The TRUE cost of Ethanol...read and respond

[Vertnut]

I'm really starting to hear some things that are scaring me shitless. Wholesale Ethanol, is at $2.58 a gallon. This is our savior :confused: . Any livestock that has to be fed (which is ALL of it), is going to go up substantially in price, due to the cost of corn going up, due to the Ethanol demand. The Dept. of Agriculture reported recently, that there will be 250 million pounds LESS meat available (meat and poultry) due to the corn shortage...caused by Ethanol production. Reports out of Brazil (by environmentalist' studies), are showing there are more hydrocarbons being emitted by the act of just FERTILIZING all of the corn to make Ethanol, than what the same amount of gasoline would emit by just burning it in cars. Am I seeing a pattern here, or am I just being paranoid?

[MrSS]

Where did you hear that from OPEC? My grandma rents out her land and the guy doesnt even plant corn anymore because its so cheap so that part of it doesnt seem right. I think its was $1.67 a bushale which she said it was up in the $4range in the 70s. Also they use the sylage not sure of I spelled it right but thats all the stock from the corn to feed them too and thats no shortage.

[Vertnut]

It's been all over the news and in the business section of the Dallas Morning News.

[Vertnut]

Just do a google on corn prices...

[Walsted]

If I recall correctly, a lot of other countries use sugar cane and other plants to make ethanol, and it is a few times more efficient. I've also heard that hemp could be used to make ethanol more efficiently than corn, but I don't know how much I believe that.

[mardyn]

Yea, corn is not the way to make ethanol.... the same effort put into producing ethanol from sugar cane or sugrar beets yields like 8 times the energy. The corn deal is a bust.

mardyn

[Vertnut]

Corn is around $4 a bushel as we speak. The govt. sudsidizes the Ethanol with .51 a gallon. Ethanol is in the $2.60 a gallon range. On E85, cut your gas mileage by a 1/3 or so, assuming your vehicle will run on it. Effective cost of Ethanol vs. gasoline, with the fuel efficiency figured in, puts Ethanol in the $4.00 a gallon range... :eek: . With corn doubling in price due to demand, beef and poultry will also go up in price, not to mention the fact that other farmers will switch over to corn from what they now grow. This can lead to a shortage of other crops, which can lead to higher prices.

[White trash wagon]

Every year our government pays subsidies to keep millions of acres of farmland inactive, that's right, we pay farmers to grow nothing, The government also buys millions of bushels of corn, just to keep it off the market so the price will be stable.

So if we activate all the millions of acres laying unused, and the government stops stocking piling millions of bushels of corn, there would no supply or price concerns.

The US is in a unique position, in that we have the ability to grow FAR more crops than we could ever eat. I'm a big proponent of ethanol, but corn it NOT the way to make it. In Brazil ,they been perfecting ethanol production for 30+ years, and they produce it for about $.90 per gallon.

The US cannot produce sugar cane the way Brazil does, but studies show that switch grass and sugar beets can complete with sugar cane in terms of yield and low cost production.

Scott

[Vertnut]

Brazil doesn't worry about the emissions they are expelling just from the fertilization process of all those "crops". Environmentalists' studying the process in Brazil, are saying it's horrible pollution in the process itself. I guess I feel like we're robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

[exlude]

Brazil doesn't worry about the emissions they are expelling just from the fertilization process of all those "crops". Environmentalists' studying the process in Brazil, are saying it's horrible pollution in the process itself. I guess I feel like we're robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

Where are you seeing these studies? I couldn't find anything good (just wanna look over it).

[Vertnut]

Look at the opening page of Yahoo right now. There are several stories on the Yahoo News page. The DMN, USA Today, and other's have articles here and there, but I'm seeing more and more of them just recently.

[exlude]

Yeah, I see quite a few articles talking about it...but I would like to find the actual studies, hopefully in a peer reviewed journal. Having a bit of trouble with that.

[mikeb]

Ethanol production here is still in it's very early stages. Corn happened to be handy to start with but I think that over time other materials will emerge that will be as good as if not better than corn. There are already small local plants operating owned by famer co-ops that use essentially waste material from farming operations to make ethanol. This is good because waste is being recycled and the plants themselves are not owned by some giant oil company. Hopefully there will be more of these kinds of plants and they will be able to help dampen the large monopoly companies to some degree (ie: ADM).

The increased use of corn will affect food prices for some time to come no doubt. But as another has pointed out there is also unused corn production capacity that can be brought into service to help correct the price hike. This cuts government spending too since government subsidies to not grow crops go away.

I have not read much about the ecological damage being caused by fertilizer used to grow corn; would also be interested in reading any links someone might have.

[Casper]

This country's economic strenght is built on agricultural technology exports. You're trading a few dollars worth of corn for a few pennies worth of oil.

And the Corn lobby is succesfully preventing ethanol imports from South America.

Dumbass farmers.