Letter to the Editor
Watts Up With That?
23rd July 2012
Nothing illustrates the anti-human ethos of the Greens better than their support for “biofuels”.
That trendy name cannot hide the fact that encouraging and mandating the burning of food for motor fuel creates nothing but negatives for the environment and for human welfare, but will have no effect on climate.
The biofuel scheme relies on taxpayer subsidies and legislated market-sharing. It wastes land, fuel, fertiliser, water and financial resources to produce ethanol from sterile monocultures of corn, soya beans, palm oil and sugar cane. Most of the land used was cultivation that once produced food. Some is stolen from peasant landowners or obtained by ploughing natural grasslands or clearing virgin forests. The distilling process produces good alcohol but an inferior motor spirit that can damage some engines and has only 70% of the energy of petrol and diesel.
The biofuel schemes have already inflated world food prices. Shortages and famines will increase. This food-burning policy is taking us back to the hungry years before tractors, harvesters, trucks and diesel fuel when teams of draft horses, working bullocks, stock horses and farm labourers consumed 80% of farm output. Some may like to return to those bucolic days, but then most city populations would not find food on their supermarket shelves. In trendy green jargon, big cities would be “unsustainable”.
Here is a new slogan which is kind to humans AND the environment:
“Don’t Burn Food for Fuel”.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
I am happy for my email address to be published.
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After last year’s summer (here in Tejas) I’m considering rocks (think: “Zero-scape”) … sorry about the other part, it’s just the prosecutor/lawyer part of me seeping out …
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philincalifornia,
You keep posting that link, but it does nothing to address my comment. I had simply questioned the assertion that turf grass was the largest U.S. crop, as Guy specifically stated. That claim seemed preposterous to me, and I have since shown that turf grass is not even close to being the largest U.S. crop.
For comparison, I asked for the corn crop, or the wheat crop. Instead, I am given the corn ethanol crop numbers.
Face it, there is no good argument for converting a large part of the U.S. food crop into fuel, particularly when the energy needed to do so roughly equals the bio-energy produced. The only profit comes from subsidies and now the mandate. That is the kind of nonsense that results when the government interferes with the agricultural markets. Free markets should determine what is needed, not government bureaucrats.
The food to fuel economy is a result of legislation to incorporate “bio” into fuels for general transport.
The legislation creates the demand which drives up the price that buyers will pay to get stock for filling the legislated requirements. The market price for the commodity rises and all processors of the food stock compete in the same market for stock produced by farmers trying to earn as much as they can from what they produce.
As cars become “eaters”, the “population” of food consumers rises sharply, making for a much larger market; where the voracious “eaters” have to pay whatever it takes to get the raw food; financed out of the pockets of the “wealthy” car-owning populations which form a minority of the world’s human population. Food prices increase for all in the free, global market of commodity foods. Poor farmers justifiably change to monocultures the most-profitable crops, making them more vulnerable to crop failures and unable to provide necessarily diverse nutrition.
The legislated requirement for “bio” in the fuels we use for transport therefore increases the inequity in the market, making food less affordable for many people. It encourages monocultures of cropping and puts pressure on larger areas to be subjected to agriculture; not for food, but for fuel crops.
If the legislated requirement disappears, then it’s now plausible that that would cause enormous economic and societal damage in the agricultural regions of production that depend on a high price. They can’t stop producing overnight, so the commodity price is likely to “collapse” under a surplus of stock.
Fuel producers may well take advantage of that falling price as they already have the facilities to utilise the raw material. The lower price could carry forward into the price on the fuel bowser, supporting the blending of fuel from the cheapest-available stock; be it mineral or vegetable. It is quite likely that the market will react to dampen the “collapse” in prices over several years throughout which operators can exploit the potential of their existing industrial investment; following an initial “shock”.
The core “evil” of legislation has to be undone. Quickly.
