Comments DBLJ has made

Lee Lynd

I have had the pleasure of hearing Lee speak on a couple of occasions and it is always inspirational.  

the argument made by Harkin is bogus, while it does take some time (approximatley 2-3 years) for perennial plants to come into full production; corn stover, and expiring CRP acres are readily available to fill in the gap TEMPORARILY (for stover)

The enzyme approach (sugar platform) is always touted as the way to proceed for cellulosic ethanol, and agian in this article it is protrayed as a "bonus" but I am not as convinced.  

The feeling I get is that the companies that are doing the R & D of anzymes to break down the cellulosic material are in some way connected to the seed industry so that they can also design crops that work particularly well with thier enzyme thus having 2 revenue streams: selling enzymes to the processing facility and selling seeds to the farmers.  Ideally the process would be feedstock neutral.

At any rate we NEED cellulosic fuels; for many reasons but none as importnat as the potential benefits that could be seen in the agricultural industry.On A nice newsweekly cover story on ethanol posted 2 years, 9 months ago 5 Responses

My 2 cents

Thank you Julia, it is nice to see another smart Iowa Stater that has not been indoctrinated by the "industrial farming lobby" that basically built ISU.....

On to more pressing issues.  Whatever the reasons behind the investment Mr. Kholsa has put into cellulosic ethanol I commend him for doing so.  However I am a little concerned with some of the numbers given

<blockqoute> $40 per ton biomass is very feasible even at single digit yields in acres per ton of miscanthus or switchgrass (or hopefully diverse grass cocktails) without any significant irrigation or fertilizer. And corn farmers will make more money using these grasses if they can get about $200 per acre. And so far little genetic engineering has been applied to these crops because there hasn't been much reason to do it. In fact, I have seen private companies in with yields north of 20 dry tons per acre using only traditional plant breeding techniques. I personally don't have a problem with genetic engineering but we don't need it to achieve these yields. I suspect 6-8 tons per acre will make cellulosic ethanol competitive even if oil prices decline, because of the much lower level of farm inputs required compared to corn/soy. </blockqoute>

This simply is not my experience.  I have worked for several years on finding new markets for prairie grasses and other perennial crops and the largest bottleneck we come to is that boimass is by its very nature dispersed, requiring large amounts of energy to accomplish the tasks of harvesting, transporting, processing, etc.   and for what?..... to make fuel.  The price the energy facility wants to pay to the farmer does not come close to what he/she needs to compare economically to corn/soybeans. As to the figure of $200 per acre return with perennial grasses..... consider cash rent in my neck of the woods is $150-$190 acre I know of one large farmer that just paid $220 per acre, up front, to rent some farm ground.  Why has the rent price for good farmland gone up so much in the last 5-6 years?  In part because of the subsidies paid to corn/soybean growers.  it is vicious cycle.        

    On Venture capitalist says cellulosic rules posted 2 years, 10 months ago 10 Responses

couple of more things

Oh did I mention that by transitioning to more perennials on the landscape it reduces the trips across the field thus burning less fuel.  It also reduces tillage by about 75% which is a contributor to global warming, and could greatly improve the financial outlook for our family farmers.   On Let's wonk it out posted 2 years, 10 months ago 28 Responses

My 2 cents

Friedman is a joke, ask David Sirota.

Coal is also a joke, thank you David Roberts for your article over @ Tom Paine and highlighting the fact:  Even if "clean coal" technology were implemented via sequestration, gasification, etc.  The basic tenet of MINING coal is very destructive.  The thing I find so frustrating (from the agricultural point of view) is that coal is nothing more than biomass from thousands of years ago.  So why not use dedicated energy crops to provide the biomass from our marginal agricultural lands to provide the same things, i.e. combined heat and power, liqued fuels, chemicals, etc?

Even the argument I have heard from some that coal is plentiful and cheap seams misguided.  Were coal to liqued technology be implemented on a large scale what would keep ligued fuels from coal cheaper than liqued fuels from a barrel of oil.  I suspect the price of coal across the board would be pegged to a barrel of oil in some way.  But then again perhaps I am gettign off track a little, I mean coal is still a FOSSIL FUEL.  

   On Tom Friedman, erstwhile Great Green Hope posted 2 years, 10 months ago 21 Responses

Food vs. Fuel

A very smart friend of mine says this about the food vs. fuel debate: "it is not a debate really, when one thinks about it food is merely a specialized form of fuel, and the interesting thing to think about is what happens when that day comes where an individual has to decide between the $8.00 hamburger and driving his/her SUV?  Will they finally understand that the only way to survive is to change the way we live"

Meat prices WILL be higher, but is that a bad thing?  Meat consumption is at it's highest level in human history, and along with it increased health problems.  Besides the leftovers from the ethanol process have to be used in some form so feeding it to animals is seen as not having as big an impact as some would think.  

However, I believe that even the meat industry is vastly niave about DDG's (the by-product) being a cheap feed source for animals.  You will soon see more and more ethanol plants using DDG's as a fuel source for running the plant replacing natural gas.

The real debate needs to be focused on the production agriculture vs. the environment.  More corn-on-corn WILL be planted and that means increased tillage, increased inputs i.e. fertilizer, pesticedes, herbicides, etc.

So what is the solution?  I'm not that foolish to think their is but on solution but I will say that we need more 3rd crops!!!On More from Lester Brown on ethanol and food costs posted 2 years, 11 months ago 10 Responses