Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?

Anothe brilliant post from Indur M. Goklany.
Yet more evidence that the “War on Global Warming” is actually a war on the poor.

Perhaps I’m being excessively cynical but, since many greenies are also enthusiastic malthusians, maybe the “unforeseen” consequence of increased numbers of dead and dying people from starvation isn’t accidental at all. I hope to God I’m wrong.

Fabulous. Now I will hold my breath waiting for all those concerned citizens to drop the “evil CO2” mantra and show some real concern by agitating for real solutions for real people with real problems.
(expires quitely and unnoticed in corner of room)

I see no mention of land clearance, plowing, planting and harvesting of the biofuel crop. All part of the life cycle surely?
As a pensioner in the UK I already have problems with food prices and if we lose power next winter for any extended period, my life, and my wife’s, will be at risk. The death rate here in the UK will rocket. Never mind the death rate in the undeveloped countries.
The greenies target is the developed countries. So far they are holding all the aces.

It would be good to see more cost-benefit analyses related to climate change abatement. Many of us have commented for years on the likelihood that reducing energy use world wide would have catastrophic consequences to the poor.
Too many studies have focused on the negative consequences of climate change. Few focus on the possible benefits of such change, the costs of abatement, and the cost-benefit of adaptation rather than abatement.
Perhaps Indur M. Goklany has started us along a better path.

I promise to only use it to pick up my mail from the bottom of the drive.

Sorry, let me get this right. The PDREU/UESR & the UN are actually out to relieve the effects of disease & poverty, right? Like they did with Malaria (65 million deaths & God knows how many otherwise affected since arbitrarily banning DDT), AIDS (25+ million deaths & God knows how many infected), Rawanda (3 million + deaths (they’re improving) & goodness knows how many maimed, raped, destroyed lives etc). Now they propose making basic foodstuffs much more expensive so the poor get poorer & hungry get hungrier. reminds me of a few Nazi like comments passed around n the UN some years back about population control. Purrleese tell me they aren’t doing this! Sarc off.

Like many here I’ve long waited to see some hard-nosed analysis of the effects of biofuels. Many thanks, Indur – true humanitarian.

Of course. The EU, for example, fawning over “evil” India and China, and other developing countries over their CO2 output is just the same.
It’s modern colonialism. Why do you think are tomatos from the EU cheaper in some African areas than local products?

There are three essential industrial processes omitted from that circular diagram. Item 1 is the coal mine needed to supply the electricity generator.The second item is the electricity power plant needed to supply the very heavy power demand of, no. 3, the ammonium nitrate manufacturer. For the sake of brevity we can ignore the fleets of heavy vehicles that are needed to distribute the n.a. to the farmers and those needed to deliver the crop to the bio facility. Like wind farms, the most essential ingredient of biofuel is subsidy.

Another excelent post from the author.
Like others who have posted in similar vein, I too have become quite cynical about the Greens and their errant Malthusian views. I am no longer willing to grant them possible good motives in promoting their multiple silliness and I no longer see them as merely misguided but as evil – there is too much evidence now for me to believe that starvation of the poor in developing countries due to ‘Green’ governments mandatingting the use of ‘green’ fuels and the scandal of the Green encouragement of the spread of Malaria can be atributed to the Law of Unintended Consequences. I know ‘wicked’ seems a terribly old-fashioned word, but I see it as an entirely appropriate apellation for the Greens of the world.

In the US, it is the Corporate Farmers and Ethanol Distillers that are pushing use of ethanol from corn, not the environmentalists, who recognize first of all, that it uses almost as much fossil fuel as it saves, in addition to the problem of increasing the cost of food. I don’t know about what drives it in other countries where land is being used for biofuels instead of food.
Brazil seems to be a success story.
It seems that ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil will reduce GHG emissions and is so cost effective that a tariff is needed to keep it out of the US. It does not seem to have a deleterious effect on food prices or create problems for other productive types of land use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
It seems that it is possible to make wise use of agriculture for biofuels, but it is not going to be a big factor in reduction of GHG emissions from fossil fuels.

Dr. Goklany,
Thank you for the excellent post. This message needs to be spread–many people in the world are living on the edge. Those of us fortunate enough to live somewhere far from danger should know about the very real, though unintended, consequences of our policies and actions. We have to live our lives too, but as we find out what happens as we pick one path or another, we should be made to decide.
People literally dying just so we can have alternate fuels and feel good about ourselves is just not something most would want to cause. Good for you for letting us know about it.

Who Supports Biofuels (bio-ethanol etc)?
is it the Greenies?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8559661.stm
Environmentalists fear it is – and their latest manoeuvre to stem the biofuel tide is a legal action to force the European Commission to publish thousands of pages of evidence of the impacts of plant fuels on the environment.
…
Green campaigners want to see all the background research immediately because they believe that some of the papers already confirm that biofuels may do more harm than good.
…
The environmentalists say they suspect that the Commission’s analysis contains explosive evidence that could blow the EU’s biofuels strategy apart
…
Green groups have also been angered by a separate EU policy statement leaked to BBC News. They say it could grant plantations of palm oil the same status as natural rainforests.
…
Kenneth Richter from Friends of the Earth said: “This is absolutely appalling – they are bending over backwards to support the palm oil industry. To equate a palm oil plantation in the same category as a rainforest is dishonest and outrageous.” When I queried the Commission about this policy, they declined to comment.
…
But environmentalists point out that the E4tech study doesn’t even attempt to factor in the other potentially malign side-effects of fuel crops displacing food crops.
…
http://www.vivergofuels.com/web/about
Vivergo Fuels
Who are the backers? Greenies again?
BP is one of the world’s largest energy companies, offering expertise in fuels technology and access to major fuel markets.
British Sugar offers experience across the agricultural value chain, links to feedstock supply, and co-product expertise.
DuPont holds expertise in biotechnology and bio-manufacturing capabilities.
Looks like misguided government policies and Oil industries to me
A little positive stuff however:
1.1Mtonnes produce 420M litres bioethanol leaving a residue of 500k tonnes of high protein animal feed. Only the starch gets used in the processing

Lets re-brand coal.
Lets call it ecoal?

More from the paper:
“Based on current technologies, higher biofuel production necessarily means greater diversion of crops and/or cropland to
the production of fuel rather than food.”
Another broad assertion unsupported by any fact or proof. Both demonstrably false AND shows the ‘cooked books’ aspect – twisting specifics to match an agenda.
First, higher biofuel production does NOT “necessarily” mean greater diversion of crops/cropland from food to fuel. The vast majority of crop used for biofuel production is not food crops. And the USDA data shows that corn is not crowding out other food crops – at least in the US, as I clearly showed (and sourced – look it up yourself at USDA site under crop reports) showed in the last ethanol thread, other food crops are not seeing greatly reduced acres planted.
Additionally, we have seen significant increases in yields on corn in recent years due to improved farming methods, and to generally good weather.
Corn used for biofuel production is almost entirely NOT FOOD corn – but rather FEED corn. Crops grown specifically for animal feed. And ethanol from corn production produces an important byproduct – distillers dried grain solids – a high quality animal feed that replaces a very large part of the “feed” content of the corn used for ethanol.
Second is the disclaimer “Based on current technologies” … which give license to ignore that corn use as a feed stock for biofuel production WILL level as the new cellulosic and other processes come online. The author notes that the study is based on the claim that biofuel production would continue to increase – ignoring, by use of the carefully selected “Based on current technologies” disclaimer that an increasing use of alternative feed stocks and cellulosic and other processes will cap and eventually reduce corns use for biofuels.
The author makes yet another broad brush claim unsupported by fact or proof:
“The iron law of supply and demand dictates that this would almost unavoidably increase global food prices over what they would otherwise be.
Indeed, this is confirmed by studies of the impact of biofuel production on global food prices, although the magnitude of the effect varies from study to study”
Not real proof – just the authors claim there is some immutable law that “unavoidably” will cause an increase in food prices.
He notes 2 studies – De Hoyos and Medvedev and Cororaton et al – that “provide estimates” of “potential increases in poverty induced by greater biofuel production” … note that they do NOT allege to correlate increase in poverty to increased deaths.
He goes on to state that while these two studies “indicate higher biofuel production increases global poverty” those increases, if they do exist, he admits are “small in relative terms.”
Yet again, a more detailed read would show some very interesting numbers.
The first study estimated the poverty headcount in 2005 to be 1,208 million vs a world population of appx 6.5 billion – the study alleged poverty head count would increase 32 million due to biofuel production increase from 2004 to 2010.
The 2nd study shows estimated poverty headcount in 2010 to be approx. 798 million vs estimated world population of appx 6.909 billion – a substantial decrease from 2005 to 2010. The author admits this is due to increased economic development during this time.
Remember those numbers ….

Nitpick.
Caption title misspelled.
Biofeul life cycle Image: LBL.gov

Grey Lensman says
I think perhaps you are smoking some type of hemp.

