production? If it is so profitable, why doesn't the ethanol market work without all the tax incentives, the subsidies, and the mandate? Why does the government require that oil refineries use ethanol to produce gasoline? Answer: No one in their right mind would burn ethanol if it weren't required. One sure-fire way to stop this crazy ethanol binge would be to require that farmers and ethanol producers use biofuels exclusively to grow ethanol and biofuel crops.
If we were stupid enough to try to become "energy independent" of imported oil we would surely run out of farmland. Even if we tried to replace 10% of our gasoline consumption with ethanol it would require about 40% of our existing cropland. Not to mention water. It takes about 1700 gallons of water to make a gallon of ethanol. I wonder what it costs in gasoline or diesel to pump 1700 gallons of water out of the ground.
I don’t think you are reading it right. No where in the article does it talks about inputs to make ethanol.
Look at this excerpt from the Energy Information Administration.
**In 2005, total U.S. ethanol production was 3.9 billion gallons, or 2.9 percent of the total gasoline pool.**
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass.html
They are talking about the percent of ethanol in the total gasoline supply not how much gasoline is used to make ethanol.
As I said before they don’t use gasoline to make any sizable amount of ethanol.
I suspect Dan that back in the 19th Century you would be asking why the government was subsiding the railroads. Hell you think there would be airlines today without government support back in the early days. Alexander Hamilton would approve of the Biofuel support the same the government in his day directly or indirectly supported new industry in America.
Did you oppose the Interstate System? Damn government boondoggle. The two lane highways are good enough, just going to make the trucking companies rich off the taxpayers. Etc,etc.
The water usage is absolutely bogus. The plants use 4 gallons water per gallon of ethanol and most of the water is recycled. 90% of the corn farmers don’t irrigate their crops. The needed water comes from rainfall.
Think about it, if it took 1,700 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of alcohol then the old moonshiners would have to be getting truckloads of water every hour to make any decent amount.
Budweiser’s St Louis brewery makes 13 million barrels of beer a year and a barrel holds 31 gallons. So about 403,000,000 gallons of ethanol times your figure of 1700 gallons of water to 1 of ethanol and that equals 685,100,000,000 gallons of water needed to make the beer.
Does that sound reasonable? Don’t to me.
Nope. At least not in the way that they are claiming. No more then corn stoves a few years back did. But people need something to panic and worry about. I guess this is the flavor of the month now that Golbul Warming has been canceled for lack of interest.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.