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Drought = Less Ethanol?

"Think of the possibilities, if we unleashed our creative talent on resolving the issues we have with the current system?"

I agree with the statement however in my belief system. Human intellect perhaps one of the strongest survival tools of humans for problem solving has been replaced by economics. A byproduct of "civilization". So sad.
 
"Think of the possibilities, if we unleashed our creative talent on resolving the issues we have with the current system?"

I agree with the statement however in my belief system. Human intellect perhaps one of the strongest survival tools of humans for problem solving has been replaced by economics. A byproduct of "civilization". So sad.

We always have the choice......economics of the moment or the future.
 
Much of my life has been spent in the Upper Mississippi basin, the Red River basin or the Missouri basin. The infrastructure you reference is the current infrastructure that is continuing to be built or revised. Rural electrification out here did not come as part of the 30s TVA type projects but a much more local/regional ad hoc basis. Long before electricity the upper Mississippi powered the turbines that ran the mills making flower for the nation and rivers like the Wisconsin has long been called the hardest working river in the nation have been used. Much of the infrastructure was designed for flood control in mind to allow navigation, irrigation with power as tertiary objective if at all.

Tour the Connecticut river valley thru New England, you'll find the same story. The testing flume at Holyoke MA was the primary test turbine research facility prior to WW1.

I wish it was a question of resolution. Rather it is an on going process of managing use and changing demands. Ethanol or cornflakes the increased demand for row crops increases run off. This run off is part of what is increasing the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is an international issue in that the Red River Basin drains into Canadian waters impacting them. Part of what drives that is the demand for sugar beets.

We are dealing with a similar issue with the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay. While much less expansive than the Mississippi, the Susquehanna drains an area densely populated with dairy farms that feed an immediate metropolitan population.

I grew up in a camping family that instilled a silly ethic in me. We camp, hike, enjoy power sports and more. We use the land and resources. At the same time we were taught to do our best to leave our campsite in as good or better condition than we found it. It gets harder and harder to do that while meeting the demands of right and left coasters for food, cattle, industrial agricultural products, grow and refine exportable products and more to offset all the BMW parts we buy. In US terms my corner of Fly Over Land has been at it since Zebullon Pike and his expedition set up camp in 1804 on Pike Island, part of the river of I frequently walk.
;)

I caution you on casting the problem as one solely of market demand or "pull" for product. In many cases, it's also issues arising from a desire to limit expenses to increase profits. In most aspects, our food costs have dropped for several decades by lowering production costs and corporate consolidation. We get cheap food with little diversity and of mediocre quality. In addition, we don't really like the people employed to manufacture it. Sometimes, you just have to say there's a better way to do things..........maybe more expensive, but better.
 
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Totally agree the it is not just "pull". Keep in mind many of the ethanol plants mentioned in the original post are owned by farmers and coops. We debate enlightened self interest v self interest issues all the time. As to the quality of food it is a bad and as good here too. Picking on the R&L coast seems a fair contrast for all the hot air about greedy farmers some vent at times.
:stick
Some of those guys have been my riding partners.
:p
 
please qualify-"we don't really like the people employed to manufacture it" ? I don't know how to feel about that one...:lurk
 
please qualify-"we don't really like the people employed to manufacture it" ? I don't know how to feel about that one...:lurk

From fruit and vegetable harvesting to meat packing, US agribusiness, its profit margins and our low prices are dependent on folks that are paid the lowest possible wage. We like the profits and the prices, but we really don't want to live near the people that live at the economic level that can support those outcomes. When they live in our neighborhood, we have to face the reality that we are probably sliding down the ladder too........
 
I decided not to comment on that line in my previous response because I was concerned about the answer for a bunch of reasons. I was right, so let me respond and try to take this back to the core topic of ethanol.

Population and brain drain is a problem in F-O-L. "India" for rural businesses is the competition for jobs and talent with F-O-L is seen as our urban centers of population and the R&L coast. At the state levels, ethanol is seen as a way to create jobs and perhaps more importantly bring money into the state in the form of increased crop prices, FTEs, wages paid and the multiplier impact they may have. These in do have a ripple effect in the communities that is much more apparent than in urban settings with more diversified economies. Often the goal is to stabilize communities long before anyone talks of growth.

Take your own number for how much corn was put to industrial use. 39% was given earlier by a poster. Even if you take a mix position like mine allowing for ethanol production as a component in gas blends while doing away with the "ethanol making us energy independent" portion you are going to significantly decrease that figure. Given the crop dependent nature of some growing regions and the farming version of retooling costs and lag time for change over to new crops, markets and pricing. If you cut the number in half people in urban settings would be screaming about the jobs lost.

