Print 66 comment(s) - last by corduroygt.. on Feb 11 at 3:10 PM

  (Source: Center for Environment and Commerce)
Vote is cheered by environmentalists, jeered by corn coalition


I. Corn Ethanol is Rolled Back




Corn ethanol handouts



II. House Vote Derails E15



Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) [contact]

[source -- votes]


III. Passage Earns Praise, Condemnation

Rep. Sensenbrenner cheers the passage, stating:






Ethanol jobs


Sources: U.S. House, EPA, Growth Energy

Comments     Threshold


RE: **$# Corn
By JediJeb on 2/8/2012 7:16:39 PM , Rating: 2
We only have so much farmland, and if you could grow ethanol corn for bigger money then why bother with another food crop? So is our plight.

So farmers should not worry about making money and only worry about being slaves to the rest of the population by growing cheap products to keep the food prices down in the stores?

Until 2008 when corn prices spiked, the average price of corn had remained relatively the same since the early 1970s, yet the price of fuel, equipment, land and every other thing needed to farm increased several fold. If you really look around there are many farms that have been sold and turned into housing development because the farmers just couldn't make money any longer. It used to be if you had 100 acres you could support a family just from farming(my family did it in the early 70s) but now unless you have several thousand acres, a farmer has to also have some other type of job just to afford to run the farm.

All that aside though, for the last 40 years most of the corn grown would fall into the "ethanol corn" category, not the "food on the shelf" category. There may have been a slight shift between growing soy beans to corn but since the prices of both are high right now it is almost a push, and very little land has been switched from growing "another food crop" to growing corn, since most farmers that grow food crops are not equipped to grow corn on a large scale and vice versa. Also depending on weather large shifts between corn and soybeans can occur. Just like last year around here with all the early rain and flooding, many farmers could not plant until late in the season so what would have normally been corn fields had mostly soy beans growing in them.

The price increase in food is just the markets using ethanol production as an excuse to raise prices. Same happened several years ago with milk prices when the milk sellers started getting on the local news telling everyone that due to increasing corn prices the farmers were charging more for milk. What they didn't tell the public was that the bulk price for milk was fixed and the farmers were absorbing the increased cost of the feed while the milk plants were charging more to the stores using the excuse their raw product was costing them more even when it wasn't. Just like the day crude oil prices jump gasoline prices jump the same day, yet when oil prices fall, it takes a long time for gasoline prices to come back down. It is more of an excuse than a cause and effect.

As for the worry about aluminum heads on engines, do the flex fuel vehicles use only cast iron heads or do they also use aluminum? I haven't worked on one of those yet but since they are running E85 what do they use to avoid the problems?