Now we can look at the actual claims of the paper. How many deaths can be attributed to the alleged increase in poverty headcounts and what is the proof to support that claim?
The whole section about poverty related health risk factors – the exercise in defining “poverty related” deaths – uses admittedly “arbitrarily” reached conclusions on what health risks are poverty related. The author decides that, in order of highest to lowest risk of death; global warming, underweight, zinc and Vitamin A deficiency, unsafe sex and unsafe water, sanitation, hygiene are the “poverty related” risk factors for death and disease for this report.
Remember the top poverty related risk of death from above.
The paper begins this discussion by trying to tie increase in poverty to increase in deaths by comparing 2004 estimate of poverty headcount with the 2005 estimated poverty headcount.
The paper notes the 2004 estimate of poverty headcount was, according to a 2007 study, estimated at 969 million people. The very first thing they do however, is adjust that number – you guessed it – upwards – by 1.5 times, claiming “new” poverty estimates using “new data and methods” shows 1.48 to 1.5 times higher counts.
The paper claims the World Bank and De Hoyos and Medvedev study uses this new poverty data and methods – remember that too ….
So right up front they adjust the 2004 poverty headcount number to 1,464 million.
The author notes the De Hoyos and Medvedev study is allegedly the more accurate one. That study, which he also notes (see above) uses the latest and greatest most accurate data and methods, found the estimated poverty headcount for 2005 was 1,208 million.
Remember as well from above that the author noted the World Bank also used the new latest and greatest data and methods. That earnest group found the estimated poverty headcount for 2005 was 1,374 million.
Whoops.
So how does the good Doctor reconcile the difference between two organizations, considering both as he claims are using the latest and greatest new data? He notes the World Bank number is higher by 14% and that is the perfect excuse to increase the De Hoyos and Medvedev 2005 number by a commensurate amount.
The authors reasoning?
“The difference between the two estimates is mainly that the World Bank analysis covered more countries”
…. but wait, what was it said about the De Hoyos and Medvedev and Cororaton et al studies earlier?
Hmmm: “… both analyses covered 90% of the developing world’s population”
Not a shred of evidence to show the author did any analysis at all on the actual numerical differences between World Bank and De Hoyos and Medvedev – nothing more than a tenuous and unsupported claim – yet that was more than good enough to increase the numbers 14%
So ….. the 2004 estimated poverty headcount number was increased 150% over the actual number from a 2007 study, based on the latest and greatest new data and methods – so that it compares to the De Hoyos and Medvedev numbers – which also use that same latest and greatest new data.
And then the author gives the De Hoyos and Medvedev numbers another 14% boost – despite again, that they are supposedly based on same new data and methods – with apparently no substantiation, documentation or support for the change.
Which leaves us with a 2004 poverty headcount estimate, originally 968 million, inflated to 1,454 million.
And the 2005 estimated poverty headcount from De Hoyos and Medvedev originally 1,208 million – increased to an estimated poverty headcount of 1,377 million.
The De Hoyos and Medvedev estimated poverty headcount – despite allegedly being based on the same new data and estimating methods – was increased by 169 million ….
But wait … they did not increase the De Hoyos and Medvedev estimated poverty headcount by 14% at all – in fact they ignored the poverty headcount entirely. Instead the author increased the alleged 32 million INCREASE in the poverty headcount due to the increase in biofuel production over the 2004 level by 14%
Now that’s what I call new math.
Lets review the authors own numbers:
2004 estimated poverty headcount adjusted to match new data and methods used by De Hoyos and Medvedev and World Bank: 1,454 million
2005 estimated poverty headcount by De Hoyos and Medvedev, which uses same new data and methods as above 2004 number, but arbitrarily adjusted upward 14% (169 million) to match World Bank number: 1,377 million
So 2004 to 2005 estimated poverty headcount actually DECREASED 77 million despite being artificially and arbitrarily increased by 169 million.
2010 estimated poverty headcount per De Hoyos and Medvedev: 798 million … a further decrease of 579 million (despite arbitrary increase of 169 million above) from 2005 to 2010.
Hold on – we ain’t done yet either …

And last a serious comment …
I’m waiting for the similar study to this one, and/or outcry from the tree-hugger types, that shows how many deaths are due to (just to pick 3 at random):
1) Bovine flatulence – ie: Cow Farts
2) Food price increases from world consumption of corn fed beef
3) Food price increases due to cotton crop displacement of food crops
Where are the same type attacks and studies on any of these?
Interestingly corn based ethanol production helps address the first two … with the corn ethanol byproduct, distillers dried grain solids, a high quality more digestable replacement of highly inefficient corn as cattle feed …

Alexander K
April 19, 2011 at 3:42 am
I am glad that some people are starting to wake up to the awful truth. Socialism by any name is evil.

“Policies that subsidize or mandate biofuels benefit neither Mother Earth nor humanity.”
There it is! The truth is not pretty. If we could only recognize the difference between “green” and “greed” we’d be so much better off. The UN is discussing the idea of making the Earth (and all plants and animals thereon –regardless of size) a Legal entity. Hummmmmm…. OK! Who gains? The Earth? Don’t believe it for a second.
Observation – the biggest issues facing human beings are not about “green” but “greed”. The only lifeform in danger from man is man himself. AGW is NOT about science, it is about money, politics, power. And, I’m sorry to say, making the World better for mankind isn’t about making it better for all mankind, it’s about making it better of the right kind of mankind; and most of us are NOT in that number.

220mph
April 19, 2011 at 8:04 am
I have not read all of your rants yet; I am at work. But you seem to make some interesting points. My main concern is that you appear to be talking from a socialist world view. Though in truth, it is difficult to talk about this type of subject without doing so, as the socialists have been very busy insuring that they are the ones defining the vocabulary. Be that as it may …
What role do you think the distortion of the food market by government policies such as subsidies have on hunger?
What role do you think humanitarian food distribution has on local food production?
Would increased food prices result in local farmers being able to realize greater profitability in producing food crops, thus enabling them to farm?
Have you read “The Plight and Promise of Arid Land Agriculture”? Can’t remember the authors names right now.
BTW, I think that the paper you are dissecting only really makes sense in a Marxist context. It ignores second and third order effects. The problem in analyzing stuff written by socialists is ferreting out all of the invalid equivalencies.

220mph says:
Hey, hasn’t anyone told you that science is only supposed to be digested in small media and eco-friendly sound bites? No one is supposed to read the actual papers and try to understand them. That’s not science. Science is about scaring people with all sorts of made up what ifs and coulds and potentially mights. How dare you try to understand something that someone in a lab coat said! I’m so shocked and appalled that I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish my soylent green…
Seriously, how anyone can take this paper any more seriously than any of the other garbage being misconstrued as true science today is beyond me. As soon as I see the first “might” or “could” I know I do not have to read any more. I BELIEVE he is right inthat it makes sense to me that using more land for biofuels is not a good idea, but I don’t need made up possibilities to convince me. One simple question is all that is needed – Does the biofuel cost more or less to produce than traditional (“fossil fuel” misnomer intentionally left out) sources of energy? That’s it. CO2 is a good thing. Cheap abundant energy is too. Let’s use it all as long as people get to choose which they want and can afford. No mandates, subsidies, or other “we know better than you” government intrusion is necessary.

Charlie Foxtrot says:
April 19, 2011 at 9:25 am
Any politician that continues, in the face of the known consequences of ethanol subsidies, to continue to advocate for such subsidies is, in my opinion, guilty of crimes against humanity. I can find no positive aspect of ethanol subsidies. Even the primary justification of such subsidies, to reduce CO2 emissions and dependence on imported oil, is a failure and had any thought been given to it they would have realized this before the first ethanol plant was ever built.
In summary: They take our tax money (actually borrowed from China), to pay for ethanol to be made from corn, which results in gasoline with lower fuel value and a higher price, that makes it necessary to transport huge quantities of extremely flammable and corrosive liquid over highways and in railcars, that drives up the cost of corn and all commodities, puts more land under cultivation, uses more water in parts of the country where water is scarce, makes food more expensive and therefore less available to the world’s poor resulting in needless death due to starvation, inflates food prices in developed countries resulting in less money available for other things which then slows the overall economy putting people out of work, and in the end reduces imports of oil insignificantly. A pogram worthy of Lenin himself.
——————————————————————————————————-
A couple of things if you please…
1. In my opinion you named yourself well, because your post is a Charlie Foxtrot.
2. Crimes against humanity? Really, what does it take to be accused of that these days… You and James Hansen are on the same page. Unfortunately for you, it is the barking mad page.
3. Has anyone thought about why the cost of food has actually gone up? It is not Bio-fuels! (insert a name calling spittle filled rant here) It is the cost of ENERGY stupid! I can’t believe that no one has pointed this out. Fact. You get about 50lbs of corn meal from a bushel of corn. Farmer Brown is getting US $7.59 for a bushel of corn on the open market. Farmer Brown is smart. So now he can also use his bushel of corn to get around: 2.5 gallons of ethanol + 15.5 lbs of livestock feed + a liter of corn oil. The actual cost of the food has gone up yes, but MOST of the cost increases are due to increases in Energy costs. Not ethanol production. Furthermore Farmer Brown now knows that the price of his corn now has a floor. In years past a bumper crop was just as bad as a poor harvest because the price for his corn dropped to his costs or even below his costs. Now he has more options, and better margins on his bumper crop, and an incentive to plant more…
4. Dude, ummm we transport oil all over the world, why not complain about that?
5. I think that we can both agree that Govt. intervention in the free market is stupid, but I don’t hear you complaining about the current energy policy that is actually responsible for the high prices.
6. The reasons behind the worlds poor is that their governments are doing a horrible job. Not ethanol.
7. If you don’t like CO2 hold your breath and stop emitting, problem solved for everyone. Otherwise, increasing CO2 leads to increased crop yields which would make more food available to the worlds poor. Talk about a win/win.

If only there was a naturally occurring biofuel, that uses plant material that has accumulated over time. And what if these naturally occurring biofuels could be matured into usable fuel using the natural heat of the earth.
If only these naturally occurring biofuels were just lying in layers of the earth, and one needed only to drill down and access these bounties of nature!
Oh wait…

The bread that we buy in our local supermarket here in Germany has gone from
euros 0.65 cents in October 2010 to euros 1.99 cents today, but this is the home of the greens, and talking to a German is like talking to yourself !

Ziiex Zeburz says:
April 19, 2011 at 12:05 pm
“…and talking to a German is like talking to yourself !”
I’m German, but i can relate. 😉

Robert M says:
April 19, 2011 at 11:17 am
——————————————
Thanks Robert M. I’ve been meaning to construct a similar post and now I don’t have to.
…. especially your point number 6, which I will reiterate:
“6. The reasons behind the worlds poor is that their governments are doing a horrible job. Not ethanol.”

