Is Biofuel a reasonable answer?

Ethanol works. It has been used on farms to power tractors and other farm equipment for many generations. But jumping on the bandwagon for the opportunity to tell big oil where to stuff it is a luxury we cannot afford.

Higher food prices.
Corn for ethanol brings a higher price for the farmer than corn for food and so from an economical standpoint it makes sense to sell more corn to ethanol producers than to food producers.

Diverting corn from making food to making ethanol will translate to higher food prices for all of us, whether we individually use ethanol or not. The federal government has begun paying out subsidies for corn-for-ethanol and now we are going to be stuck with it.

The increase in the number of acres to produce this corn will mean the loss of acreage for other food crops because it doesn’t pay as well as corn.

One of the dangers of maintaining a mono-cultural is that if anything comes along that adversely affects that crop then we will lose everything. And now that we are going to have two industries depending on one crop the results will be devastating.

Just to keep this pursuit of ethanol going, farmers will need to grow more corn to attempt to meet the demand for ethanol production while at the same time maintaining the demand for food production.

Food prices have already jumped a startling 75 percent since 2005. This is a direct result of ethanol subsidies, which have dramatically driven up the price of corn and other grains. Another, more long term, effect is that rising demand for meat in China and India, will push up demand for more feed grain. The combined strain on the farmer to produce higher yields to feed animals, people and cars is going to create a market collapse.

The farmers, right now, are ecstatic over the rising prospect of increasing their income. The rest of us, especially those on fixed incomes, will inevitably be forced to further stretch their already strained food budget.

And what will happen when the point is reached, and it will, when we have to choose between feeding our cars, our animals or feeding ourselves?

None of these concerns has addressed the damage that increased corn production will have on the environment.

More fertilizer production.
Corn is what is known as a heavy feeder. It requires a lot of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, much more than almost any other food crop and it doesn’t absorb as much as other crops so the fertilizer has a higher runoff rate. Currently, the nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This fertilizer runs off into the water table, on towards the Mississippi River and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico where it contributes to a growing “dead zone”. This dead zone is a 7,900-square-mile patch that depletes oxygen and is suffocating fish, crab and shrimp. Fishermen have to sail further out to sea to get a decent catch and this leads to higher fuel bills which, as always, comes down to higher consumer prices.

More pesticide production.
Another environmental factor to consider is the increased production of pesticides and their effects on the animal kingdom, including humans. The U.S. has come a long way toward finding alternatives to the traditionally used more toxic chemical pesticide. But foreign countries are not as regulated with nearly as much zeal.

More and more, our food crop is coming from the rest of the world. China is the largest producer of apples, with nearly 41 percent. With the recent recall of toys made in China due to the use of tainted chemicals it does not take much imagination to realize that China has a lot of chemicals to use up and they are willing to use them regardless of how the U.S. protests their use.

Higher subsidies for farmers.
The increase in subsidies to farmers to produce more corn costs the American taxpayer $9.4 billion in 2005. That figure is double what it was in 2004 which almost doubled the previous year which almost doubled 2002. Farm subsidy formulas are a complicated matter and the numbers and reasons are overwhelming. But the bottom line is we will end up paying more in future years, and the trend backs this up. These figures are just for the production of corn.
http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn corn sub…cost the…

Once this kind of money begins flowing through the hands of politicians, it is going to be very problematic in halting, or at least slowing down, the demand for ethanol production. Lobbyists get paid big bucks to make sure that flow does not stop, whether it benefits the country or not. These subsidies need to be redirected towards a more environmentally sound answer to the use of petroleum.

Bottom line.
All of this gobbling up of extra land and extra money, and all of this extra production of chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides results in producing a gallon of ethanol that requires more energy than the ethanol saves as a replacement for gasoline.