I forgot the chemistry details, but sure there's no phosphorus in alc.  So it should not get lost.  Where is the stuff going that's left after ethanol production?  Why not simply put it back on the fields?

on how unsustainable our entire global economic system is.

How can we close the nutrient cycles between farm and consumer without massive infrastructure and energy investments assuming we attempt to keep our deeply flawed systems afloat?  

The more we break elemental cycles, the more we undermine ecological services, the more we have to substitute energy hungry technological services.  Ironically, the economy selects for and rewards these substitute technological services while doing little to bolster the ecological services they are intended to replace.  Technocracy runs our lives and leaves only bad choices as we paint our civilization further into a corner.  

The nitrous oxide, 296 times worse than CO2 in GHG effect, that is released by the use of chemical fertilizer?  

And how chemical fertilizer burned the 20 foot deep natural prairie soil down to inert, toxic, dust bowl ground, releasing millenia of stored carbon in the process.

Go with biogas from the waste stream, manure and crop waste, along with clean, easily stored grid backup power it produces organic fertilizer and carbon rich soil amendment.  Bolstering the soil ecosystem that stores the CO2 that photosynthesis removes from the atmosphere.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Plus this great fuel farming boom to supposedly give US independence from foreign oil (15% of gas guzzling at most could come from domestic ethanol)has run out of ammonia converted from natural gas.  So now ammonia tankers are providing it..from russia.  Where they convert their natural gas.

Independence huh?  Have a nice drink of ethanol and dance with that lump of clean coal Barack.  Go ahead.  You support them both.  Hehey.

It's not funny, someone ought to sit our next prez down and talk this all over with him, before he makes too many promises that no one should keep.  To coal, nuke, and ethanol lobbies.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The more we break elemental cycles, the more we undermine ecological services, the more we have to substitute energy hungry technological services.  Ironically, the economy selects for and rewards these substitute technological services while doing little to bolster the ecological services they are intended to replace.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

There are proposals to locate cattle feedlots close to ethanol plants to reduce the transportation and energy costs of moving the dried distillers grains to the feedlots.  Some of the phosphorus in cattle manure could be returned to the land to grow more corn.  Much of the phosphorus would be consumed by humans and processed in rendering plants so who knows where all that ends up ...

But, we need to remind ourselves that feeding grains to cattle is one of the least efficient  energy conversions we can make in the food chain and one of the costliest in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.  Without citing the source, I read in the press recently that if US consumers would reduce our consumption of meat by just 20% it would be equivalent to all of us switching from sedans like the Camry to the Prius.  That is significant, especially considering that the average consumer of meats in the US eats far more than is needed to satisfy dietary requirements. Ironically, putting more corn ethanol in our cars may force this change among many as meat prices escalate. Somebody will probably figure out some way of counting this as an offset and profiting from it.

Fish is much much less resources than Beef.

Most people don't know that coal companies use thousands of tons of weapons grade fertilizer and diesel fuel to blast the mountains off in Kentucky and West Virginia. Much cheaper than dynamite. The same type of explosion that was used when they blew up the federal building in Oklahoma only on a massive scale. I have seen blast rock destroy houses from 1/2 mile away. The explosions are so large it cracks the strata and causes well to go dry and in some cases has cracked the strata and allowed natural gas to seep into wells.

The main problem is damage to structures due to blasting. The regulations are written so lose you can deflect the ground in a sideways motion up to 1/2 half an inch and still be within the federal guidelines.

The whold structure shakes when they blast close and it feels like a small earthquake. Pictures fall from the wall or dishes. Nerve racking and dusty, sometimes clouds of dust raise up from the explosion. Yes they blast right in communities, I live in a hollow 3 miles long and they are going right up the valley following the coal seam.

So the fuel and fertilizer consumed in strip mining is another factor to consider aside from MTR and Co2 emmisions.

Back on topic I feel the sugar cane used in South America is a better plant for ethanol. It has 7 times the btu of corn and is more comparable to petrol. The kind of sugar cane they grow will grow up to the midpoint of the country if not farther.

The use of corn a food and cattle feed staple has caused the cost of these products to offset any future savings derived from alcohol fuel. At this point there is none, the energy it takes to make a gallon of fuel offsets the savings and it gets worse when you factor in how much more corn fuel it takes to equate to a gallon of gas. You do not get the same milage with corn fuel. One of the countries in South America went to sugar cane fuel in 73 and they are energy independent right now.

I know with our current appetite for fuel we can not expect to reach that goal with sugar cane but it still seems a more logical fuel sorce than corn. We have a lot of southern states we need to wean of growing tobacco so cane would make a good replacement cash crop.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.