I have tried to compare how robust Dr. Indur Goklany’s claim of 200,000 deaths a year from biofuels is compared with the WHO’s claim of 141,000 from AGW. The conclusion is that Goklany’s claim is far more robust.
Goklany relies on a simple relationship. The poorest in the world – those on less than $1.25 a day – are often underfed. As incomes rise they consume more calories, and become less reliant on local farming. A rise in food prices dramatically reverses the virtuous development process.
WHO’s death count is far more circuitous. If not all the recent warming is anthropogenic; or if there less weather variability than the alarmists claim; or if there if less extra disease attributable to warming; or if folks adapt to changing conditions, then the deaths are overstated. But if all factors are overstated, then the 141,000 deaths rapidly tends towards zero.
Further, as Goklany points out, if you read the original 2002 WHO report, climate change is far less important in premature deaths than many other factors, such as lack clean water and sanitation, inadequate diet, lack of access to basic healthcare, lack of exercise, air pollution and so on. Most of these factors can be dramatically reduced by economic development. Combating climate change will curtail that development – so the biofuels issue may be a small policy cost compared with constraining CO2 directly.
See my blog posting
http://manicbeancounter.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/biofuels-%e2%80%93-a-policy-that-is-killing-the-poor/
Interested people should compare Goklany’s paper with the 2002 WHO Report. Chapter 4 “QUANTIFYING SELECTED MAJOR RISKS TO HEALTH” is from page 49, with the climate change section on page 72. 2.4MB pdf at http://www.who.int/whr/2002/en/whr02_en.pdf

Septic Matthew
April 19, 2011 at 12:41 pm
###
I probably should have said Wall of Words instead of rant, but even so, I was not accusing 220mph of being a socialist, but stating that at first scan, the writing had a bit of a socialist odor to it, and that, I ascribe more to the constraints of having to use vocabulary designed by socialist in order to communicate, then anything else. Read what I wrote. I know that is hard as their are a lot of thoughtful posts to read, but when I comment on something that I have not had the time to read properly, I mention it. As 220mph seems to have a clue to what is being discussed, I thought to pose some questions to get his take.
I for one tend to think that Governmental distortion of the market has more to do with poverty then anything else, and raising food prices could enable poor farmers to keep farming, but I keep my eyes open to other possibilities.

The defenders of biofuel on this thread should explain why subsidies are needed, if it’s such a great thing to do. Maybe i can learn something.
In the EU, the largest consumer of biofuels by a wide margin is Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel_in_the_European_Union
You know the typical German is arch-green, arch-warmist and an archetypical bonehead. Does it still look like a good idea now?

Septic Matthew
April 19, 2011 at 12:41 pm
###
And furthermore, I most certainly was not defending the WHO article that is being discussed. I am pretty sure I indicated that I thought it was so embedded within a Marxist world view as to be irrelevant. If 200mphs several dissertations had a whiff of socialism, the WHO study reeked of it so bad I had to hold my nose. I will not tolerate nonsense even if it seems to lend support for my political views. Such support is illusionary, like everything Marxist thought produces.

#
Bioblogger says:
April 19, 2011 at 2:56 pm
###
If growing corn for ethanol is such a great idea, then it does not need subsidies to be a viable business.

Thanks, Anthony, it’s about time that this public health aspect has reared its ugly head!

Policies to increase production and use of biofuels retard the
developing world’s progress against reducing poverty levels and
would exacerbate their burden of death and disease from the
various diseases of poverty.

No argument there. However, they should amend this report to mention “food-based” biofuels. There are legitimate biofuels that are not harmful to the environment that can be generated, particularly from waste materials.
I worked with Kraft Foods years ago to develop their cheese-whey-permeate to fuel ethanol distillation process, works like a champ. It converts a high-strength pollutant into a viable gasoline additive. However, you can scrap the corn-to-ethanol stuff anytime you want. Same for rice, sorghum etc.
The lefties, in their zeal to save the earth, are contributing to the eventual extinction of the orangutan in Indonesia (palm oil plantations), destruction of habitat in Brazil (sugar cane ethanol), and other environmental catastrophes. They don’t care much for human life it appears, but you think they’d catch on eventually.

Finally! I found a biofuel that does not displace a food crop, nor would there be a demand for growing more of the feedstock solely to use it for making fuel, that starts with a “waste product” that is neither left on nor returned to the soil the feedstock grew from. And it really does come from what nearly everyone considers garbage.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf802487s
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Spent Coffee Grounds as a Versatile Source of Green Energy
Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta K. Mohapatra and Mano Misra
Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada, 1664 North Virginia, MS 388, Reno, Nevada 89557
Abstract:

The production of energy from renewable and waste materials is an attractive alternative to the conventional agricultural feed stocks such as corn and soybean. This paper describes an approach to extract oil from spent coffee grounds and to further transesterify the processed oil to convert it into biodiesel. This process yields 10−15% oil depending on the coffee species (Arabica or Robusta). The biodiesel derived from the coffee grounds (100% conversion of oil to biodiesel) was found to be stable for more than 1 month under ambient conditions. It is projected that 340 million gallons of biodiesel can be produced from the waste coffee grounds around the world. The coffee grounds after oil extraction are ideal materials for garden fertilizer, feedstock for ethanol, and as fuel pellets.

This was described in a New York Times article. A researcher looked at some day-old coffee and noticed the oil film on top. Standard chemistry techniques are used for oil extraction from the grounds, the oil becomes biodiesel. They estimated production costs of a dollar a gallon.
Now, I am quite willing to help produce the starting material, as I have for decades. This sounds like a good use for it, as opposed to dumping it in a landfill. Unfortunately, this is far from displacing significant amounts of fossil fuels.

Even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. “It won’t solve the world’s energy problem,” Dr. Misra said of his work. “But our objective is to take waste material and convert it to fuel.” And biodiesel made from grounds has one other advantage, he said: the exhaust smells like coffee.

Still, every cup helps.
This work was originally published at the end of 2008. I wonder how it’s progressed. Heck, I wonder if I should be saving my coffee grounds. I could be throwing away valuable fuel!

DirkH says:
April 19, 2011 at 2:33 pm
The defenders of biofuel on this thread should explain why subsidies are needed, if it’s such a great thing to do. Maybe i can learn something.
————————————–
I’m not a defender of bioethanol as a long term solution, but next generation technologies are looking really good. In fact, any VC investing in biofuels right now assumes no subsidies. I posted this link further up the board, I guarantee that if you read this in detail, you can learn something:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/guest-post-vinod-khosla-on-what-matters-in-biofuels/
The subsidies were required because unlike, for example, the biotech/biopharma industries, where VCs could embrace the extremely high margins available from new drugs and invest, the margins and ROIs on bioethanol were so low (or negative) that they couldn’t evolve the industry without the subsidies. The technologies were just way more pedestrian – essentially medieval brewing technology.
So for better, or for worse, there’s lots of plant and infrastructure to use as a springboard for the next generation of biofuels, outlined in the Vinod Khosla article.
I probably didn’t fully answer your question, but I definitely provided a link where you can learn something, with that something being about technologies that are capitalized based on the assumption that there will be no subsidies.

Somebody mentioned transport and infrastructure costs relating to biofuels
So oil is transported vast distances in free pipelines and supertankers.!!!!!!!!!!
In fact most biofuels can be grown and processed just where they are needed. See my New Zealand example above.
From just 136 trees per hectare, oil palm plantations can produce up to 40 tonnes per annum, year in year out for 20 years before they need to be replanted.
In fact, I see the USA as being in gross breach of WTO rules by imposing duties on imported biofuels whilst paying subsidies to American processors. This is the core problem, not biofuels.

220mph
First, regarding my “arbitrary” selection of risk factors that are related primarily to poverty, if you read the paper (pages 11 and 12), you would have known that this was based on an underlying methodology. Under this methodology, I estimated the disease rate for each of the 24 health risk factors for different income groups. If the disease rate for a specific risk factor for the lower income group was more than 5 times that of the next lowest income group (“lower middle income”) then I classified it as a poverty-related health risk. Based on that, I identified 6 risk factors — global warming; underweight (largely synonymous with chronic hunger); zinc deficiency; Vitamin A deficiency; unsafe sex; and unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene – as being poverty related.
Because of this “arbitrary” choice of 5, I excluded a number of risk factors that many (perhaps, most) would consider as poverty-related (see, e.g., reference 43 in the paper, which cites Gro Harlem Brundtland). Among the risk factors that I excluded – unmet contraceptive needs, indoor smoke from solid fuels, sub-optimal breast feeding and iron deficiency. I did this, because I intended to make a conservative estimate (see top of page 12).
Also, BTW, for the 6 risk factors that I classified (“arbitrarily”) as poverty-related, 99.3% of deaths occurred in developing countries (page 11 of paper).
So let me ask you, 220mph, which of the 6 risk factors that I have identified do you believe do not qualify as poverty-related?
Do you think I included all poverty-related risk factors?
BTW, had I included the 4 additional risk factors noted above as poverty-related, then my estimate for deaths due to “additional” biofuel production in 2010 would have been 47% higher. That is, instead of 192,000, it would have been around 280,000.
There is nothing in the above that isn’t in the paper on pages 11-12.
Second, 220mph complains about my adjusting the World Bank’s poverty estimate for 2004. Well this was dictated by inexorable logic.
I had WHO health data for 2004. Therefore, to calculate the “Coefficients of Proportionality between Poverty, and Death and Disease from Poverty-Related Health Risks”, I necessarily had to obtain poverty estimates for 2004. [2003 or 2005 would not do, because poverty levels have been dropping rapidly from year-to-year, thanks to economic growth in the third world.]
On the other hand, the incremental poverty estimate (due to incremental biofuel production) for 2010 that I had was based on a different (newer) methodology and newer data than the 2004 poverty estimate. So I had to re-estimate what the World Bank’s 2004 poverty numbers would have been using the World Bank’s newer methodology/data.
Based on Chen and Ravallion’s papers (references 44 & 45), I estimated that the newer methodology/data increased the poverty numbers by 1.48-1.5 for 2002 and 2005. Note that World Bank’s estimates are based on Chen and Ravallion’s analyses. [Both work for the World Bank.] Hence, the 1.5 multiplicative factor that was applied to the 2004 estimate (that was based on the older methodology/data).
Had I not used this multiplicative factor, the estimate of incremental deaths would have been:
(a) Wrong, and
(b) 48-50% higher.
That is, instead of 192,000 deaths, the estimate would have come in at around 285,000-288,000. If you care to, you can work out why as homework.
Incidentally, all this is written out on page 12.
Third, you have complained about the 14% upward adjustment to the estimate from De Hoyos and Medvedev (DHM, for short). As noted on page 12,

“the World Bank estimated that the 2005 poverty headcount was 14% higher [than HDM], that is, 1,374 million.
“The difference between the two estimates is mainly that the World Bank’s analysis covered more countries. To reconcile these two estimates, De Hoyos and Medvedev’s estimate for increase in headcount due to higher biofuel production should be adjusted upward by 14% to 36.4 million.”

