thinkstoomuch - 11/27/2024 06:23
mikado - 11/27/2024 04:38
Is that we are driving up the price of food because “we burn up a third of our crop to make fuel rather than food”
I’m getting in a load of modified distillers today. I get a couple semi loads a month, so does my son. Cattle love wet cake, modified or dry distillers. Hogs have a percentage of distillers in their rations. Momma cows can get by with low quality hay or corn stalks spiked with distillers.
Point is……we are making food with the by product of ethanol production….no one is starving from this.
And I would say better food than some factory taking same amount of corn and making corn syrup, corn flakes or god knows what else.
Your distiller's protein came mostly from some natural gas somewhere being made into synthetic nitrogen. A nominal amount came from soil organic matter. The corn plant didn't make it or give cause for it to be fixed from the atmosphere.
Ethanol Co products are maximally utilized but would not exist if ethanol wasn't made. You can rationalize their usage to offset the energy equation, but lack justifying the whole.
It also is a hard rationalize even a 7:1 feed conversion into beef when that metric doesn't associate real "food to fuel" food gain/loss.
1 pb or corn going into ethanol doesn't make 1 lb of food end result. That being the crux of the ethanol debate.
I am not against ethanol, but arguments need to come with justifiable basis.
Our end users mind set is subtlety swayed.
