But ...

Growing our way out of oil addiction is not a viable solution despite what many would want to believe (even with a new article in Business week). Clever.

Needs water ...(or grow alot of cellulosic alternative sources of ethanol from "somewhere")

..maybe biomass ideas like the DoE is investigating that can be scaled up hopefully?? OK ..send $$$ ..or raise taxes.

Otherwise here's tomorrows headlines (again) in ethanol growing states in the midwest:
Ethanol Takes lots of Water to Grow Corn

Nothing is for free. Grow food with water, grow your fuel, or help farmers with subsidies. Take your pick.

Strange world we all live in huh?

-JChan

I would encourage gristmill readers to skim the comments on the Business Week article. They are very revealing of the enormous chasm, and the acrimony, that is growing between the biofuel boosters and the biofuel skeptics.

By the way, Joachim Braun, head of the prestigious International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), has produced an excellent summary analysis (PDF warning) on this issue. See, in particular, slide 14. Braun sums up the causes of imbalances and volatility in the world food equation as follows (in reverse order of importance)Income growth and demandBiofuels (energy price)Underinvestment in agricultural productivity and technologyTrade policy and low stocksProduction shocks (emerging climate change)High input and transport costs (energy price)Population growth

In short, Braun places biofuels as the second-most important factor, and high input and transport costs near the bottom. The latter may be important for food prices overall in North America, but they are much less important for the world as a whole -- especially the much poorer folks living in places like sub-Saharan Africa or Haiti.

These are only my personal opinions.

Total U.S. Corn Production:

~10% used for direct human consumption (sweet corn)

~90% used for livestock feed (field corn)

"We grow animal feed, not human food in the United States," [Dr Bruce] Dale said. "We could feed the country's population with 25 million acres of cropland, and we currently have 500 million acres. Most of our agricultural land is being used to grow animal feed." (1)

"Ethanol production has been linked to a rise in the price of everything from tortillas to gummi bears. Unfortunately, this argument is very nearly ridiculous. The fact is that very little U.S. corn (about 10 percent) is fed directly to people; most of it is fed to animals." -- Dr Bruce Dale, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Michigan State University (2)

* Corn kernel ethanol is made from field corn, i.e. livestock feed. *

The causes of food shortages are varied and complex, but if Americans simply ate less food, there would be more for the rest of world. By some estimates, the average American consumes about 4,000 calories per day; that's twice what they need. For anyone who's done any international traveling, Americans in general are the fattest people on the planet. They don't even have any close competition. Those 2,000 fewer calories would do most Americans some good and would be available for those who truly need the food. (3)

Anyone who is truly worried about a shortage of grain in the USA and objects to ethanol production for that reason is also obliged to stop or dramatically reduce his or her consumption of animal flesh and other animal products. It takes 8 units of grain to produce 1 unit of beef. However, for anyone who is genuinely lacking corn in his or her diet, that problem can be easily addressed -- there's plenty of field corn available. It's being fed to livestock. It's not as tasty or as palatable as sweet corn, but it's perfectly edible. (4)

All that being said, the fuel of today and the future is cellulosic ethanol (CE) of course. As most everyone already knows, CE is produced from non-edible biomass such as agricultural and forestry waste (corn stalks, corn cobs, wheat straw, bark and wood chips, etc.) and native, non-edible species that will grow on marginal and poor soil in areas of the United States that have never been agriculturally productive. (5), (6)

The rarely mentioned fact is the extraordinarily inefficient production of animal flesh and animal products consumes a far larger percentage of the domestic corn crop than does the production of ethanol.

Refs:

(1) http://www.physorg.com/news94224070.html (1)

(2)  http://www.nj.com/opinion/times/editorials/index.ssf?/bas ...
0/120737075044810.xml&coll=5 (2)

CV and Contact Page for Dr Bruce Dale:

http://www.chems.msu.edu/php/faculty.php?user=bdale

(3) http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080430/sc_livescien ...

(4) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-othe ... (4)

(5) http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

(6) http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/539563/

We grow animal feed, not human food in the United States

That's ridiculous. Grain fed to livestock is grain fed to people. Cows, pigs, and chickens process raw grain into food humans find more palatable to eat than raw grain, things like meat, eggs, and dairy.

The causes of food shortages are varied and complex, but if Americans simply ate less food, there would be more for the rest of world

Which would be easier to do, get Americans to eat less or drop the subsidies for ethanol? Wheat and soy were also displaced by corn and canola crops. Soy and canola oil also went into gas tanks.

Anyone who is truly worried about a shortage of grain in the USA and objects to ethanol production for that reason is also obliged to stop or dramatically reduce his or her consumption of animal flesh and other animal products

Which would be easier to do, get Americans to go vegan or drop subsidies for ethanol? People are "free" to eat whatever they want. Mandates "force" consumers to burn ethanol. Food has a higher moral imperative than fuel for cars.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Biodiversivist wrote: Grain fed to livestock is grain fed to people.

Some of the potential-energy in the grain fed to livestock is turned into heat and methane, rather than into food. Therefore, not all of the grain fed to livestock is grain fed to people.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_rate

In animal husbandry, feed conversion ratio (FCR), feed conversion rate, or feed conversion efficiency (FCE), is a measure of an animal's efficiency in converting feed mass into increased body mass.

Specifically FCR is the mass of the food eaten divided by the body mass gain, all over a specified period of time. FCR is dimensionless, i.e. there are no measurement units associated with FCR.

Animals that have a low FCR are considered efficient users of feed. Poultry usually can convert 2-3 kg of feed into 1 kg of live weight, while sheep and cattle need more than 8 kg of feed to put on 1 kg of live weight. The U.S. pork industry claims to have an FCR of 3.4-3.6.