It seems in your haste, typing at 220mph, you skipped this bit, like you seem to have skipped all the other explanations.
Fourth, you state that, “The authors (sic) claim of 192,000 poverty related deaths caused by biofuel production increases specifically INCLUDES deaths caused by global warming – in fact they represent the largest portion of these 192,000 deaths according to the authors own chart and claims.”
NO, 220mph, you are really showing that you didn’t understand the calculations. Global warming’s share of the 192,000 is equal to its pro-rated share of deaths from the 6 risk factors. That is, 141,000/7.7 million. You really should go through the paper and understand it before you comment.

Dr Indur M. Goklany; I wouldn’t waste too much effort on 220mphs’ concerns. As 220 did not use much effort in study on your post. 220mph is a high speed troll that wastes all our time reading comments that yield no enlightenment.
To those that comment that Maize or American corn is inedible, I should point out that a lot of people around the world consider it to be a basic food source.
I have been involved in creation of food and fuels for nearly 60 years, the subsidies to create fuel from food is stupid! and counter productive. On again, off again, government involvement just screws up real progress and lines the pockets of the well connected. pg

The biofuels myth explodes.
Independent inquiry concludes that the production of biofuels to meet UK and European directives violates human rights and damages the environment.
Biofuels transport targets are unethical, inquiry finds.
Targets for biofuels had driven a rapid expansion, in parts of the world with lower ethical standards, the researchers said. They cited the destruction of rainforest in Malaysia to produce palm oil, forcing people off their land and endangering orangutans, and a 2008 report by Amnesty International which found conditions near slavery for workers in some sugarcane plantations.
An international certification scheme, like the Fairtrade scheme for food, must be introduced, the NCB inquiry concluded. It would guarantee that the production of biofuels met the five ethical conditions identified by the NCB: observing human rights, environmentally sustainable, reduced carbon emissions, fairly traded and equitably distributed cost and benefits.
Prof Joyce Tait, at Edinburgh University, who chaired the 18-month inquiry by the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCB) said “Biofuels are one of the only renewable alternatives we have for transport fuels, but current policies and targets that encourage their uptake have backfired badly. The rapid expansion of biofuels production in the developing world has led to problems such as deforestation and the displacement of indigenous people. An international certification scheme will not add to red tape, it will simplify it with one overarching standard.”
Under the European Union’s renewable energy directive, 10% of transport fuel must come from renewable sources such as biofuel by 2020. The legal requirement to put biofuels in petrol and diesel sold in the UK and Europe is unethical because their production violates human rights and damages the environment. The need to meet rising biofuel targets has also led to exploitation of workers, the loss of wildlife and higher food prices, the inquiry found.
Alena Buyx, assistant director at the NCB, said: “If you look at food prices and they go up and incomes do not, then more people will probably die from hunger, and biofuels are one contributing factor to those price rises. Biofuels also contribute to poor harvests, commodity speculation and high oil prices which raise the cost of fertilisers and transport. We should slow down [the targets] if it is not possible to meet ethical standards. But we think it is possible to do that [meet such standards] if enough pressure is applied. The EU says each member country should make their own voluntary scheme – that is madness.”
Prof Ottoline Leyserof Cambridge University, and another member of the NBC working party said “But doing nothing is also immoral. There is a clear need to replace liquid fossil fuels to limit climate change and if a new biofuel technology meets ethical conditions, there is a duty to develop it”. But future generations of biofuel, made from agricultural waste such as straw, fast-growing perennials such as willow or miscanthus grass, or even algae grown in tanks, could avoid many of the problems by not competing directly with food. “These are very exciting technologies,” said Leyserof. “The potential is huge.”
In the UK, 5% of transport fuel must come from renewable sources by 2013. Today, 3% of the UK’s petrol and diesel comes from biofuel, mostly produced in Argentina, Brazil and other European countries. But in January, it was revealed that two-thirds of the biofuel being used in the UK today failed to meet environmental standards. Government cuts to the budget of the Carbon Trust also saw a flagship algal biofuels project cancelled.
The Department of Transport is currently consulting on changes to the UK’s biofuels regulations. Transport minister Norman Baker said: “It has already been agreed that no biofuel will count towards European renewable energy targets unless it meets certain sustainability requirements. But we are pushing the European commission to go further. Be in no doubt, we consider the sustainability of biofuels to be paramount.”
The inquiry found positive examples too, such as small-scale biofuels initiatives that provide energy, income and livelihoods in fuel-poor areas, such as in rural Mali.
Existing certification schemes, such as that run by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels were a good start, the researchers said, but remained entirely voluntary. There was also problem of responsible biofuel producers having to conform to many different standards.

Dear kate
That report was by the same people behind the global warming scam. Do we sue the Romans for deforesting northern Europe putting Celts and Gauls in danger of extinction.
Jungle is not suitable for Palm Oil Plantations.
Slave labour, look to factories sweatshops and such around the world.
Certification, yes wonderful another gravy train and means to commit fraud. Wanna buy cheap CO2 certs, avoid VAT
Please stop the nonsense. Growing any crop on land suitable and in a rational way makes simple sense. Oil Palm estates use insect and plant control. They breed barn owls for vermin control. They are protecting riversides and water access for elephants and others.
Yes there are bad eggs, mostly corporations exploiting some local legal loophole. Go for them by all means.
Malaysia is a land covered in Jungle, a wild natural place with Oil Palm plantations making up a small percentage and cites even less. Driving the motorways here is a joy, mile after mile of jungle.

DesertYote says:
April 19, 2011 at 9:21 am
220mph
April 19, 2011 at 8:04 am
I have not read all of your rants yet; I am at work. But you seem to make some interesting points. My main concern is that you appear to be talking from a socialist world view. Though in truth, it is difficult to talk about this type of subject without doing so, as the socialists have been very busy insuring that they are the ones defining the vocabulary. Be that as it may …
I can assure you I’m furthest thing from a socialist there is 😉 … and they were not intended as rants – but rather my thoughts on the report and topic … I’ll point out in effect I “live blogged” my read of the paper – so my comments aren’t intended to be definitive but rather my initial take on the paper and its conclusions
What role do you think the distortion of the food market by government policies such as subsidies have on hunger?
I do not believe the facts – at least regarding the US, which is all I feel knowledgeable enough to comment on, show there is any significant distortion in “food” market caused by government biofuel policies. USDA crop reports for example show little or no support for the claims alleged by biofuel opponents – there is little evidence of any significant impact on food prices due to biofuels.
Many ignore for example that a large part of the corn ethanol subsidies are for production of corn, regardless of the use – food or fuel.
I believe the primary mover on food prices are commodities speculators and the current very high energy prices
What role do you think humanitarian food distribution has on local food production?
You can give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. You can teach a man to fish and they can eat for life. The detrius of years of ever expanding liberal entitlements – food and benefits handouts – are clear for all to see. In America at least OBESITY is a serious problem in the entitlement classes.
I also believe, as hard as it is to say, that we have to have a serious discussion about just what is humanitarian about encouraging and supporting the continued population growth in many of these areas well beyond the ability of the populace and the environment to support them. That is NOT in any way condoning eugenics or any of that ridiculous garbage – but rather to encourage an honest frank assessment of the sustainability of some of these populations.
Would increased food prices result in local farmers being able to realize greater profitability in producing food crops, thus enabling them to farm?
Farmers take all the risks – have since the beginning – and reap a tiny share of the reward. Increased food commodities prices are a benefit to farmers – but even in the best of times a large number never make a dime – just too many variable, sun, heat, cold, wind, rain, flooding, drought etc. I love family farmers and would like to do everything possible within reason to support them. But the simple facts are the massive corporate farming operations are the most efficient and cost effective way to produce our needed crops.
Those who rant about ethanol subsidies and the alleged impacts of biofuel production would very likely scream if farm subsidies were gutted. THAT would cause a quick and real increase in food prices
Have you read “The Plight and Promise of Arid Land Agriculture”? Can’t remember the authors names right now.
Nope – but at least as regards biofuels production marginal lands are the future of feedstock cultivation … switch grass and other cellulosic type feedstock grows just fine on these marginal lands
BTW, I think that the paper you are dissecting only really makes sense in a Marxist context. It ignores second and third order effects. The problem in analyzing stuff written by socialists is ferreting out all of the invalid equivalencies.
I think the basic premise of the paper is simple enough – if food prices increase it increases poverty is rational … its all the blind leaps – the “if-then” statements that are not based on data but rather speculation … the ‘we can’t find a real, provable link, so the only thing it could be is this’ mentality … pronouncing allegedly “scientific” judgement despite minimal or no data in support of the conclusions … that is the problem.
As I noted the conclusion of this paper could have AGW, man-made CO2 etc substituted for biofuel induced poverty and alleged deaths … neither are in my opinion based on sound empirical data – but rather in leaps of faith … THT is the problem – as we’ve seen with both AGW and this paper

From Grey lensman on April 19, 2011 at 10:27 pm:

Classic, I believe 95% of the corn grown in America is
inedible”, the dent variety. It is designed that way to ensure a consistent corporate crop of “feedstock”. This, as with any other feedstock,is chemically treated to produce “food”.
That explains why so many obese Americans suffer from malnutrition.

*sigh* Dent corn is edible, and used for human food, but as is the case with all corn it benefits from some processing. Read this. Traditionally maize was treated with alkali-water of some sort, which frees up the bound niacin. Without such treatment, relying on corn as a staple food can result in pellagra, which is caused by niacin deficiency. The process is known as nixtamalization and was used by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Nowadays there’s also an enzymatic version used in industrial settings. The process also has other nutritional benefits that make it even more desirable.
Traditional corn is also deficient in two key amino acids, lysine and tryptophan. To avoid complications, a varied diet which supplies those amino acids is recommended, although high lysine maize has been developed.
While people do eat untreated sweet corn and popcorn, it’s not the best way to have it from a nutritional standpoint, and that “chemical treatment” you lament is needed to make it a better food. And it’s been “chemically treated” for millenia by people who knew that corn was best with such processing. So why gripe about it and blame “corporate farmers”?

