OK, can somebody please tell me what the politics behind the Ethanol issue are?

I do get it that farmers grow corn for ethanol and that depletes the supply for food products. But wasn't ethanol the answer to our dependency on oil? Did it start out as a good thing and then just get out of hand?

Help needed here to alleviate my ignorance...:shrug:

and has remained as such.

Its one of the many ways the corn industry tries to increase demand for its product. Industry loves to portray their latest scheme as a way to help the environment. Coal to liquid and most "clean" coal technology is the same scam.

Ethanol generates more carbon output to grow and distribute than it saves.

Ethanol does have the political advantage of both appealing to the new craze in "green business" and subsidizing corporate agriculture. A special interest two-fer. Maybe that's why rational analysis of ethanol has escaped the MSM from the start of the craze? :shrug:

option as an altnerative fuel ...

Depending on whose math you go by, give or take, you expend the same amount of fuel to produce ethanol as you ultimately gleen from it ...

UC scientist says ethanol uses more energy than it makes:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/27/MNG1VDF6EM1.DTL

Ethanol Lobby Is Perpetrating A Cruel Hoax:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290119894243935

"Supermarket to the world"

Very true evl , lot of people don't know this

"Supermarket to the world"


Absolutely, they have some exclusive government deal on ethanol production

http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com/2007/10/al-gore-saved-ethanol.html

http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/speeches/farmj.html

With this week's announcement that former Vice-President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change", we're reminded of the Vice-President's long time support for ethanol. In fact, he even saved it.

"I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be."

Indeed, Mr. Vice-President, the better-off our environment will be. Ethanol remains a viable solution for our energy security and for our environment. And that's not an Inconvenient Truth!

By the time you use fossil fuels in farm equipment, fertilizer produced using fossil fuel energy, processing to ethanol, etc. the energy yield is not very good.

As far as using corn, it's a terrible source of biomass for ethanol compared to other crops. Corn requires a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, its root systems don't absorb N as well as many other crops, so the N heads out into groundwater and streams, etc.

Switchgrass, using other biological materials (e.g., byproducts from wood, etc.) are maybe more promising. Haven't followed this much in a while but that's what I recall.

Hundreds of tons of sugar beets are left in the fields to rot every year. The problem is they are grown under contract from Crystal Sugar and they won't let anyone do anything with the excess.

Didn't know about Crystal though.

Would that help industry in Louisiana? Could they switch to that instead of oil production, or in addition to?

My guess is that the by-product beet pulp probably has little value. I don't know that for sure......am only guessing. If that's the case then that would add cost.

The main by-product from corn is used in the cattle industy......much cheaper than the corn they have to buy for feeding.

That is a real waste if they are letting the beets rot. That basically says alot about Crystal Sugar...and that wouldn't be a good thing...

Next question?

strictly from an energy inputs to energy outputs point of view.

Corn is one of the least productive crops when it comes to biofuels.

It's something that we latched onto early in the biofuels push (right after the gas crises of the seventies). Corn farmers liked the government subsidies to push the program. Iowa is an important state in the Presidential election process, Iowa grows a lot of corn, ergo, Presidents and Presidential Candidates have been reluctant to end this program and switch the biofuels subsidy money to some other (more recent and more promising) technology.

The current rise in corn is only partially explained by increase in biofuels, so I wouldn't attribute the world wide rapid food cost rise to just ethanol or biofuels.

There are many other farmed sources of "feedstock" for making biofuels, some of which have gained in popularity.

pretending that it would replace or even reduce our dependence on oil was just the marketing

unfortunately we have an unskeptical, uncritical, unthinking media and as a result an unskeptical, uncritical, unthinking public who buys pretty much any unscientific tall tale if it "sounds good"

that helps one understand the reasons corn is grown for everything from ethanol to high fructose corn syrup. And how the government has used corn to keep rural American dependent on subsidies. Most local video places won't have it, but you can get it from Netflix, Blockbuster.com, etc. I highly recommend it.

include the fact that corn ethanol takes a lot of energy to grow & produce. Consider that most of the pesticides and fertilizers used in modern agriculture are petroleum-based. Then, you have to use a LOT of heat to distill the alcohol & concentrate it for use as a fuel.

By and large, corn ethanol is just another boondoggle that serves mostly to pass government money to large farmers.

to turn food into fuel. It also gets votes in farm states, but it is big corporate agriculture that really benefits.

Alternate fuels are needed; but this is the absolute-worst way to generate 'alternate' fuel. And it is not really an alternate, because it uses up so much fuel in generating the ethanol.

Any switch to alternate fuels, ethanol, biodiesel, and so on, must not rely upon food crops -- nor displace food crops. Biodiesel can start with waste products, including waste oils. Both ethanol and biodiesel can use plant matter that is waste matter, or at least that does not come from land that could instead raise significant amounts of food. Biodiesel can also depend on algae, water hyacinths, and so on.

We are facing world food shortages not just because of switching food to fuel; but in large part because of global climate change, so necessitating alternate energy strategies. Finding workable strategies will likely not benefit corporate agriculture, nor even farm-state voters; but this must be done.

Adding to world hunger. Trees being cut down to create fields to grow corn. Corn farmers getting rich.

It seems to me that the Ethanol issue has really brought people together.

I mean you have the progressives hating it....Rush fighting it.....and of course the Oil industry doing everything in it's power to kill it.

I think it seems to be a very unifying issue.....

Farmers are seeing the best corn prices in ages. There was more corn planted last year then I've ever seen before.

When farmers are happy, a lot of local businesses are happy.

Also, ethanol plants are providing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jobs in the area.

None of this negates the negative impacts of ethanol production for fuel, tough. Just sayin'.

There is no doubt this has been a boon here too. It's been along time coming. Many jobs being created ......very good jobs I might add.....and so many spin-off businesses also being created.

...the start of a new (albeit competitor) industry.

It starts with ethanol, but who knows where it will go?

Apparently, the GOP and their oil masters don't want us to find out.

(ON EDIT)

Much less begin looking.

Food, crops and farmland do not belong on the open market.

Burning crops is social suicide. We need food more than we do fuel, and food must always be the priority.

It is the speculation, in the hopes of big profits, that drives prices up and creates artificial scarcities of the grain. In other words, the actions of the "free market." Food, medicine, water, air - these are necessities, not widgets or fads or market opportunities, and must be regulated for the public good. The alternative is starvation for some, massive wealth for others, even when there is more than enough to go around. This always how the "free market" works, it is just more dire and obvious when it comes to food. It may be fun and exciting to say "nyah nyah I get a yacht and you don't, you loser!" and imagine that this is the way the "game" should be played, but when it is food that we are playing games with, the consequences become a little more severe.

Some are getting fabulously wealthy, others are starving. That is the "free market" at work. As Democrats we must support adequate funding and restoration and strengthening of our public agricultural infrastructure, and kick the hucksters, the wheelers and dealers, the investors, the clever foxes, and the market manipulators out of the food production and distribution system.

The ethanol craze let Wall Street get its foot in the door and "play" with agriculture in ways that were blocked off before. We are seeing the consequences - starving people. Is that a price we are willing to pay for the sake of a discredited and dangerous theory - the libertarian free market theory?