Corn-based ethanol... Anyone else wondering about food prices?

There's a reason why so many "big guys" have been buying up family farms.. I fear that ethanol may be the reason.. For years we have all been told how ethanol is not the "answer", and yet millions of acres of farmland are now under the control af a few agri-business banners.. ADM, ConAgra etc..

Now that the price is sufficiently high and gasoline seems to be on the "shit list", I can see a time coming when a HUGE percentage of land will be used to grow corn-for-fuel. If the land now being used to grow FOOD and livestock feed is turned into a gasoline substitute, we will have traded one problem for an even BIGGER one..

Food costs have already risen dramatically, and if our capability to GROW food is seriously cut, we will no longer import food as a chi-chi luxury..(grapes in January..watermelon in february, etc)...we will be in NEED of imported foods to feed ourselves..

I can imagine that the cattle people might be a bit annoyed too, because cheap feed and cheaper grazing land has always been their mainstay.. Beef is already triple what it was just a few years ago..

We might become America, land of the Hungry :)

various engineering/industry publications is that they could use up to 15 billion bushels of corn for ethanol before seriously affecting prices. Besides, corn ethanol will eventually give way to cellulosic ethanol and more biodiesel/electric hybrids. They (the engineers and biopioneers) are dilligently working on ways to NOT affect the food supply.

Fields that have been sitting idle because of crop prices are now being pressed into corn production. I'm seeing a big increase in fallow field usage in the interior valley of California for corn crops.

And that brings up a future problem, fields will be depleted faster and the use of fertilizers and other chemicals will increase to keep the fields productive.

are not harmful if they are derived from better sources. we can use a synergistic approach-and "they" are working on this, too- to produce non petroleum fertilizer and useable animal feed from byproducts of energy crops. also, manure processed for methane gas can then be used and refined for fertilizer.

erosion control techniques and green manure crops (like winter wheat) can help fix nutrients and reduce springtime runoff problems.

Kern County is the biggest depository of manure in the state of California, maybe in the entire U.S.

Dairies are leaving areas of the interior valley (Chino, for example) because the cows have created such a mess and are relocating to Bakersfield.

On edit: Kern County just passed Measure E by 80% of the vote which will stop the importation of manure and other biosolids into the county.


Alternatives to fertilizers and chemicals are more expensive and the profit margin on corn for ethanol is still small. There's no telling if it will ever be truly profitable to producers.

thru Chino.. Traffic jams were the pits.. We'd have to sit there and endure the smell.. I never understood HOW people could live near that smelly place..

So many diaries have moved south of Chino, the entire stretch of Hwy 99 through the valley is almost one long lagoon of sweltering in the summer heat of shit.

All you can do is roll up your windows, set the air to interior circulation and turn on the air conditioner. Even in the winter.

Some mornings on my drive to work the stench is so bad you want to puke when you walk out of the house. And the nearest dairy to me is 10 miles away. I can't imagine how the people living within a couple of miles from the dairies deal with it.

Corn production is so high that we have to subsidize it's production to keep it profitable. That's also one of the reasons that corn syrup is so popular currently as a sweetener: it's cheap.

....a situation where corn fuel became much more valuable than food corn. It isn't a question of IF it happens but merely a question of WHEN.

having surplus corn and then some converted to ethanol and withheld from emergency aid.

Hemp. Why the hell we're allowing the DEA to bully this country into banning it is beyond me.

from the fermentation process is high-quality high protein feed, and is actually better for feeding cattle than raw corn as it is more easily digested. Many grazing animals aren't ideally suited for corn consumption as feed; there are problems with bloat among other things. The amount of corn as a percentage of total diet must be closely monitored.

A lot of grazing land is good for grazing and not much else.

There may be an upside to the as to the availability of high-quality feed as a by-product of the distillation. The same goes for soy based bio-diesel, the pressed soy is very high protein feed.

Beef prices have risen partly because of demand for high-protein diets. The recent uptick in wholesale food costs are largely due to the increased price of energy and fertilizer. Shipping costs have risen dramatically to get crops to market, and then product to the retail level.