I can totally see that biofuel does impact food prices and it is also easy to see the relationship that is drawn here. One thing that is not focused on though in this article is that fact that Biodiesel especially displaces millions of tons of carcinogens that are associated with petroleum diesel. These carcinogens are killing untold numbers of North Americans and Europeans each year. I would like to see these statistics in relative terms before we go saying we are killing people by turning to biofuels. Better yet, additional biofuel subsidies should be provided to the algae biofuel industry where no arable land is being used and no fresh water needs to be displaced, ultimately putting an end to this debate.

Indur M. Goklany says:
April 19, 2011 at 8:04 pm
“[As an aside, as a lapsed electrical engineer whose thesis and post-doc was partly in solid state physics, I feel confident that the future belongs to solar. But the future isn’t here yet. And I wouldn’t mandate solar subsidies based on my predilections and biases.]”
I share this opinion. Once PV drops in price enough AND we have affordable energy storage (via H2 or CH4 synthesis or via batteries or via flywheels) it becomes a very simple way of running things. It will not be cheap enough before 2025, though. With “cheap enough” i don’t mean “as cheap as electricity from coal” but “cheap enough to run a civilization on it”. At the moment, the EROEI is still too low. (The price of a PV installation obviously correlates with the energy used in its production, so improvements in the production processes will become visible in the form of lower prices, but it will take several production process generations to get an interesting EROEI of perhaps 10:1 over the lifetime of a PV installation.)

From Grey lensman on April 20, 2011 at 2:41 am:

Thank you KD, I eat my corn right off the cob, it needs no treatment. Study chemistry, how do you turn crude oil into plastic, same way you turn dent into “food”. Same as is now done with so many factory produced foods, sorry “foods”.

Dent corm is processed by cracking in refineries, those products are then subjected to polymerization, to yield food? I don’t think so. Now if I want to eat corn as it has been eaten for millenia by the native people who discovered it, I’ll stick with nixtamalization.

Here in Malaysia, in the Highlands, we grow most of our vegitables in a very limited area. One of them is a particularly sweet, sweet corn, whcich clearly you need to try, to rediscover exactly what FOOD is.

Oh I like sweet corn too, on the cob is great. But it tends to leave my digestive system looking much like it did when consumed, leading me to wonder how much nutrition it actually provided. When consumed not as a vegetable but processed by nixtamalization then normally processed further as a cereal grain, my body digests it quite readily.
While Googling for “nixtamalization corn meal” I found this thread on a site dedicated to sustainable living, albeit with somewhat of a survivalist slant. They are well aware of the process, using dent corn was mentioned, and there are good reviews of the traditional nixtamalization processes both presented and linked to. Using wood ash (from hardwoods) is highlighted. Do you like hominy? That’s nixtamalized corn.
If you really are so concerned about having “real food” and are fearful about “industrial chemically treated” “food” then get some dried ripe corn and use the traditional methods of “chemical treatment” yourself. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not about to abandon the millenia-old wisdom of how to properly prepare a natural food for human consumption due to your concerns over modern efficient bulk processing, nor due to your condemnation of a common variety of corn first developed by James L. Reid in the late 1800’s (ref one, two), a farmer using basic crossbreeding methods, that has been used for human food for well over a century.

kadaka, that kernel in your personal biomass co-product is mostly just the pericarp.

220mph: You don’t show the entire “equation” from start to finish, and in fact you change from estimated poverty headcounts (which as you note have been decreasing dramatically) to the 32 million number for increased poverty headcount due to biofuels, while presenting nothing to show how that number was derived – (or why it should be arbitrarily increased 14% when it was created using the new data and methods already).
RESPONSE: As I explained in my earlier response — which apparently you didn’t read perhaps because, in your own words, “its late and I don’t have energy to give your response the time in reply it deserves” — the 14% adjustment is due to the fact that DHM’s analysis did not cover all developing countries, and I am trying to get an estimate for all developing countries. It’s not rocket science. In fact, it doesn’t even travel at 220mph! Read the paper and read the earlier response
220mph: You should it would seem, include at least an explanation of the basics of the calculations used in the papers [ie DHM] that are integral to your claims … for example how the the 32 million number at the heart of your paper arrived at?
RESPONSE: There is an explanation on p. 10 and on p. 12. Also, the citation for DHM is provided. It can be googled and downloaded for free. I recommend you read that
220mph: A proper study in my uneducated opinion would show the changes in poverty headcount for the comparison periods, and considering that the poverty headcount has been dropping dramatically how the 32 million number was calculated.
RESPONSE: A number of factors determine trends in the poverty level. They include economic growth rates as well as changes in the prices of food and other basic necessities. Because of rapid economic growth in China, and East and South Asia, in particular, global poverty rates have been declining very rapidly. But a part of this decrease has been offset by the increase in food prices. All this is in the paper, which observes on page 10, “The dramatic drop in headcount from 2005 to 2010 is due to increasing economic development. Thus, biofuel production would retard the developing world’s progress against poverty.”
But of course, since you were reading at 220mph, you skipped that part. For my part and contrary to my normal practice, I’ll skip the rest of your comments, since it seems to me your comments are not made after a good faith effort to understand what was done.

John Q. Galt:
I am not an agronomist. And yes, I am aware that byproducts of ethanol production have value, and that soybean oil can be (and is) converted to fuel. However, that doesn’t mean that biofuel production does not increase food prices.
I presume you know that soybean oil is edible and used in a variety of edible products, as well as for cooking. It is also used for feed, but (much of) feed eventually ends up (indirectly) as food.
Regardless, the real problem is that if biofuel production were economic then it would not need to rely on subsidies, tariffs and mandates to be sustained in the market place. And I would quit complaining about it.

Biofuels, the oldest fuels known to man

Here’s a rather long description of the history of metallurgy from our favorite University.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/timelines/pdf/tl_compare_tc.pdf
Search it for the word “deforestation”. (Hint, it appears twice, guess what the solution was?)

Sadly this is a really important issue and it will soon slip off the page and be forgotten.
Lets try and look at some real data.
What is the current global FOB price of crude palm oil?
It is way above the price of a litre of diesel at the pumps.
So assuming and thats a big assumption, that the global price reflects fully and is in balance as the theory dictates, supply and demand for energy products, then its clear that biodiesel from palm oil is not needed in the market.
But is that the real picture.
What of the cost of production?
Palm oil is currently very cheap to produce. So here we have a real question. Why is the market price so high.
Look at crude oil, always stories of Peak Oil, sky high prices, problems, we are all doomed. But lets look a little deeper. Lets take the latest mega Saudi oilfield. The BBC told us. it took 9 billion dollars to develop and that is a lot of money and reflects the dire shortage of oil. They then told us how much oil would be produced per day and for how many years. At the time the field went into production, Crude oil was USD 150 per barrel.
Thus the field paid all its capital costs in 66 days, yes 66 days. Cost of production worked out at usd 1.10 per barrel as opposed to a global market price of USD 150.
Now back to biodiesel. Wjat is limiting its use, the global market price. Who controls the market price? Why money not CPO nor the demand for CPO.
We are not comparing apples with apples.
So the real problem with biofuels is?????????????????????????

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 20, 2011 at 6:11 pm
From John Q. Galt on April 20, 2011 at 11:44 am:
So, for either reason, if you’re doing soybean production for oil then you’re not feeding those Africans.
Unless you’re examining local corn and soybean growing in Africa, with the generated feed used towards making those locally grown and consumed animal products, if you’re making biofuel then you’re not feeding those Africans.
———————————————————-
Maybe I missed something further up the thread. Why is it incumbent upon US farmers to feed Africans – if that’s what you’re saying ??

From Grey lensman on April 20, 2011 at 7:36 pm

Oh and KD, stick with fresh wholesome natural foods and dont forget, fibre a very vital need. Also note biodiversity, Humans are OMNIVORES which means they eat a varied diet, not just factory processed inedible corn. That how we survive when others go extinct.

And two attempts later, you are still sticking with your inaccurate claim about “inedible” corn, that you make without evidence, despite extensive proof that the “dent corn” you are maligning has been beneficially consumed by humans for well over a century.
If your ability to critically evaluate presented evidence is an indication of the results of a diet of these “fresh wholesome natural foods” you promote, then you’re doing an excellent job of convincing people of the benefits of factory processing. ☺

As usual the starting image, from a government source, is wrong. Where’s the beer mash going? The image has no by-products out put displayed. Biofuel can’t be viable if you don’t consider the high protein by-products coming out of the plant. You cant make biofuels without making or concentrating the protein. There’s no global shortage of livestock or human carbohydrates; its protein that matters. If the factory is not turning out edible Soya flour, canola press cake or dry distillers grains then take the staff out and shoot them! But check first whether their allowed to make human food from the by products. In most countries its forbidden. Pet foods getting very cheap though; I wonder why? /sarc The food vs fuel argument is so insanely wrong it proves that the powers that be DON’T WANT A SOLUTION !

