Grist | Topics | 6 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 6 of 6
Headline	Author	Published	Section
USDA food-safety czar: Ethanol waste causes tainted beef -- and that's okay Let cows eat vaccines along with distillers grains	Tom Philpott	28 Jan 2008	Gristmill
In December, a study came out suggesting a link between distillers grains -- a waste product of the corn-ethanol process -- and a spike in cases of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli 0157 virus. You see, the government-mandated ethanol boom has dramatically pushed up corn prices. To cut costs, feedlot operators have been substituting cheap distillers grains for pricey corn. Thus in the past year or so, we've seen an explosion in use of distillers grain as livestock ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, Department of Agriculture, energy, ethanol, food (all these topics)

Monsanto counts its cash Seed-and-chemical giant sees its profit triple	Tom Philpott	04 Jan 2008	Gristmill
In a gold rush, the firms that supply the gold diggers with tools -- not the gold diggers themselves -- make the highest and steadiest profits. That's a platitude, but it's also usually true. And it's now playing out in the boom in corn-based ethanol. Don't waste much time envying corn farmers. Sure, they've seen the price of their product double over the past year and a half or so. But they've also seen their costs inch up. Fertilizer, land rents (much of the farml ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Maybe not such a great idea after all? Feeding ethanol waste to cows	Tom Philpott	04 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Perhaps the most persistent debate around corn ethanol involves its 'net energy balance' -- that is, whether it consumes more energy in production than it delivers as a fuel. Even the studies that credit the fuel with a robust energy balance, like this one from the USDA, acknowledge that it's pretty much a wash unless you account for the "co-product" of the ethanol-making process. The ethanol process consumes only the starch component of corn, leaving behi ...
Topics: biofuels, waste, ethanol, food, agriculture, energy (all these topics)

Cellulosic beef It's a thing	David Roberts	02 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Tom Konrad ponders the ethanol situation and wonders: what if, instead of feeding most of our corn to cows, and then growing a bunch of grass to make cellulosic ethanol, we use all the cow corn for ethanol and feed the grass to the cows? Gimmicky hook, but quite a fact-filled, educational article.
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, food (all these topics)

Thirty years to hone an argument Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished	biodiversivist	19 Jun 2007	Gristmill
This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's 'case for corn-based fuel.' I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field. How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered? That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that 'an evil to be conquered' isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, b ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Feeding the Beast It's time for a real 'food vs. fuel' debate	Tom Philpott	13 Dec 2006	Victual Reality
It's time for a real "food vs. fuel" debate By Tom Philpott 13 Dec 2006 Grain piled high at an ethanol plant will feed only insatiable driving habits. Photo: iStockphoto Can U.S. farmers keep filling the nation's bellies as they scramble to fuel its cars? Given its evident gravity, the question has drawn remarkably little debate. Like it or not, though, more and more food is being devoted to fueling the nation's 211-million-strong auto fleet. High gasoline prices, ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, economy, energy, ethanol, food, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, industrial ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Stories About: agriculture AND biofuels AND energy AND ethanol AND food