Many in F-O-L have hitched themselves to the ethanol star and now shale. After all how else are we going to afford soap and water, paint for our houses let alone Sunday goin ta meetin clothes so you guys won't be afraid of us when you ride through. Some day we may be able to afford dentists and edgeamakation so you all will even talk with up insteadun at us in the official Fly Over Land coffee shop.
 
Many in F-O-L have hitched themselves to the ethanol star and now shale. After all how else are we going to afford soap and water, paint for our houses let alone Sunday goin ta meetin clothes so you guys won't be afraid of us when you ride through. Some day we may be able to afford dentists and edgeamakation so you all will even talk with up insteadun at us in the official Fly Over Land coffee shop.

F-O-L had best hope for oil in that shale. If it's only gas...........the price is too low. In PA the future is here....the NG drillers have more at-risk by not drilling on signed leases than they'll make on the gas.
 
From fruit and vegetable harvesting to meat packing, US agribusiness, its profit margins and our low prices are dependent on folks that are paid the lowest possible wage. We like the profits and the prices, but we really don't want to live near the people that live at the economic level that can support those outcomes. When they live in our neighborhood, we have to face the reality that we are probably sliding down the ladder too........
Interesting assessment. As I live in a county that has at one time been listed on a "10 poorest counties in the USA list" how does that carry over to me? FWIW, even in a "poor place" it's possible to live a rich & rewarding life. Down the road from me(as in real close) there are many persons living in poverty and it sure doesn't pull us down. Interestingly there are Mexicans working at the sawmills all over my area, long ways to travel to do the work the gringos don't want! There(at least he used to work there a year or so ago) is an MD from India that worked at a mill in Morehead,KY recently. My neighbors frequently work for minimum wages or slightly above as thats the level of factory work that is attracted to eastern KY.
While I get the bad neighborhood notion( really, I did work in juvenile treatment & corrections and know what the dark side involves) its touchy stuff to suggest that some people are better than others to live around based on their economic level. No, I'm not angry just making my point that money doesn't make a neighborhood. One of my early jobs was to be a caddy at a country club from 5th grade on into college. It was an interesting exposure to people that had far more money than at my house and we were not at all poor. Some were OK, some not at all. Having lived in "Appalachia" since 1973 I find the same thing here-some OK , some not at all.
Signed, sliding down the ladder?

Now back to ethanol & the drought...
 
F-O-L had best hope for oil in that shale. If it's only gas...........the price is too low. In PA the future is here....the NG drillers have more at-risk by not drilling on signed leases than they'll make on the gas.

I thought the discussion was more than F-O-L's best hope for oil. It is part of a national discussion of many topics. But I guess we will leave it at cheap food, no ethanol, bad wages making us undesirable neighbors while being greedy money grubbing agribusiness monsters.

Knew their was a reason I considered that ethanol thread 12 step program. :bolt
 
Those Agribusiness monsters help provide the cheapest and the safest food in the world. There's a reason, and I feel that our increasing age in America bears this out, that other countries in the world want what we have. Cheap, safe food and an abundance of it too. We also have a regualatory system in the US, the FDA. Our export grading system from the USDA is best in the world for consistent monitoring of what leaves the country. This is a compettive advantage as importing countries can trust what they buy. Sure, neither is perfect, both are beaurocratic, but they function well. Anyone who wants more expensive food like organic can buy it and for those of us that like cheap food we can buy that. We have personal preferences as to which is better, but there's no proof you'll live longer if you eat only local or only organic food. It's a feeling we have. My personal preference is locally grown, but I believe the all food is the same. Even GMO.

It's our dietary and sedentary habits that cause us to over eat certain foods and they big agriculture with cheap food is to blame?

Our gov't estabished Ag policy in the 30s. To a certain degree those policys were food security for the US. The same body imposed an energy policy requiring ethanol to be blended at rates far too high. They never thought that high fuel prices would reduce gas comsumption, which it did by about 6-7%. So they wanted more ethanol to be blended into less gas being consumed!

Also, oil companies were in favor, maybe supported??? ethanol growth because they were worried over lawsuits with MTBE. I believe ethanol at about 6% of fuel consumption is a good idea to replace MTBE as it's much safer and has similar atributes as a fuel additive for octane/knock. (I'm getting out of my league here now real fast...)