That ethanol production increases the food prices is not totally right, first there is a by-product called “distillers dried grains with solubles”, which is used as feed for livestock, that is also nothing else than food. Moreover, by using ethanol, you put pressure on oil prices, which has also an important effect on food prices. You also give your money for more research (again labour), which will yield in higher efficiency of production and alternative production methods like cellulosic ethanol, which will change the whole equation. Again in case of oil this money would be spent for oil rigs, oil-infrastructure, but also for weapons to defend the oil.
By using ethanol, you produce less CO2, since it is produced by corn, which actually consumed the CO2 in the air for its growing. The more people use ethanol, the higher the efficiencies will come for production (similar to solar cells). The prices will go further down, and much less CO2 will be produced during production in the plant.
Do you know that the production efficiencies already improved 30% ? (1)
Finally inceased food prices will lead to enrichment of the poor farmers in poor countries, since they will plant more, since farming will be affordable for them. (2)
Source:
(1)http://brownfieldagnews.com/2010/09/21/ethanol-production-efficiency-improves/
(2)http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2011-03/armut-nahrungsmittelpreise

KD
I have some suggestions for you
1. Ask yourself, why, in 100 years America now has a epidemic of obese malnourished poeple
2. google Weston Price and really read their research
3. You continue to eat it, I will continuie to avoid it.
On topic, thanks to the posters who pointed out the food byproducts and labour and income generated by biofuels. I am disappointed that nobody picked up on the phoney pricing, economics.
Its so simple, Its the Policy not the biofuels.
One reason that corn, even dent, is used as a biofuel in the USA, is that it is a key to getting global price control of food in the same way that oil prices are. Think about that.
Maybe, biofuels is the only use dent should be put to, smile

John Galt … don’t forget that more and more of the energy to do all that drying, rolling, milling, grinding etc is heading more and more to being provided by the very product being created … and additional energy is coming from the resultant waste product the biomass remaining after processing
I don’t remember if we’ve heard the water scaremongering in this thread or not but that is yet another largely false statement.
Yes water IS used to produce ethanol from corn, what seems like a huge number … in reality – and this is from memory from old research I did – a 50 million gal ethanol plant used the equivalent water to a handful of golf courses, or car washes … and like each of those, the ethanol industry has dramatically reduced water use by onsite treatment and reuse of waste water … another red herring especially when compared to water use of fossil fuel based fuel production ….
50 million gal per year standard ethanol plant uses appx 400,000 gal per day (150 mgpyr) (appx 3 gal per gal ethanol)
Petroleum refining uses appx 65 to 90 gals water per barrel of crude – each barrel makes appx 20 gals gasoline or 3.25 to 4.5 gals water per gal gasoline
Cellulosic processes use as little as 1.9 gal water per gal ethanol …
Water use will continue to improive … Poet used appx 3 gal per gal ethanol in 2009, an 80% decrease from 1988 and expect to further reduce water usage to 2.3 gal per gal ethanol over next 5 years.
NPR: Audubon International estimates that the average American course uses 312,000 gallons per day. In a place like Palm Springs, where 57 golf courses challenge the desert, each course eats up a million gallons a day.
A large 150 million gallon per year corn ethanol plant will use appx 1.2 million gallons per day of water (although this is greatly reduced thru treatments and recycling) … about the same as one large golf course in Palm Springs or 4 average American golf courses.
That SINGLE 150 mgpy ethanol plant – assuming 15mpg avg fuel economy – provides enough fuel to provide the entire annual fuel needs for 1,000 cars driving avg 10,000 miles per year.

Indur M. Goklany says:
April 20, 2011 at 7:41 pm
John Q. Galt:
I am not an agronomist. And yes, I am aware that byproducts of ethanol production have value, and that soybean oil can be (and is) converted to fuel. However, that doesn’t mean that biofuel production does not increase food prices.
I presume you know that soybean oil is edible and used in a variety of edible products, as well as for cooking. It is also used for feed, but (much of) feed eventually ends up (indirectly) as food.
Regardless, the real problem is that if biofuel production were economic then it would not need to rely on subsidies, tariffs and mandates to be sustained in the market place. And I would quit complaining about it.
Ah, so you’re a free market libertarian then. /sarc
Great way to say you don’t know what you’re writing about but here’s my paper any way. Like most academics you start with a money quote (“Policies that subsidize or mandate biofuels benefit neither Mother Earth nor humanity”) and then work back from there as you rearrange some ad hoc numbers that appeal to the current narrative.

kadaka, isn’t it funny corn is blamed for the worlds ills because it is both too cheap and too expensive? Haha!
My previous post concerning the relationship between corn and soybeans really should have included a note about corn’s value relative to wheat, sorghum, rice, potatoes, sugar beets and other starchy crops. A comparison of costs-benefits is even more obvious with these crops.
Here’s a new article on the feed value of ethanol co-products.
http://advancedbiofuelsusa.info/fuel-and-animal-feed-both-produced-from-advanced-biofuel-biomass-the-new-biofuel-paradigm
Despite the title, this isn’t a new thing, just a “new to you” thing.

I should have also included this link, just so nobody misses it in the above linked article.
http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/power-and-energy/5713-ethanols-overlooked-source-of-food-supply.html

Orchestia …
Unless you read and believe the repeatedly refuted work of outliers Pimental and Patzek – who are almost the only people claiming a net energy loss – and who not surprisingly are the references Dr. Goklany includes in his paper …. ethanol production from corn has had a positive net energy balance for a long time.
Current numbers run from appx 1.3 to appx 1.8 to 1 for current corn ethanol production – meaning 1.3 to 1.8 BTU units of energy are produced from every 1 BTU expended in production. In 2001 USDA found an avg net energy balance of appx 1.7 based on a 19 state study.
This number continues to grow, but it is the newer cellulosic processes that are the future of ethanol.
Using switch grass, corn stalks, tree fiber and similar as feedstock, cellulosic production provides a net energy balance that starts around 3 to 1 … typical current avergaes are in the 5 to 1 to 8 to 1 range. Improvements in process, feedstocks etc show promise of energy balance of over 20 to 1 possible.
The feedstock for cellulosic ethanol is grown typically on marginal land with minimal cultivation and irrigation. Feedstocks like switchgrass can provide addtl side benefits – making good wildlife habitat and a restorative nature to soil.
At the end of the day corn ethanol provides a valuable part of our renewable energy needs. It is not a solution nor was it ever expected to be, but it does put a significant dent in our foreign fossil fuel needs

kadaka …
What a sill and meaningless comment – on many levels …
1. Your own article clearly stated the district would save money using switchgrass.
2. A 13 year payback is quite respectable.
3. Your other geothermal “payback” was based on 1998 energy prices – not the extremely higher current prices
4. It was nice that you picked payback vs replacing heating oil system – which is claimed at 5 years … however, you conveniently avoided the payback for natural gas systems – the prevalent systems in US – which is 12 years
All of that is irrelevant regardless … trying to compare cellulosic ethanol to burning switchgrass is just plain ridiculous – there is nothing remotely in common.
Interestingly however you DO does point out and confirm yet another benefit of cellulosic (and corn) ethanol production … after extracting the ethanol, distillers dried grains and corn oil in case of corn, and other valuable byproducts the remaining waste product can be BURNED to create heat and energy

http://www.pacificethanol.net/site/_images/media_photos/energy_balance_chart.gif
Patzek & Pimental debunked
Shows their findings in graphic perspective to many other studies

philincalifornia says:
April 22, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Do you have a reference for the following (pretty please):
“Integrated co-located, co-generating and co-production plants will use manure water as a water (and nutrient) source, sterilize it during the feedstock cooking stage, and feed the cleaned, nutrient rich co-product liquids back to livestock.” ??
No link as such. The use of waste flows is pretty straightforward. Manure water (wash water from livestock pens and manure lagoons) can be sterilized during the cooking process or even during a biomass-fired open-cycle steam generating process.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 23, 2011 at 7:15 am
Getting the most energy possible out of switch grass by simply burning it efficiently, the payback period is many times that of a geothermal heat pump system. If you think that switch grass to ethanol would be such a wonderful thing, then perhaps you’d support the far greater potential benefits of geothermal to ethanol. ☺
kadaka, your argument is comparing apples to oranges.
1) The energy needed to run the heat pumps needs to come from some primary mover. Heat pumps don’t replace fuel sources but merely reduce the fuel required to do some desired work.
2) Geothermal to ethanol?
A general comment about EROEI. All energy balance studies assume all energy sources to be the same. They are not. A btu of coal can not be compared to a btu of finished retail gasolines or any other liquid fuel. Energy inputs should be classified as fossil fuels and refined fossil fuel products. Only the potential refined motor fuels should be considered when calculating the value of ethanol as a motor fuel. Ethanol’s value is greater than it’s btu content. Ethanol is a fuel additive which increases the octane value of low-octane, high-btu heavy gasolines thus increasing the total amount of gasoline that can be sold on the market at the varios octane rating.

kadaka …. burning switch grass is the “most efficient” way to use it?
Not even remotely accurate – just one miscellaneous comment:
“Most plans for cellulosic ethanol processing call for burning the lignin to generate steam and heat to run the process. As a fuel, lignin is worth around $40 a ton.”
another:
“Lignin and protein, two important co-products, have the potential to significantly improve the economics of biorefineries. Lignin is a non-fermentable residue from the hydrolysis process. It has an energy content similar to coal and is employed to power the operation, thereby reducing production costs. “There is enough residue [lignin] left over to meet the energy needs of the process plus make additional ethanol or electricity,” says Eric Larson, a research engineer at the Princeton Environmental Institute.”
The same story talks about a process to use that lignin in a glue product that would be worth as much s $300/ton
The byproduct can still be burned as fuel, in addition to the ethanol – which is produced at a net energy balance somewhere in the 5 to 7 to 1 range.
Your comments seem to make little sense – trying to compare geothermal to ethanol is as noted wholly unrelated.

Orchestia … yes the net energy balance studies take into account growing the crops … that said the argument is food vs fuel – which makes that question moot – the crops are going to be grown regardless
Cellulosic ethanol processes use marginal land to grow feedstocks that are wholly unrelated to food or animal feed – the process does not take land or resources away from nor compete with food crops. It also has a much higher net energy balance – as high as 8 units produced vs 1 unit expended in production.
Last – your comment on “stock food” I assume means animal feed … corn ethanol is produced from FEED corn – corn grown for purpose of feeding livestock – NOT corn grown as food. And after ethanol is extracted from the corn a large amount of distillers dried grain solids are created as a byproduct. These DDGs are high quality animal feed that replaces the orig corn used as feed

From John Q. Galt on April 23, 2011 at 7:07 pm:

1) The energy needed to run the heat pumps needs to come from some primary mover. Heat pumps don’t replace fuel sources but merely reduce the fuel required to do some desired work.

Oh come on now! The heat pump allows the replacement of fuels with geothermal energy, as you’re well aware. The electricity could come from anywhere, even wind and solar. The complete replacement of traditional fuel sources is possible.

2) Geothermal to ethanol?