@rgbatduke,
As usual a great read! One thing you got wrong was this:
“Anything but free market prevention of starvation puts you right back into the government intervention seat. ”
The ethanol in our gasoline is an example of a government that already is in the “Intervention Seat”, interfering with free markets. If ethanol free gasoline were on sale side by side with gasohol the market could operate properly. My expectation is that the majority would reject gasohol absent the government subsidies but the market should be given the opportunity to sort winners from losers. That is not going to happen as long as ADM (Archer, Daniels, Midland) and other large agri-businesses pour money into the political machine.
A. Scott says:
July 22, 2012 at 3:51 pm
I would also add to the above – the US Corn crop fulfilled ALL U.S. animal feed demand as well. Including providing Distillers Dried Grain Solids which replace more than 1/3 of the corn used for ethanol with a higher quality animal feed….
__________________________________
I for one am well aware of that. (I feed pelleted feed with Distillers) However the cost of all feed has sky rocketed since 2008. Since 1990 my costs have quadrupled and since 2008 they doubled almost overnight. Unfortunately I think they are about to skyrocket again this winter.
The increase in the US corn crop has another problem and that is corn is very hard on the land. It really sucks it dry of nutrients. Today I noticed something else. The corn on my road is planted much much closer together that it was traditionally. This photo shows old vs new link
Another complication is China has just within the past couple of years become a big buyer of US corn too. link
Smokey says:
July 22, 2012 at 8:26 pm
philincalifornia,
You keep posting that link, but it does nothing to address my comment. I had simply questioned the assertion that turf grass was the largest U.S. crop, as Guy specifically stated.
——————–
Our posts crossed.
As I said, I think that Guy was guilty of perhaps calling turf a crop and not calling it a “crop”. My own sarcasm on this re. lawns was also misinterpreted ….. but I’ll let Guy answer for himself if he comes back.
The link was just to the numbers on Slide 7, but I’m sure you can also see the significance of the concept of sugar reserves, which Richard Hamilton came up with. I think this is an economically sound concept, and the independent capitalist community is funding such projects, and some better ones coming down the pike.
If all was break even (let’s bury the sunk costs, because either way, that’s how it is today), wouldn’t you rather the money stay in Iowa and Nebraska et al. than go where it currently goes …… ?
_Jim says:
July 22, 2012 at 5:13 pm
…But Ray says ALL this apply to the petroleum industry as well, and it does not …
What do you need Ray, cites of every P.L. (Public Law) and ‘statute’ passed by the US congress in order to ‘believe’ differently that ethanol IS mandated for use, IS subsidized and the producers ARE given specific tax breaks in their business of ethanol production?
_______________________
I will help you with that one _jim
Here is a link to tickle the funny bone if you have a really warped sense of humor. EPA fines oil refiners for failing to use nonexistent biofuel
And of course we the consumers end up footing the entire bill as usual.
philincalifornia,
Yes, of course I would prefer that the money stays in the country. We’re on the same page there.
Smokey says:
July 22, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Jim,
I’ll add to your critiques:
A. Scott’s link says:…..
And philincalifornia’s link states:
Total acres of turf in the U.S. is estimated to be 46.5 million acres.
Again, that is not the total U.S. “crop”. That refers to the total acres of all turf grass in the U.S…..
_______________________________
And all that nice grass is acting as a filter strip cleaning our water supply, building up our top soil, as well as gulping down CO2 and producing O2. This post indicates it helps clean the air of pollutants in cities.
Smokey, because everyone here’s an expert but, actually not answering your questions, I’ll try.
planted acres for 2011/2012 in millions of acres…..Corn–91.9, Soybeans–75, Wheat–54.4. Nothing else comes anywhere close. No word from the USDA about the sophist argument re. turf.
Start here for fun with U.S. crops….. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops.aspx
Well, there’s much more to say, but it’s all been said already. The reality rejection of the higher prices, the total failure to address our energy needs or decoupling from oil is something I don’t usually see here. Uncle Sugar sure knows how to manipulate just about anyone. Welfare, it’s for everyone today!