What is FOL?
 
I thought the discussion was more than F-O-L's best hope for oil. It is part of a national discussion of many topics. But I guess we will leave it at cheap food, no ethanol, bad wages making us undesirable neighbors while being greedy money grubbing agribusiness monsters.

Knew their was a reason I considered that ethanol thread 12 step program. :bolt

I was just pointing out that we in PA have ridden the NG wave only to find that ........ with the drop in NG prices due to excess capacity and poor distribution, the wave is moving to the mid-west and upper mid-west due to potential for higher profit oil. There is still drilling activity in PA, but paraphrasing T. Boone Pickens, .........these guys are drilling themselves to bankruptcy due to lease exit clauses which will cost more than the gas they extract.

Now, let me offer this............Would BMW be in business if they tried to sell the lowest priced product? Not in my opinion. BMW AG is playing the luxury brand and technical feature game at the moment to show value. In a prior day it was reliability. In any case, it was more than just $ per hp.

In my opinion, that is the same issue facing F-O-L and the rest of the nation........solely focusing on the cost of production only reduces the employees living standard and their environment to that of the lowest cost competitor. Old technology and products will always be captured by the competitor, so new products and manufacturing methods are the only hope of moving forward. Otherwise, the other guy, will easily "go to school" on what you did and make it cheaper or better.
 
In my locality they came in and "leased the oil shale"- maybe it was the 1980's? & dug a bunch of pit type holes and then moved on when the money wasn't there to make it work.
 
Intersting about BMW. And a very good point. BMW does a great job marketing and branding. One we can identify with, at least many of us.

You are correct about the competitor taking technology and then tweaking it for a cheaper production result. That's the nature of commodities, whether crude oil, nat gas, or corn and I think ethanol fits in there too. The basic law of economics at work - Marginal Revenue will always be driven down to Marginal Cost - in the commodity world. When the commodity guys for nat gas in PA, or crude oil in the Bakken reserve make a margin, and good margin, it brings in the competition and new technology until the fun is gone and then they move on.

And that doesn't do much for local jobs or wages when that happens. I don't think any amount of regulation will stop this commodity game, but frustrating it is for those that labor and don't participate in the high margin "good years."

Way off topic, but I'm sure some of you have read "Shop Class". He makes a good arugment for american workers and lost talents, thus wages fall because the raw talent is no longer needed or desired. That is a poor synopsis, but the value an excellent BMW mechanic, or self mechanic and what they yield is huge. I'm thinking with fewer of us that can fix our own plumbing any more, won't wages once again have to increase to pay professional trades for work most people won't do any more?
 
Fly-Over-Land. All that flat, green stuff when folks get on an airplane in NYC and land at LAX. You know, all that wasteland between the left and right coasts (where 65% of what the world eats gets produced).

That area and people living in it, held in the same high regard by those high flying people as they hold third world countries: a source of raw materials and population to be accepted as the R&L coasts burden. Lets not get bothered by details like agriculture playing major rolls in balance of trade, FOL universities doing R&D of everything from soybean based inks to cutting edge development of civilian applications of GPS they are so enamored with to get them around because they are lost and that the average FOL farmer and the communities (large or small) participate in an economic system as heavily regulated, convoluted, complex and on an international basis as a R or L bank LIBOR derivative scheme etc they are fond of, that while many of our jobs are low paying they are so because they send high paying industrial jobs offshore etc.

I gotta find a ethanol thread 12 step meeting quick. Think I'll head out to the tractor and see if I can Google the map directions to the nearest one. Quick!
:bolt
 
I'm thinking with fewer of us that can fix our own plumbing any more, won't wages once again have to increase to pay professional trades for work most people won't do any more?

Ask the folks at Apple which produce hardware.
 
In my locality they came in and "leased the oil shale"- maybe it was the 1980's? & dug a bunch of pit type holes and then moved on when the money wasn't there to make it work.

You should have seen Oklahoma in 1981........folks tenting on every inch of public land and site bosses recruiting roughneck crews at the convenience stores. In a year or two, the NG market crashed and all that activity was gone.

The next time you are near Knoxville, TN, check-out the site of the "Energy World's Fair". The NG market collapsed before the fair closed.........

If leases were signed in your area, do you you know whether, or not, if you own the mineral rights to your property?
 
"Those Agribusiness monsters help provide the cheapest and the safest food in the world"

Propaganda cool aid

But a topic for another forum
 
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