Why not? Building ethanol from water and carbon takes energy, geothermal can efficiently supply energy. An endothermic process is possible. As part of the biofuel rage, there’s the concept you’re starting with energy harvested from sunlight. But this brings up the vagaries of actually growing crops, with assorted land use issues. The Earth itself can provide a reliable continuous supply of geothermal heat. So why not use the heat to grow some sort of life form in vats from which biofuels can be extracted? Or one that will just convert the starting ingredients directly to ethanol?
To see how close the technology is, see this. BRI Energy has a pilot plant where assorted carbon-containing waste undergoes incomplete combustion to generate syngas, primarily H2 and CO. The syngas is cooled to 100°F then fed to bacteria, which make the ethanol.
Since we can already go from H2 and CO to ethanol, and the breaking down of water to hydrogen and oxygen is a long-established biological process, making ethanol from water and carbon with the energy input of (geothermal) heat should be possible. Might take two or more organisms, or just clever genetic engineering to need only one. Either way, and that’s with biological action instead of merely chemical which may also be possible, it’s worth pursuing.

From 220mph on April 24, 2011 at 9:37 pm:

Last – your comment on “stock food” I assume means animal feed … corn ethanol is produced from FEED corn – corn grown for purpose of feeding livestock – NOT corn grown as food.

Incorrect. You need better info about maize, specifically field corn, which you are incorrectly identifying as “feed corn.” Animals eat it as whole kernels, it may be ground (or “cracked”). For humans it’s normally processed by nixtamalization and ground. Otherwise, both humans and animals can eat the same field corn.

And after ethanol is extracted from the corn a large amount of distillers dried grain solids are created as a byproduct. These DDGs are high quality animal feed that replaces the orig corn used as feed

I realize it may be hard to understand why it’s called agricultural science, but there’s quite a bit of knowledge used in farming and farmers do go to college to do it right. Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) are not a direct substitute for corn. There are assorted calculations to do to assure the animals are getting proper nutrition, further info can be found here. To mention it generally, in this article it’s mentioned about mineral supplementation when using distillers grains.

Kadaka – I identified it exactly as I intended – the corn used for ethanol production is “feed” corn – meaning corn gown for the primary purpose of feeding to livestock and not “food” corn – (ie: sweet corn) grown as a food source.
Not gonna waste a lot of time on a response since you don’t really seem to care about the answer but our trusty pal’s at Wiki show us some of the facts about “feed” corn.
First they point out the fallacy of your claims – that corn used for ethanol is used for “food” ….
“Within the United States, the usage of maize for human consumption constitutes about 1/40th of the amount of grown in the country. In the United States and Canada maize is mostly grown to feed for livestock, as forage, silage (made by fermentation of chopped green cornstalks), or grain. Maize meal is also a significant ingredient of some commercial animal food products, such as dog food.”
They go on to show the actual numbers that show the inaccuracy of your claims:
The breakdown of usage of the 12.1 billion bushel 2008 U.S. maize crop was as follows, according to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report by the USDA.
5.25 billion bu. – Livestock feed
3.65 billion bu. – Ethanol production
1.85 billion bu. – Exports
943 million bu. – Production of Starch, Corn Oil, Sweeteners (HFCS,etc.)
327 million bu. – Human consumption – grits, corn flower, corn meal, beverage alcohol
Just 2.7% of the corn harvest in the US is used for human food consumption – and a good share of that is for hooch.
There is a big difference between being able to eat feed stock corn and actually doing so.

From 220mph on April 25, 2011 at 6:32 pm:

Sorry, no – it shows you don’t understand the processes involved and have little desire to educate yourself. One of my comments directly addressed:
“Most plans for cellulosic ethanol processing call for burning the lignin to generate steam and heat to run the process. As a fuel, lignin is worth around $40 a ton.”

It was you who brought up the value of the lignin. You even brought up the possible value of the one version, $300/ton. This invoked the concept of selling the lignin. When presented with the relative worthlessness of the lignin as a commodity, your “defense” is of course that you were talking about burning it at the plant.
Burning the lignin is already done in the kraft process of separating cellulose fibers out of the source wood for paper making purposes. Your charges are particularly spurious as I clearly have researched and have educated myself about lignin and its relationship in cellulosic ethanol production.
See this 2010 article, from a site that is very involved in promoting biofuels:
http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2010/06/28/using-synergies-to-save-cellulosic-ethanol-power-plant-co-location/
Using Synergies to Save: Cellulosic Ethanol & Power Plant Co-Location

Co-location of a cellulosic ethanol facility and a coal-fired power plant is one strategy that holds promise. Joining these industries in the same location can result in significant economic and environmental benefits for both, in the form of feedstock sharing, cost savings, and regulatory compliance.

Further down comes this important info about lignin:

Power plants moving towards ‘green electricity’ production will pay more to purchase biomass than coal, but an effective co-location setup can still result in profit for both the electricity and ethanol producers. Lignin is basically a by-product for the ethanol facility that must either be turned into landfill waste or burned into steam and electricity at a relatively high cost, but it has significant value for the power plant.

There it is. The choices are paying to dispose of it or burning it on site, and it’s only marginally better to burn it, thus the low $40/ton price estimate as a fuel. Granted the article does try to make lignin as a fuel sound good:

A power plant that is co-located with a cellulosic ethanol facility can benefit from co-firing lignin in its coal boilers to produce electricity. Lignin possesses high BTU levels and is a clean burning substrate. (…)

From a biomass promoter comes this article about possibly using lignin for synthetic gas (syngas) production:
http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/2928/cellulosic-ethanol-what-to-do-with-the-lignin/
Cellulosic Ethanol: What to Do with the Lignin

One challenge to the lignin gasification approach is that biomass gasifiers are still in the developmental stage when it comes to producing a very clean synthetic gas from lignin.
Coal gasification experience is helping to meet the challenge, since lignin should perform similar to a low-rank, lignite coal in a gasification environment. When analyzed for their components, lignin and lignite show a similar composition.

Lignite, aka brown coal, is considered the lowest rank of coal, known for low energy density, of such low value that it’s burned for electricity generation in plants located very close to the mines, it’s not worth transporting any significant distance.
You presented lignin as being valuable and providing economic value in cellulosic ethanol production, lowering the production costs. I showed its relative worthlessness. Your response was pointing out using it at the plant for fuel, which I had considered. Here I have provided further evidence of its relative worthlessness, even at the ethanol plant, where the choices are to burn it at relatively high cost and reap what little value it has, or throw it away.
Given the headaches and expense of utilizing such a low-value fuel, I can understand why, as you stated, only most plans for cellulosic ethanol plants call for burning it. With the economies of scale and increasing efficiency, it seems assured these plants will generate more lignin than they can burn. For a commercial-scale operation trying to run lean and uncomplicated, throwing away the lignin and using a simpler-to-utilize energy source is very attractive.
But there may be some hope, since, as I linked to, work on converting lignin to syngas is progressing. As I mentioned in a different comment, converting syngas to ethanol is advancing nicely. Bringing the technologies together will allow converting the lignin to ethanol, with co-generation of steam and possibly electricity. If the investment costs are low enough with a reasonable return on investment, perhaps the cellulosic ethanol plants will find that an attractive alternative, between burning it as efficiently as possible and just throwing it away.

I am still puzzled by the economics involved in biofuel production. In the USA corn growers receive $7 billion in direct subsidies. And foreign ethanol imports face a massive 12.75 c per liter tariff. In addition, there are export subsidies and indirect subsidies to both farming and biofuel industries.
What effect does this have on biofuel economics? All the costing I have seen so far have not taken these subsidies into account.
I would point out that Western (Northern) agricultural subsidies cost the underdeveloped world about $50 billion in lost sales – equal to the annual development aid from the West!
Can we ever establish a viable and sustainable biofuels industry while such massive subsidies to rich farmers distort the market and damage the 3rd world??

Thanks for the considered reply Kadaka but I still don’t think any industry is sustainable if subsidized. The US now has robust competition so old solutions may not suffice. The world is changing fast. There are both moral and commercial reasons as to why subsidies are daft. Small farming does much better when subsidies are removed as New Zealand has proved. Land here is treated as an earning asset, so prices are held in check by the market and young farmers can get their own farms. To give you an idea of prices I am looking at an 800 ha mixed property on which we may be trialling the growing of biofuels (though I am not a young farmer). It has pine plantation blocks, sheep and beef on highly productive and well-farmed land – all good earners experiencing strong price gains. The property costs $3.75 m. It is fully stocked, has two excellent houses and farm assets in very good condition. It is also a very pretty property. How does that compare?
I don’t know how we can get politicians to be more rational and wise – that’s a problem we all have.
Our government had broken all the rules and has offered a subsidy for biodiesel. But the take up has been minimal since the industry isn’t judged to be economic even with the subsidy. That’s why I am keen on detailed cost analysis – if we can find how to reduce growing or production costs we might be able to develop a desperately needed biofuels industry.
Kind regards

From 220mph on April 26, 2011 at 7:53 pm:

1/40th equals 2.5% – corroborated by the 2.7% number when looking at the actual corn used for food purposes …

Here’s a hint for using Wikipedia: Look for the reference marks. That paragraph has no bracketed references. The “1/40th” sentence lacks linked words as well, and it is normal to expect such links can be followed to the presented info. Thus “1/40th” has nothing showing that it’s not the same mistake you made.
It’s amazing how you keep moving the goal posts, yet are still wrong. Note your current waffling on the “definitive evidence” you provided earlier:

Regardless – even if it was half the exports you’d still be talking about just 7.5% of corn crop used for food – added to US food portion of total corn crop and you have 10% of US corn crop used for food

See this from the USDA:

Field corn is the predominant corn type grown in the U.S., and it is primarily used for animal feed. Currently, less than 10 percent of the U.S. field corn crop is used for direct domestic human consumption in corn-based foods such as corn meal, corn starch, and corn flakes, while the remainder is used for animal feed, exports, ethanol production, seed, and industrial uses. Sweet corn, both white and yellow, is usually consumed as immature whole-kernel corn by humans and also as an ingredient in other corn-based foods, but makes up only about 1 percent of total U.S. corn production.

So you can get that 10% without even considering exports.
Way back here you stated:

Last – your comment on “stock food” I assume means animal feed … corn ethanol is produced from FEED corn – corn grown for purpose of feeding livestock – NOT corn grown as food.

