In a "man bites dog" moment, Lester Brown gets something right:

Just a single fill of ethanol for a four-wheel drive SUV, says Brown, uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year. This year the amount of US corn going to make the fuel will equal what it sells abroad; traditionally its exports have helped feed 100 - mostly poor - countries.

From next year, the amount used to run American cars will exceed exports, and soon it is likely to reduce what is available to help feed poor people overseas. The number of ethanol plants built or planned in the corn-belt state of Iowa will use virtually all the state's crop.

This will not only cut food supplies, but drive up the process of grain, making hungry people compete with the owners of gas-guzzlers. Already spending 70 per cent of their meagre incomes on food, they simply cannot afford to do so.

Time to stop this latest nuttiness in farm subsidies.

Well, aren't those countries refusing to import genetically modified corn already? Who cares about genetics if you're making ethanol out of it?

I agree that the ethanol is foolishness, but what are you going to do?

On the flip side, not having the US dump subsidized food into their economies is probably great for farmers in those countries, many of whom are the "poor people overseas."

The article also assumes a finite amount of food can be grown. If ethanol were to pick up you would find more crops turning over to producing corn or whatever. You'd find fields that couldn't profitably grow corn suddenly being tilled and you'd find african nations suddenly had an economic insentive to grow more food as they could sell it into the ethanol market instead of competing with nearly free US products being dumped into their countries.

There are many reasons to harp on Ethanol but this doesn't seem like a very good one to me and Farm subsidies are an abomination with or without ethanol in the picture.

So if we burn gasoline we're EVIL and SELFISH, and adding to the woes of the world. Conversely if we burn ethanol, made from corn we grow, we're EVIL and SELFISH, and adding to the woes of the world. Why is it that the United States is always to blame for hungry people in countries where the ruling class controls and uses 90% of the GDP?

Is anyone ever going to blame the rats that run these countries into the ground, starve their own people and steal the food we do send?

Corn-based ethanol is silly and is a net energy-loser, even without the issue of competing with food.

Cellulosic-based ethanol, on the other hand, would use non-food biomass such as pine trees. (We have a LOT of pine trees in Georgia.) Feedstock would be grown on land that is currently not used for crops, and it appears to be a significant net energy producer, even after you allocate energy inputs for cultivation, fermentation, transportation, storage, etc.

If someone is pushing corn-based ethanol, they are trying to hijack the "green" bandwagon into economically untenable directions.

Genetic modified hemp (first eliminate the THC) is a good bio-fuel crop. Grow the stuff everywhere, like kudzu.

= = =

For a Mars colony greenhouse, would you want your hemp with (or without) a THC gene?

Why eliminate the THC? The trace amount in hemp might make the exhaust curtail road rage. :)

Funny,

Genetically THCless Hemp was discussed at dinner tonight.

Might want to cahnge the hue of the leaves to make it harder to hide real MaryJane inside the field.

Or, to make it even easier to hide, some enterprising pothead should engineer THC-saturated lawn grass.

Wait.

Enterprising pothead.

Nevermind.

Actually,

We speculated about THC enhanced Tobbaco.

The neat thing about hemp, setting aside the research suppressed by the DEA which showed that THC shrinks brain tumors, is that you can simultaneously harvest the seeds for an oil which makes excellent biodiesel with more energy yield per acre than corn ethanol (and feed the pressed seeds to the hogs) and make more paper per acre from the stalks than from pine while using less of the nasty chemicals paper mills spew.

As for ethanol-added gasoline, the latest news is that it is damaging a lot of boats.

Anyone hear about the big oil field that was uncovered in the Gulf? Couple more finds like that and we can tell the Mid East to go stuff it.

Ah, Josh the kill-joy brings us from weed to the Middle East.

You need to take a puff from the pipe and mellow-out, man.

"We speculated about THC enhanced Tobbaco."

Marijuacco? Tobbijuana? Mobbana? Tojuanaco?

Corn-based ethanol is silly and is a net energy-loser, even without the issue of competing with food.

It's not a net energy loser, unless you're including the sunlight (in which case the point is trivial and uninteresting). Moreover, the fossil energy input is mostly natural gas and coal. Think of it as solar-assisted synfuel. The fossil energy/ethanol energy ratio has also continued to steadily improve as the processes are further optimized (for example, feed the wet distillers grain to co-located cows instead of drying it for shipment elsewhere.) The critics tended to cherry pick old, inefficient (and in one case, I believe erroneous) numbers to make their points.

Whether ethanol is the best substitute for gasoline is an open question, but inaccurate criticisms don't help your case.

The process of making alcohol from grain does not use up all the food value of the grain, just much of the carbohydrates. What is left is much higher in protein than corn and a higher quality protein. This resultant mash makes an excellent feed for cattle and other animals. You are not really reducing the amount of food as much as you are changing the type.