World Starves as Americans burn food to drive cars

[Soggy in NOLA]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

 

[KissMy]

NEWS FLASH!!! - Ethanol plants produce a co-product. It is called animal feed DDGS (Distillers Dried Grains) You take feed corn to the ethanol plants & you get back both food & fuel!!!

Cattle that would have eaten the corn grain and soybean meal to supplement their diet, now eat distillers grains as that part of their balanced diet. Equal or better performance (rates of gain for beef cattle or milk yield in dairy cows) are usually reported from cows with up to 20% of their diet from distillers grains are compared with control diets.

Ethanol is only made from the starch in the corn. DDGS contain all the protein that was in the corn. Protein is what builds muscle, not starch. Muscles = Hamburger. The corn starch caused methane in cattle that was released into the atmosphere. It was not making beef, hamburgers, steaks or milk. Methane gas is 15 times more powerful of a greenhouse gas than CO2. Now this starch is converted into ethanol instead of methane gas.

Bernanke's printing press is what is driving up cotton, corn, oil & metals prices. All commodities have risen big-time in price. Even the price of water (the most plentiful comodity) is going up.

It is a good deal that you get double use out of the corn but.......the cows would have eaten the corn before it was used to make ethanol anyway.
And it still takes more energy to produce then what you get out of it.
But I suppose we could always stand to have less cow farts.
All in all still a bad idea.

EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) starts at 1.2 to 1 for ethanol if we raised corn the conventional way & used old outdated ethanol plants just to make ethanol & threw out the DDG feed. There is no study on the viability of ethanol that factors in the energy value of the DDG feed that comes out of the plants. They also never factor in how most plants use waste heat from power plants to cook the mash. This waste heat used to go into the atmosphere. These new ethanol plants use much more efficent gmo enzymes. They also do not factor in No Till Farming methods that cut in half the total fuels used to produce corn. I have read all their studies & done all the math. They conveniently leave all the things I mentioned above out of their study intentionally to make their point. When you just add in the feed value the ethanol produces 2.2 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy used or lost in the entire chain from growing corn to making your car move. If you add in No-Till Farming, gmo enzymes & waste energy consumption the EROEI goes much, much higher.

We export more food now than we ever did before ethanol. We even export a larger percentage of our food than we ever did before ethanol. The media controls the peoples minds. On average, the world production of crops grew at a rate 40 percent faster than population.

Ethanol is a bad idea if you grow crops just to make ethanol. It is good if you use the DDGS co-product to feed the same animals that the original crops were going to feed.

There is no scarcity! There are just to damn many dollars circulating. There is probably more dollars than rocks on the ground & that makes dollars as worthless as rocks on the ground. Ask yourself - Why is Cotton 3 times higher than 2 years ago? Oil? Wheat? Copper?

Stories of scarcity & supply disruption get moved up to front page news & main TV coverage because prices rise. It is the tail wagging the dog. Print money now & lie about a year or two later when prices rise. The media & government have brainwashed the planet.

 

[Sallow]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

that would drive up the commodity prices on sugar and of course would result in higher food prices here and abroad.

Or less use of Sugar..

 

[Sallow]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

What's dumb is NOT developing new sources of fuel. And you don't do that sitting on your hands.

 

[KissMy]

If you think using switch grass or something else that is not used for food will not cause an even larger problem then you need your head examined!!!

Food producing crop-land & fertilizer will get used to raise switch grass. So then you will truly have less food in the world. At least with corn ethanol 100% of the corn protein is turned into DDG animal feed. Hell Taco Bell could even use it instead of the other filler they are currently in their tacos. Ethanol is only made from the corn starch. All the other feed value is still preserved & used for animal feed.

