In article <1b056e23-af54-4d01-b259-
9176b44eff9e@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, calderhome@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(calderhome@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
) says...
> The biofuel rats must be gotten rid of; the con men selling the idea
> that we should sacrifice our family's food supply in order to make a
> paltry amount of fuel. Even if the USA dedicated 100% of our corn and
> soybean production to biofuels, we would only satisfy 12% of gasoline
> demand and 6% of diesel demand. "The biofuel potential of the entire
> human food supply is quite a small amount of energy compared to the
> global oil supply - somewhere between 15 to 20% on a volumetric basis,
> so 10 to 15% on an energy basis." - Quote from Stuart Staniford in
> Fermenting the Food Supply [ http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431]
Get used to paying more for food. The human race is simply running out
of food. The population is increasing, while arable land is vani****ng.
We are already far past the long term carrying capacity of the planet.
Food and fuel are just two of the resources that will become steadily
more expensive and hard to obtain.
Work continues on bioengineering yeasts that will produce ethanol from
cellulose. Concurrently, work is under way engineering trees that
produce more cellulose and less lignin. When cellulosic ethanol becomes
practical, the feed stock for ethanol production will expand by an order
of magnitude.
Meanwhile, your figures for corn demand are way out of whack. At
current growth rates, ethanol production is projected to consume 31% of
US production in 2014-2016. Ethanol production used 14% of US corn in
2005-2006. This is from USDA figures at
>
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/May07SpecialIssue/Features/Ethanol.htm
Rising domestic prices for food in the USA have been largely offset by
the dropping dollar, so only US consumers have been hit with food
inflation. A few countries, like Mexico, have pegged their currency to
the dollar at a fixed exchange rate, so they are feeling the pain.
Meanwhile, the US government has balanced inflation on the backs of
farmers for 30 years. Food production grew so unprofitable that farmers
searched for, and found, alternative markets for their produce as
industrial feed stock. The general public now finds itself faced with
paying for corn at both the gas pump and the supermarket. Food prices
in the US can be expected to double or triple in the next few years.
The effect will be primarily domestic, as the continued slide in the
value of the dollar will discount food ex****ts to the rest of the world.
On the down side, sooner or later the drought in Australia will break.
Australian production has been off the market for two years now, which
has created major dislocations in the world food market.
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