James Sexton,
You made it look so easy!☺ What’s your secret?
Hey, I know your secret: you answered the actual question, not some other strawman question.
Thanks.
It should also be pointed out that about 2002/2003 that Corn, Wheat, and Soybean were much more closer in terms of acreage planted…… Wheat was in the mid 60s, while corn and soybean were in the 70s of millions of acres planted. So, as we can see, wheat and the other crops weren’t planted and was replaced by corn to pour down our gas tanks.
philincalifornia,
The document you link overestimate by an order of magnitude the barrels of petroleum that an acre of corn can produce over a 21 year contract. Corn is very depleting of the soil so it must be grown in an annual rotation to be an ongoing operation, so at most you will see 10.5 years of corn on a given acre and realistically less due to rotation. Presently about 2.8 gallons of ethanol is produced from a bushel of corn. Optimistically 175 bushels per acre is an average expectation going forward so an acre can produce 490 gallons of ethanol divided by 42 gallons per barrel equals 11.67 barrels times 10.5 corn plantings over a 21 year contract equals 122.5 barrels of fuel per acre from a 21 year contract, far less than the 1000 barrels stated in your link. Then when you subtract the fuel used for planting, harvesting and soil preparation there is some reduction in efficiency, After harvest the corn usually need to be dried for storage using large quantities of petroleum gas,and processing uses another large quantity of petroleum fuel for the distillation process. Plus there is a few percent of loss in storage.
The point is the numbers in your link are wildly optimistic as presented.
Smokey says:
July 22, 2012 at 9:27 pm
James Sexton,
You made it look so easy!☺ What’s your secret?
==========================================
Lol, yeh, it’s a neat trick I learned some while back. 🙂
Pot is hemp. Cannabis is hemp. There are not different.
Kannabis –> Hannapum –> Hanneap –> Hemp
Hemp: Origin: before 1000; Middle English; Old English henep, hænep; cognate with German Hanf, Greek kánnabis
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hemp
Canvas is also a mutant form of the word cannabis:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canvas
The word “assassin” is also a hemp derivative…!
The U.S. Department of Agriculture disagrees:
So does the U.S Department of Health and Human Services:
http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=us+patent+6630507
Strongest natural fiber on Earth, one of the fastest growing plants on Earth, the fabric of human life for millenia – used for food, clothing and medicine — outlawed only to protect corporate interests. What a shame.
I have cited multiple studies and reports – most peer reviewed – from individual scientists to governmental agencies. I provided direct links to the data to support my comments.
You and several other simply reply with adhominem attack asserting your positions – yet strangely when pressed you never seem to want to support them.
Please prove your claims. We expect the AGW proponents to provide the information and data for their claims – we should expect the same from people here. Please present the studies, and data, in whatever form, that you allege supports your claims.
philincalifornia says | July 22, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Total turf in the USA 46 million acres vs. 35 million acres for corn ethanol. [ … ]
You fricking golfers, soccer players and lawn lovers. Cut it out immediately would ya. Don’t you know you’re killing children in third world countries with your vile habits ??
—————
To the contrary Phil, that turf plays a very important part in cleaning hydro-carbons out of run-off water before it gets into the waterways. In fact, sustainable design for new housing estates recommends grass filled drainage swales at the roadside over the conventional underground piping of stormwater.
Let me add the benefits of compost made from grass cuttings … also reunites ‘carbon’ with vegetation and therefore must be good for the environment. 🙂
I answered your question long ago. I gave you the accurate data. You simply refused to acknowledge it. Turf is NOT the largest crop – as I pointed out it is behind, at minimum, corn, wheat and soybeans. Total turf acres are larger than corn acres used for ethanol – which it appears was the intended point albeit not what he said.
