Letters to the Editor
-
Oats, hell!
What about barley and hops!
-
Well, yeah, but you can also feed oats to finish cattle
I don't know anything about farming, but I think the oats story might be involved in the alfalfa story, since oats was/is undersown with the first year alfalfa crop. If cattle farmers who traditionally used a corn-oats/alfalfa rotation chase the market for soybeans, they get used to finishing their cattle with something else? In any case, I doubt demand for horse feed is the answer, since I suspect horse population has increased over the past several decades.
Fertilizer is one limiting factor, but in the West it's also interesting to look at water. The market for hay is up, but alfalfa is an irrigated crop in much of the West and water is scarce.
It will be interesting to see how so many new factors affect food prices: peak oil, "alternative" fuels (including snakeoil ethanol from corn), water shortages, global warming swings in weather patterns, etc. The future looks chaotic, and perhaps more threatening than Osama.
-
Food or Fuel?
Is it true that most of the corn grown for ethanol is not food grade, but feed grade, or lower? At least we can eat soybeans, those most Americans do not, which makes you wonder how this is helping us. Less gasoline, less food to eat, less feed stock, while farmers switch to an export crop. Something is seriously wrong here folks, but when you go the store and the shelves are empty, it's too late to do anything about it.
-
You can feed oats to ME
Just had some for breakfast this morning. Yum yum.
-
Food grade corn
I think food-grade refers to corn directly meant for human consumption (eg in tortillas or sweet corn). But most corn is fed to livestock so it is indirectly in the human food chain. I believe livestock corn (commodity corn) is the same corn used for ethanol. Somebody probably knows more than I do.
In any case, all corn varieties compete for acreage and inputs with each other, so an increase in corn ethanol demand could mean an increase in food prices. I call ethanol snake oil because the energy inputs seem so high for the energy output--it may make economic sense (especially with subsidies) but not environmental, consumer, or energy sense. There are many farmers who would disagree, but they probably don't read Salon.
Food grade corn brings up another issue though--foreign markets. I think we probably sell a lot of corn to Mexico since NAFTA. As foreign markets begin to eat more like us, that will also affect what we grow. India and China have a lot more money to spend on high-cost food now, but I wonder how much more meat they can grow without grain imports from us.
-
BioDiesel?
So does this mean more vegetable oil and less ethanol? Do I want to wait a couple of years for the Jetta Diesel-Electric to hit the US market instead of buying that new Prius?
-
But is it a felony?
If you run your car on taxed fuel isn't that a felony?
-
Biodiesel and bioweasel
I'd like a diesel car too, but I have to admit some cynicism about the whole alternative fuels craze. It makes environmental sense to recycle used cooking oil from McDonald's, maybe, but when you start growing crops just so people can drive to the gym you gotta wonder. I don't think there are enough french fries made to power all the cars motoring past the drive-thru window. One of the main food shortages in the world is in fact cooking oil. How can biodiesel not compete with cooking oil supplies?
-
how stupid are we?
maybe once we are done with election and the candidates no longer have to pander to Iowa perhaps than we can kill of this stupid idea of ethanol made made from food and the mandate for oil companies to use the stuff. There is a good chance that the Renewable fuels mandate will end up jacking up the price of gasoline. FYI a gallon of ethanol gets 30% less miles per gallon than gasoline so everytime the oil companies add it to gasoline you are paying more.
I do believe that that there is great merit in cellulosic ethanol made from switch grass or other waste and that we should be investing heavily in the R&D but not from corn. First corn prices go up which causes farmers to plant more corn and less wheat and soya beans, whose prices in turn went up. Bottom line of this failed policy is that we destroy the environment, use up huge amounts of water pay more for food and pay more for gasoline. I think the world is justified in asking "how stupid are Americans"
-
School cafeterias fry A LOT of food
I bet you could take that sludge off their hands.
-
A national primary day would kill ethanol
Eliminating the electoral college would decrease farm subsidies. Reallocation of senators by population would eliminate them.
Though, if urban populations take over farm policy, so much for the last vestiges of Jeffersonian democracy.
-
@Michael Bowen
What about barley and hops!
For some of us, transportation means moving more than just our bowels.
-
@keepingitstraight
"FYI a gallon of ethanol gets 30% less miles per gallon than gasoline so everytime the oil companies add it to gasoline you are paying more."
Yes, which get's us back to the biodiesl question. You get about 90% of the joules out of a gallon of B100 biodeisel that you get out of a gallon of Petrodeisel. Which makes it just about as dense an energy source as gasolene.
The process to get oil out of a nut or bean is about a third as energy intensive and a lot quicker than fermenting and then refining ethanol. And the inputs to grow most oil crops are a lot lower and the crops better for the soil than corn. You still have to transesterify the vegitable oil and remove the gliceryn(sp?), but that's such a simple process that people here are doing it in their garages.
This country has very few viable oil reserves and a lot of arible land per capita. So plant extracted power of some kind makes sense. Fresh, unused vegetable oil is about 1/4 as much for a gallon right now as Gas.
The only problem right now is that it is not possible for a private consumer to buy a diesel-Hybrid anywhere on the American market.