I've driven from Paris to Strasbourg, and Strasbourg to Arles. Pretty much all farmland (and vineyards), plus the occasional PSA factory.

Biofuels have all sorts of pros and cons, but here's the thing: In both Europe and the U.S., we waste a lot of money propping up agricultural systems that have lots of overcapacity. It is also apparently a political impossibility to change the situation. So what's so wrong about having US and European farmers grow something we can actually use more of (i.e. fuel)? It seems like a win-win to me- less waste on agricultural subsidies and less reliance on fossil fuel (via biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol- corn sucks). And don't forget pelletized grass for stationary applications- with no energy-intensive conversion step, the energy balance is insane!

I am worried that expansive production of biofuels could threaten habitat and wildlife, on both the new and old worlds. But I don't accept those concerns as a deal-killer for biofuels, as some would have it.

BTW, I'd be happy to help with the French wine surplus, if I could get a barrel or two at a good price.

Why not have the European Union rip up all those vinyards, replant them in McMansions (I mean of the most obscenely large, architecturally incoherent variety), and then settle them with all the Islamic malcontents of their "suburbs" - it would be the American notion of suburbia meeting the French one, and who knows what solutions might emerge from such a synthesis? I would be particularly interested in seeing these developed without connections to mass transit and I'd like to see the occupants required by law to buy nothing smaller than a Hummer H2 for the purposes of commuting to work. If we can benefit from European-style socialized medicine, as Michael Moore seems to think, then why can't Europe benefit from America's greatest invention?

on.

Consumption of wine is decreasing in the European Union, but imports of cheap, good-quality wine from the New World are rising. Price pressure in a shrinking market is a recipe for a bad hangover.

You previously asked why declining cocaine and opium prices haven't resulted in an increase in cocaine and opium consumption.

Couldn't one ask the exact same question about wine? Prices are down but alcohol users aren't responding with increased consumption. Why not?

If you can come up with an answer for why wine consumption isn't skyrocketing thanks to the decreased price of wine, then you should be able to answer your previous question about cocaine and heroin too.

It's hard to see how any regular agricultural method would compete with algae based biofuel.

i don't see how the world's thirst for energy can be sustained by anything except nuclear power - if only we could get rid of that pesky waste.

We're about a decade overdue for the monoculture corn crop in the U.S. to die overnight from a blight not seen since the Irish Potato Blight of the 1840s.

From Virginia to the Rockies, Nebraska to the Gulf, millions and millions of acres of the exact same corn variety will be rotting in the fields, impervious to even the most fatally toxic fungicides.

The few acres of organic, genetically diverse, heirloom corn varieties will survive, but that will hardly matter to the starving hordes when a week's groceries cost more than a new car.

Monoculture is a straight, unavoidable path to famine. As dependent as the Irish were on potatos for the bulk of their diet, we are even more dependent on the corn fructose syrup that is an ingredient in virtually every food item that does not come straight out of your garden.

Fuck around with Mother Nature, and she will get you every time.

Surely we can collectively soak up part of this surplus.

I work in the wine business and thought I’d share an amusing story that speaks volumes about the problems facing the EU where vineyard/wine/distillation subsidies are concerned.

An importer I work with was driving through Sicily and came across a huge, newly planted vineyard with a shiny modern winery set in the distance. The road to the winery was fenced off and the property was completely unmarked. So he asked a local: Who planted these thousands of hectares of vines and built a new winery when so many existing vineyards in Sicily are being ripped out?

It turns out that a group of ‘businessmen,’ exploiting various provincial, national and EU grants and subsidies (which were created to help out small farmers) had recently opened the operation. Purchase of the land was subsidized; purchase and planting of the vines was subsidized; as so was the construction of the facilities.

Here’s the real kicker: The ‘winery’ itself was actually both a winery and distillery under a single roof, enabling the facility to make wine (from subsidized vines growing in the subsidized ground) which could then be immediately turned into ethanol and sold to the EU, which had already helped subsidize the entire operation in the first place, literally from the ground up.

So, using government money, these guys built a brand new vineyard and winery with the express purpose of using it to sell back to the goverment a product that it neither wanted nor needed.

There should be a subcategory for the Nobel Prize for Economics: Most Elegantly Efficient Abuse of the System. As much as such abuse damages real farmers who are really struggling (not to mention the EU’s reputation), I can’t help but admire the ingenuity of those Sicilian ‘businessmen.’

"because eventually all those vineyards sprouting around the world will get converted to more rewarding crops: biofuels that actually make economic sense."

This is industrial thinking applied to agriculture, which is a huge mistake. Agriculture is an ecological activity, and indeed, its root is in the latin, "cultus" implying religion and spiritual forces at work.

Envisioning a biofuels future where the endless fields are tended by giant remote controlled machines misses the point underneath the point that is well articulated by Wendell Berry: "What are people for?"

M