I won't believe the GOP is serious about ethanol until...

someone on that side introduces the "America's Energy Stability Farmland Recovery Act."

Which will seek to plant Golf Courses in crops that can be used to make ethanol.

A couple hundred miles from where I sit is the Grand Strand--the area around Myrtle Beach. People who've lived here for many decades tell me about how farmland stretched as far as the eye could see "back in the day." Now all those farms are gone, converted into golf courses.

If America is going to burn food as fuel, we've got two choices: (1) starve or (2) quit playing golf on all the farmland.

If we converted half the golf courses in America to cropland, it would do two things: solve the food-or-fuel dilemma and increase profits for the people who still own golf courses.

are you trying to be logical or something?

golf courses into switch grass.
actually I hear that hemp gets a much better return of fuel per acre planted. When they drop all their idiot restrictions on hemp farming - THEN I will believe they are serious.

Hemp is a truly versatile plant...you can eat it (hempseed), extract oil for biodiesel, make textiles, make paper, and generate cellulosic ethanol from it. Is there any protein in the leaves? I am certain there's fiber; how about hemp salads?

Oh, and if you just so happen to slip a few sativa or indica plants into the field, you can create one of the few recreational drugs that has no LD50.

It's just a wonderful, wonderful plant.

x(

I was amazed at the number of courses here in high desert New Mexico.

Some of the more responsible ones have put artificial turf on the fairways, at least, cutting watering and maintenance costs. However, most of them are still manicured and thirsty lawn grass.

But Archer-Midland-Daniels doesn't care.

Where do you imagine the fertilizer and pesticides come from? Where do you imagine the fuel for farm equipment comes from, that primarily run on diesel? Where do you imaging the fuel for semi's that haul the corn comes from?

Just out of curiosity, and I don't know the answer to this (but apparently you might since you posted the OP)how many acres of golf courses in the country are highly suitable as farm land?

> how many acres of golf courses in the country are highly suitable as farm land?

This source cites an estimate of 1,200,000 acres total in the U.S. As to its suitability for farming, it doesn't say, but we do know that most golf courses at least grow a fine crop of grass.

I've long thought that golf courses are such an extravagant use of land, some weird elitist legacy of aristocracy. In my home town, there are three of them that hog up a significant amount of urban acreage. Instead of amusement for the genteel few, that land could be much better used for urban farming, given the oncoming need for relocalization.

What a nice vision -- waves of wheat along the fairways, zucchini vines on the 18th green!

and trees. Wide open flat spaces isn't much fun for folf. Not much degree of difficulty to that.

Many golf courses (ball and club golf) don't support the grass without irrigation and bringing in turf. My guess (and it's purely a guess) is that is that from a third to a half of the acreage isn't quality farm land.

I wonder how many acres of front and back yard grass there is in the US? I bet it's a lot more than what golf courses use.

That's not to defend the golf courses. It's just to say that a lot of folks could start gardening and raising food in their own front and back yards

> I wonder how many acres of front and back yard grass there is in the US? I bet it's a lot more than what golf courses use.

Definitely -- yards account for a lot more acreage than golf courses, and are wasteful for the same reasons. An increasing awareness of this is reflected in such initiatives as Edible Estates and general discussions about the need for locally-grown food.

As for urban golf-course acreage that proves unsuitable for farming -- and there's probably quite a bit, as you point out -- well, the George Carlin solution (downthread) would be the next-best thing. Of course, the way things are headed, potential clients for it could include a lot more of us than he might have supposed!

produce a given amount of ethanol. I think the major portion of the energy used in producing ethanol is in the distillation process not in growing and transporting the corn. That energy could come from electricity generated by wind and solar and would make ethanol a much more viable program if, and I stress the IF, that is the case.

There's no benefit to be gained from ethanol. All it is is one massive giveaway to agribusinesses like ADM.

Soylent Fuel is not green!

It's a scam and, in fact, more of a crime than anything to date because it amounts to an acknowledgement finally that there really is an energy problem, and a call to react to that problem by making it worse, wasting food and land, and pretending anything about energy is being fixed.

A doctor whose treatments fail is committing malpractice, one who knowingly recommends treatments that will cause the patient to die faster is committing a felony.

either. It's in direct competition with the oil companies. Even if they were seriously behind the program, they're so incompetent at running the government that we shouldn't give up just because there are some problems while they are in charge. Let a new Democratic administration have a crack at it and see if they can get things on track and eliminate the problems.