Viv Forbes says:
July 22, 2012 at 2:25 pm
“I don’t care who makes ethanol from what, as long as it does not rely on legislated markets, subsidies, price controls, tax breaks or deceptive or coercive marketing. Get government out of the equation and then we will see what works.”
Well said!
The opposite is Marxism.
http://i45.tinypic.com/35l6rf7.jpg
There are a few misconceptions here particularly concerning wheat. China and India are the world’s biggest wheat producers by a long way. Canada+Australia, the EU and the FSU all export roughly the same amount of wheat as the USA.
Its not just drought in the USA that is sending wheat prices higher. Persistent heavy rains in western Europe, drought in the FSU, cold and frosts in Australia and misguided socialist policies in Argentina are all contributing.
rgbatduke says:
July 22, 2012 at 1:49 pm
+1
To illustrate the urgency of changes to biofuel policies:
* IFPRI research indicates that 30 percent of the increase in food prices in 2000–2007 was the result of grain-based biofuel production alone and that biofuel production leads to higher levels of undernourishment in low-income countries. Thus, the environmental and social implications of switching to biological alternatives of nonrenewable fuel sources, and the policies that promote their sustainable use, need to be better understood before they are adopted.
(http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/bp21.pdf )
* The global price of maize has more than doubled between June 2010 and mid April 2011, while that of wheat has almost doubled In many developing countries, including in East Asia, domestic food prices have increased sharply as shown in the charts below, driving up food inflation. Food inflation rose by 12 per cent in China and 14 per cent in Indonesia between March 2010 and March 2011. The current global food price situation is again driven by some of the same interconnected factors that led to the 2007-08 food crisis. In particular, expanding bio-fuel production, rising oil prices, U.S. dollar depreciation, export restrictions, and panic purchases are putting upward pressure on food prices. (http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/05/01/urgent-actions-needed-to-prevent-recurring-food-crises/ )
Which initiatives and reforms should be performed?
1. The existing bio-fuel subsidies should be reduced so as to minimize the food-fuel competition, in particular when the “benefits” of the use of biofuels are more and more questioned.
2. Oxfam: The EU must tackle increasing food insecurity across the developing world. Counter-productive EU biofuels mandates are diverting food from the stomachs of the hungry to the fuel pumps of the wealthy. The demand for biofuels is driving up food prices and encouraging land deals which deprive communities of vital land and water. (http://oxfameu.blogactiv.eu/2012/07/03/the-cypriot-eu-presidency-kicks-off-will-it-live-up-to-its-global-duties/ ) So, EU biofuels mandates should be ended immediately.
3. In the USA, 35% of US maize crop was used to produce ethanol!! Watkins believes that the most significant measure for combating the hunger crisis is to make changes to biofuel policies. ActionAid USA found that augmented corn production in the U.S. for biofuel led to a rapid increase in food import prices in Mexico.
“Between 2005 and 2011, the tortilla prices rose by nearly 70 percent,” said Watkins. “Since 2005, the increase in ethanol fuel usage in the U.S. has resulted in up to $500 million in corn price rises in Mexico each year.”
Watkins pointed out that already last year, experts advised the G20 to abolish biofuel subsidies in order to stabilize food prices – without success. (http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16031169,00.html ) This practice is ethically not endurable.
Recent study: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2011 Global Food Policy Report (http://www.ifpri.org/gfpr/2011 )
But talk about legalising hemp for fuel and other industrial needs and watch the eyes cloud over and the minds close … ?
Hemp for victory!
[Start Quote]
Gary Hladik says:
July 22, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Joe Guerk says (July 22, 2012 at 12:41 pm): “No, I don’t care about starving Biafrans or whatever the latest tear-jerking famine story is.”
Fair enough. Do you care about your wallet?
[End Quote]
Yes, but unless the US government is insane, it will not allow so much wheat/corn/soybeans to be exported that prices will become high enough in the US that Americans will suffer financially in order to buy food.