This is wrong if considering type of corn grown, field corn is consumed by man and beast. Also, from the National Corn Growers Association on their Publications page you can find the “2010 World of Corn Metric Edition” report. From pg 8, “U.S. Corn Usage by Segment, 2009” comes that 42.5% of usage is “Feed & Residuals” while 32.1% is “Fuel Ethanol.” That would be a lot of corn to drop on the market if all that corn was “…corn grown for purpose of feeding livestock – NOT corn grown as food.” Clearly ethanol is being made from corn grown for the purpose of making ethanol, not for the purpose of feeding livestock.

Your comments on lignin and burning it to provide energy at ethanol plants proves and agrees with my point – that there is a real value for this byproduct – not worth further discussion with you

That’s for the best, since you’re basically down to arguing about absolute value, of which even a jar of air or dirt would have some. Heck, by your standard for “real value” I should investigate uses of the byproduct of the cats that I scoop out of the litter box. 😉

From 220mph on April 27, 2011 at 12:48 pm:

Again – ACTUAL USDA numbers – not a blanket statement as in your quote

I see you haven’t checked the Wikipedia reference yet:

40. “2009 US Corn Stats”. Iowa Corn. Retrieved December 2, 2010. c

It’s not there. Wasn’t there when I checked days ago either. So I went to find a “World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report by the USDA.” The current one is found here, with a link to historical ones:
http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/
April 8, 2011 is the date of the current one. The 2008/09 info is there. See pdf pg 12. The WASDE report does not have a breakdown as shown in the Wikipedia numbers. These agricultural reports use the catch-all “food, seed, and industrial (FSI)” which does not break down what is human-consumption sufficiently.
So I followed note 2 to find a breakdown at “Feed Outlook table 5” as recommended. Feed Outlooks are found here:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1273
The current one is April 12, 2011 and has the 2008/09 info.
Table 5 is on pdf pg 17, it is the FSI breakdown. Adding together “Alcohol for beverages and manufacturing” (134.00 million bushels) with “Cereals and other products” (192.10 million bushels) yields 326.10 million bushels. That matches the “327 million bu. – Human consumption” Wikipedia number, consistent with the slight discrepancies I noted between those Wikipedia numbers and the actual WASDE report figures.
So both your “2.7%” and Wikipedia’s “1/40th” numbers must be wrong. For 2008/09, 489.06 million bushels were used for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which is used in food. 245.12 million bushels were used for Glucose and Dextrose, which are used in food. There is also 234.09 million bushels used for Starch, which has a plethora of uses which includes food uses. No amount from those figures is used in your and Wikipedia’s numbers, which is clearly in error.
Thus now as when you first stated it, you’re wrong.
I’ll stick with that “blanket statement,” that was provided by the USDA.

Sorry – but you simply don’t get it – if you read that comment in context of the discussion it was clearly meant to refer to the type of corn grown – feed type corn – and not food type corn. Ethanol production uses the same corn type almost exclusively used for FEED not FOOD (ie: sweet) type corn

“Almost exclusively” has been shown to be quite a stretch. You have yet to provide a clarification of what this mysterious “feed corn” is exactly. Field corn is used for humans as well. As I previously linked to, the USDA says only about 1% of the corn crop is sweet corn.
Feel free to delve into your vast pool of knowledge of American agriculture, and specifically identify the particular type or types of corn that are “almost exclusively” used for animal feed and ethanol but not for humans. Please also provide the additional data showing how this subset is quantitatively identified as separate from the rest of the field corn crop which goes toward human consumption.

From 220mph on April 28, 2011 at 1:52 pm :

From your own link about “field corn” :
“Field corn is not generally regarded, in industrialized societies, as desirable for human food without commercial pre-processing. (…)

Likewise wheat, oats, even rice is commercially pre-processed. Field corn, like them, is a grain, not a vegetable. Field corn is eaten by humans, like those other grains. You might as well stop this “silly” argument if you have such trouble accepting such basics about grains, especially field corn.

A look at USDA crop production reports further proves the point that the corn used for ethanol production is NOT causing land to be shifted to corn production from other food crops as so many claim … corn acreage was actually DOWN slightly last year

From the current (April 12, 2011) Feed Outlook from the USDA, pdf pg 7:

U.S. farmers plan to plant 92.2 million acres of corn this year, an increase of 4 million acres from last year. In February, USDA released the USDA Agricultural Projections to 2020 and forecast 2011 planted acreage at 92 million. Corn acreage increased the most in the Northern Plains region, comprised of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Corn acreage increased by 1.9 million acres in the Northern Plains, compared with a 1.1-million increase in the Corn Belt States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio). The big year-to-year increase for the Northern Plains as compared with the Corn Belt has implications for the national average yield as yields in the Northern Plains are about 15 percent less than yields in the Corn Belt.
Almost all corn-producing States show an increase in expected corn acreage, with the exception of a 150,000-acre decline in Texas. Texas farmers indicate cotton will provide a much better return, increasing plantings by 548,000 acres.

Another 4 million acres going to corn this year. What crops are they not planting to grow corn instead?

Kadaka said: Another 4 million acres going to corn this year. What crops are they not planting to grow corn instead?
You could first read your own post for a partial clue:
kadaka: Texas farmers indicate cotton will provide a much better return, increasing plantings by 548,000 acres.
… which directly supports my exact same claim made above.
Or you could read the rest of the crop report which will tell you the same info for other crops.

From 220mph on April 29, 2011 at 4:39 am:

A news re-cap of the 2011 USDA Crop Production Report issued a month or so ago shows the answer you seek:

Would it have killed you to actually provide the dang link?
The numbers match with one link you did provide, the Prospective Plantings report:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/ProsPlan/ProsPlan-03-31-2011.pdf
The wording is similar. Then there’s the 2010 Crop Production Summary:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProdSu/CropProdSu-01-12-2011_new_format.pdf
The “highlight” info is not available like that in the CPS, therefore I’m concluding your “news re-cap” actually concerns the Prospective Plantings report.
For something you have apparently missed, see the April 12, 2011 WASDE report. From pdf pg 12, Feed grain and corn, comes Note 1: “Marketing year beginning September 1 for corn and sorghum; June 1 for barley and oats.” Likewise on pdf pg 17, cotton, comes that Note 1: “Upland and extra-long staple; marketing year beginning August 1.” Likewise for other crops. Marketing years are used, so you have to know exactly what’s referred to when using a single year for the descriptor.
Matching up the WASDE corn figures to those “news re-cap” numbers, the “2010” referred to is the WASDE 2010/11 marketing year, which began on September 1, 2010. Thus the re-cap, and the PP report, are currently referring to crops not even fully planted yet. The 2011 figures from the highlights refer to 2011/12. Except for things like winter wheat that will be planted late in the calendar year, the 2011 figures are of crops that won’t be planted until next year.
Weather happens, the national economy can change, legislation happens, fuel prices can go dramatically higher or lower… Those “2011” figures you’re tossing around should be considered speculative. The 2010/11 WASDE numbers are more firm as they are basically committed to for this year, although recent flooding and otherwise wet conditions are delaying planting in some areas so other crops may be substituted, and some planting may be canceled altogether.
Did you know that cotton is a heavily subsidized US crop, and the US recently lost a WTO fight with Brazil over it? (Reference.) It currently looks good for those Texas farmers to add another 1/2 million acres, but it might not be that good later on.

And then there is that little issue that 2011 projected corn acres it is STILL LESS than the acreage planted in 2007.

Did you bother to wonder why corn acreage was so high in 2007?
See the graph on pdf pg 7 of the PP report. For 2007, corn peaked about as much as soybeans nosedived. See this July 13, 2007 USDA Oil Crops Outlook report:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/OCS//2000s/2007/OCS-07-13-2007.pdf
South America had abundant stocks of soybeans, as was likely predicted earlier. There were expectations of record-high US stocks as well. “An advantageous price ratio for corn encouraged producers throughout the Midwest to favor sowing that crop over soybeans.”
So for that one year, conditions looked good for planting corn instead of soybeans. As seen on the graph, by 2008 the blips were gone.
You’ve been arguing there’s been a decrease in corn acreage based on a one-time record-high blip. As seen on the graph, the overall trend towards more land used for corn continues.

SIMPLE FACT …. CORN is NOT taking acreage away from other food crops – other food crops are increasing acres planted as well.

Of course, when talking about “corn” what’s really meant is biofuels, as in corn used for ethanol.
That breakdown is not in the CPS. I can’t find it in the PP report either. The WASDE report does have an “Ethanol & by-products” listing. 2008/09, 3,709 million bushels. 2009/10, 4,568 million bushels. 2010/11 projection (April), 5000 million bushels.
From 2008/09 to 2009/10, 859 million bushels more. By the 2009/10 yield per harvested acre of 164.7 bushels, that’s a 5.2 million acre increase for “ethanol & by-products,” note that’s “harvested” not “planted.” 2009/10 to 2010/11, 432 million more bushels, 152.8 bushels per harvested acre, another 2.8 million acres. For a starting figure, in 2008/09 there was 24.1 million harvested acres used for “ethanol & by-products.”
So from 2008/09 to 2010/11, an increase of 8 million harvested acres for “ethanol & by-products.” Too bad neither the “re-cap” nor the PP report have that breakdown to work out that acreage from the speculative 2011/12 figures. So instead, I’ll punt.
“Ethanol & by-products” divided by “Use, total” yields 37% for 2010/11, 35% for 2009/2010, and under 31% for 2008/09. The percentage going towards “ethanol & by-products” is increasing, not just the amount.
By the speculative “2011” figure of 4 million more acres going towards corn, using the 2010/11 percentage (no increase) yields a guesstimate of another 1.5 million acres going towards “ethanol & by-products.” So for those three periods, the total rough figure is an additional 9.5 million acres for “ethanol & by-products.” That’s from the 2008/09 starting figure of 24.1 million acres (harvested).
All that additional acreage for “ethanol & by-products,” and you’re trying to argue IT IS NOT taking acreage away from food crops?
Also, currently we have the ubiquitous E10 gasoline, “up to” 10% ethanol. Looking around, I see a push for an E15 standard. And there’s still the increased use of E85 with more “flex fuel” vehicles. There are already government mandates in place for increasing ethanol use, with more mandates for even more use expected.
Even if, as you are prone to argue, the ethanol demand has yet to cause the diverting of resources that could have gone to food production, it will. Count on it.