With switch grass there will be absolutely no beneficial food product produced along with the ethanol. All you will get is a bunch of industrial waste. Then we will be truly farming only for ethanol which will take as much energy to create a gallon of ethanol as that ethanol will produce. Also more energy will be consumed in the production of more farm equipment for switch grass while the now productive farm equipment will sit & rust. At least currently we are extracting ethanol from the food chain that we are currently producing & still keeping all the food value in the world food chain.

Switch-grass ethanol will be the biggest mistake this country could ever make.

BTW - If you people do not understand how creating more money drives up all commodity prices then you do not have a understanding of economics. In China & India most of the population ate rice & grains. As we send more of our money to those countries more of the population start to eat meat. It takes 10 calories worth of rice & grains to raise the meat the same population eats to replace the one calorie worth of rice & grains they were eating. So as we print money this allows China & India to increase their food consumption by 10 fold. For years now China has been out bidding the ethanol plants for corn. China also buys much of the DDG feed from the ethanol plants driving the DDG feed prices higher for the US cattle farmers.

 

[BlindBoo]

No. It wasn't a stupid idea. It was a great idea - but it failed. Sometimes, even great ideas fail.

I'm glad someone tried to find an alternative to gasoline. In this case it didn't work, and we need to give up, and stop subsidizing it to the tune of 7 billion dollars a year.

But we should keep trying.

On what planet is burning food for fuel while people are starving a great idea?

You keep saying we need to find an alternative fuel, but there is nothing wrong with the fuel we are using now. You just won't let us get it.

That's false.

Remember what BP was doing when that well blew up. They were capping it. They weren't even going to pump it.

You have to cap the well to measure the pressure. Of course they planned on turning that field in to a producer. Most oil companies do not make production wells from their exploration wells. BP is one of the few exceptions. Some in the industry believe this practice was one of the contributing factors in the Deep Water Horizon blowout and explosion.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

What's dumb is NOT developing new sources of fuel. And you don't do that sitting on your hands.

What's wrong with the old source?

There seems to be plenty of it... why burn food?

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Sorry, I'm fifty and every 10 years or so some whackaloon comes along screaming the world's coming to an end in ____ years if we don't stop doing ________.

They're never right.. but they sure have a tendency to fuck things up along the way.

 

[Seawytch]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

I dunno, cause gasoline isn't going to be around much longer? We hit peak oil in the 70s and now we are just scrambling for the scraps. Time to stop sucking on the oil teat.

Now...Hemp produces 10 times as much methanol as corn does. Shame we aren't planting hemp crops...

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

Can't friggin grow it here, for one thing.

But yeah, corn ethanol is really stupid. I think it's one of the few non partisan things most agree on.

 

[rabbitdonedied]

It's too bad that this is happening, because anyone with a high school level understanding of economics could have seen it coming from a mile away. Unfortunately, because of Iowa's position as the first caucus in the nation it will never change. Too much ass kissing to be done for that to ever change

 

[thereisnospoon]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

I dunno, cause gasoline isn't going to be around much longer? We hit peak oil in the 70s and now we are just scrambling for the scraps. Time to stop sucking on the oil teat.

Now...Hemp produces 10 times as much methanol as corn does. Shame we aren't planting hemp crops...

Utter nonsense.
Since you opened the door, go right ahead and produce at least two credible sources to support your claim. Have fun.

 

[The Infidel]

Should have went with Sugar Cane like the Brazilians..but what can ya do?

How about burning, I dunno... GASOLINE?

Why do we have to burn food?

Just dumb.

I dunno, cause gasoline isn't going to be around much longer? We hit peak oil in the 70s and now we are just scrambling for the scraps. Time to stop sucking on the oil teat.

Now...Hemp produces 10 times as much methanol as corn does. Shame we aren't planting hemp crops...

Liar

 

[Care4all]

I'd reread what Kissmy is saying....

I used to think ethanol was the stupidest idea in the world and was pissed as heck with congress....after reading a post of Kissmy's in the past and doing further research on it, I have changed my mind.

In fact, it is probably the first time anyone has ever changed my mind on anything....at USMB.

