Erwin Johnson picks up a clump of the dark, rich soil that he has farmed for 35 years, like his father and grandfather before him. In a few months, this flat expanse of northern Iowa will be crowded with corn ready to be trucked to market.
A year ago, that market got a little closer – and a lot better. Instead of sending his corn to a barge company to be shipped down the Mississippi River for export, Johnson now loads it into an open truck and sends it two miles up the gravel road to a hulking new ethanol distillery that he can see from his field. The plant is paying him $5.50 or more a bushel, more than twice as much as Johnson could get just a couple of years ago.
“This is a fantastic time to be farming,” Johnson says. “I’m 65, but I can’t quit now.”
This issue is quickly eclipsing the fuel crisis for the #1crisis spot. Ethanol is supposed to help ease the dependency/price of oil, so it is natural to expect it to lower our cost of living. But this potential advantage seems to be getting offset by the apparently unforeseen consequence of ethanol driving up the cost of food.
I don’t have the numbers, but it seems to me that we are entering an area where food cost rise will exceed fuel cost rise for average consumers. Moreover, ethanol is just beginning. We have big plans for its expansion. If it is significantly impacting food today, what will it do in five years? Adding insult to injury, oil continues to take bigger bites out of peoples’ income even though it was supposed to have been tamed by ethanol. Instead, it seems like ethanol has joined forces with oil to make our lives miserable.
Just remember when you go to the polls in November it was the Democrats that prevented going after the huge Alaska reserves and have also prevented any further development of the oil in the Santa Barbara channel.
Now our local Asparagas farmers are going to plant corn and stop growing the Asparagas altogether.
The best quote from the article.
“I think the ethanol is hurting us,” Huebsch says. “It hasn’t lowered our fuel prices at all, and it has increased feed costs.”
That’s because someone’s cost is someone else’s income.
You can also count on the media to concentrate on reporting only the negative effects. Hence, they report on the suffering in the housing market (going down) and suffering in rising commodity prices (going up), making it appear that any fluctuation is bad. There are also winners, home buyers and farmers for example. The one thing you can count on in life is change. Those who prepare themselves for it prosper.
If you converted every kernal of corn to ethanol it would be a drop in the energy bucket. It is a total boondoggle typical government solution. Next they will investigate food companies demanding to know why food prices are skyrocketing for the poor cosumer they screwed in the first place and of course nothing will be said about their meddling in the energy supply. Ethanol on a miles per gallon, BTU per unit, however you want tomeasure it is more costly than oil and always will be. It is total joke expect to those with vested interests getting rich off it.
Ethanol made from corn has led many farmers to switch fields from other grains to corn. When I went accross western Kansas which is known for its amber wheat fields, I was amazed how little wheat was planted and how much corn was in it place. Studies have shown that it takes nearly one gallon of conventional fuel to make one gallong of corn based ethanol. To make matters worse the energy potential for ethanol is substancially lower (I have read 85%) that conventional fuels.
So it appears that we burn more fossil fuels to make a ‘renewable’ fuel. This has been mandated by the government and it is a mistake.
We are facing a global issue with the food supply right now. Ethanol is not the cause but it has made the situation worse. We have had several regions of the world with poor crop yeilds. In the past the United States could export surplus crops to cover at least a portion of the shortage. With the ethanol produciton we do not have the food surplus that we have had in the past. This has led to a run on grain crops of all varieties.
There is hope that we will find another source for ethonal other than corn. The energy yeld for corn is just too low. I know that there is extensive research on cellulosic swithgrass based ethanol right now in Oklahoma. It may turn out that this is a valid option but we do not know yet. In the meantime we need to drill and refine the energy sources that we have while we research options. If we have started drilling in ANWR 14 years ago when the then President vetoed drilling it is estimated that we would have an additional 1-million barrels of American Oil meeting our needs. This rougly 1/12 of our daily demand and the amount we import from Saudi Arabia. ANWR is not a perfect solution but it can help provide a bridge until we can find a permanent alternative.
I’ll take a stab at that one…Perhaps the food shortage precipitated by the rice failure is forcing them to import US grown corn? Thus building demand, which will have an impact on price, just as the expanded demand brought on by the ethanol boom has already done.
Not only is ethanol driving up U.S. food prices, but it is also causing outrage in other parts of the world. Our ambitious conversion to a renewable fuel has been called a crime against humanity and a massacre due to its effect on world food prices.
Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations’ independent expert on the right to food since the position was established in 2000, called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production to halt what he called a growing "catastrophe’’ for the poor.
Using biofuel instead of gasoline in cars is generally considered to cut carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, although some scientists say greenhouse gases released during the production of biofuel could offset those gains.
The use of crops for biofuel has being pursued especially in Brazil and the United States.
Last March, President Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed an agreement committing their countries to boosting ethanol production. They said increasing use of alternative fuels would lead to more jobs, a cleaner environment and greater independence from the whims of the oil market.
Ziegler called their motives legitimate, but said that ‘‘the effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people.’’
The world price of wheat doubled in one year and the price of corn quadrupled, leaving poor countries, especially in Africa, unable to pay for the imported food needed to feed their people, he said. And poor people in those countries are unable to pay the soaring pric
The corn used to produce ethanol is not used up completely, once it is ground up and mixed with enzymes to extract the starch needed to make the ethanol is dried and then used as animal feed. The shortage is an artificial one promoted by the drive by media!!! WAKE UP AMERICIA!!! We can make ethanol from ANYTHING we can ferment, Grass clipings from our lawns, anything Green!!!
This explanation defending ethanol from the charge of causing food price increases is clearly articulated in the article linked to the first post. Now I agree that there is all kinds of bias and agendas in the TV news media, but why would they blame the food price increase on ethanol if there was another explanation? I did hear ABC try to blame it on grain speculators bidding up the price. But they are shouting from the mountaintop that ethanol is causing the food price crisis.