I still think the subsidies need to stop, but ethanol is not the complete waste of food, as I once thought.

 

[The Infidel]

I'd reread what Kissmy is saying....

I used to think ethanol was the stupidest idea in the world and was pissed as heck with congress....after reading a post of Kissmy's in the past and doing further research on it, I have changed my mind.

In fact, it is probably the first time anyone has ever changed my mind on anything....at USMB.

I still think the subsidies need to stop, but ethanol is not the complete waste of food, as I once thought.

Everything in moderation.

We should use all the good ideas listed.. including hemp for diesel.

Its just this idea that petroleum is a bad thing is just plain idiotic and silly. There is NO shortage of it, and when used in moderation... the sky is the limit.

Oh, and I will go there if nobody else will.... why not build more nuclear power plants? That way we can keep more of our fossil fuels for powering other parts of our lives.

 

[Care4all]

I'd reread what Kissmy is saying....

I used to think ethanol was the stupidest idea in the world and was pissed as heck with congress....after reading a post of Kissmy's in the past and doing further research on it, I have changed my mind.

In fact, it is probably the first time anyone has ever changed my mind on anything....at USMB.

I still think the subsidies need to stop, but ethanol is not the complete waste of food, as I once thought.

Everything in moderation.

We should use all the good ideas listed.. including hemp for diesel.

Its just this idea that petroleum is a bad thing is just plain idiotic and silly. There is NO shortage of it, and when used in moderation... the sky is the limit.

Oh, and I will go there if nobody else will.... why not build more nuclear power plants? That way we can keep more of our fossil fuels for powering other parts of our lives.

it's the LOCAL people in the areas of where nuclear plants are proposed, that have stopped them...not the state or federal gvt.

THE PEOPLE seem to think they are fine and dandy, UNTIL it is their backyard where they want to build them....

And honestly, I don't want one in my backyard either...it'll bring my property and home value down, and an added level of worry that i am not willing to take on....100 to 200 miles from me, maybe....and this is how most people think.

i believe up here, we get most of our electric from water, hydro....so we are already with clean energy....and some new wind farms are going up to service other new england states...we don't need nuclear energy here.

It's not that we are running out of oil tomorrow, i agree. HOWEVER at the rate that china's useage is growing, we are eating up the ''easy oil'' and the costs of getting oil in deep water or through shale extraction is so so so much higher than it is to bring up the easy oil in places like Saudi arabia....

AND it is the higher and higher and higher cost of oil that is scary to me....it could bring us all to our knees.

Hemp, is a good idea....it is one of the most useful God given plants on earth....you can make hemp clothing that feels like cotton, paper instead of chopping trees, oil, rope....a number of things from one single plant.....i was shocked when i read up on it, how useful the plant is, in so many ways that don't even involve, smoking it....this has been kept from us Americans due to the drug war i presumed???

 

[Jroc]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX_6hVnm5tg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX_6hVnm5tg[/ame]

 

[Jroc]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg0E8CGde3k"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg0E8CGde3k[/ame]

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

MAybe we should be burning people in our cars for fuel?

Idaho Transfer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[JFK_USA]

World starves as Americans burn food to stay on the road | The Australian

I hate to say I told you so, but burning corn for Ethenol was a really stupid idea.

No. It wasn't a stupid idea. It was a great idea - but it failed. Sometimes, even great ideas fail.

I'm glad someone tried to find an alternative to gasoline. In this case it didn't work, and we need to give up, and stop subsidizing it to the tune of 7 billion dollars a year.

But we should keep trying.

Yes great ideas do fail. LISTEN REPUBLICANS, EVEN YOUR "GREAT" IDEAS FAIL.

But if we don't find alternatives, our world will go nuts. People can't live without electricity, gas, AC/heat, lube to get our machines rolling. Honestly, we are too dependent and need an alternative developed. Wind and Solar are showing promise but not enough to meet our energy demands.