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Corn lobby's response to all our ethanol threads

We rode from Oregon to Arkansas via a southern route and then back home via a northern route this summer. In Oregon everything is E10. Quite hard to find straight gas. I thought it was odd that the further we got from home, the less E10 we saw and the easier it was to find pure gas, and cheaper. Then on the return trip, prices slowly rose and pure gas became increasingly hard to find until we could not find at as the norm, yup, back in the NW.
 
Is ethanol a wrong path? When corn is food,not fuel?

Hmm.These are thoughtful comments not Obama Birther politics. I live in Canada and I have not seen any gas only option. Every pump I see has ethanol. Never mind the engineering issues. I ride a 95 R100RT and an 04 K1200 GT. Neither was designed for gasohol. Dunno if they will both find premature engine or other component failure or not. What does concern me more is the diversion of corn as a fundamental food for much of the world,to feed gasoline engines, when really, oil is plentiful and food is less so, in some places. I am thinking of those satellite photos that show the lights of the eastern seaboard in particular where the huge preponderance of energy is used/wasted compared to the rest of the world.
 
Beware of cost and production assumptions......

Ethanol prices vs unleaded gas: 1982 to current

http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/66.html

Corn commodity prices 1988 to current

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=corn&months=300

US Corn Production

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=production

Interestingly, there was effectively no increase in corn commodity prices from 1984 to 2006. Couple that reality with rising oil prices (fuel and fertilizer costs) and declining US exchange rates after 2000, it's surprising that any sane person would be involved with this business.
 
Nothing like a little "truth" and some clear "facts" to set the record straight.
I call it a big load of pure (not blended- no bs15) BS.
Anything I might have said on this subject has already been posted. :deal

However I will add that America's obsession with NASCAR is almost as good a mechanism for garnering enthusiasm in advertising as sex is. Well- ALMOST. :heart

To add levity to this dark subject- :brow

With all this corn flooding the markets....
How come my LIKKER h'ain't got no cheaper? :bottle
Now if y'all will EXCUUUUSE me, there's more pressing issues at hand-
I cain't find my remote.
:nyah
 
Having just ridden across MT, ND, SD, IO, IL, IN, OH, I noticed all the corn was stunted and brown apparently for lack of water. IL, IN, and OH seemed particularly hard hit with fields of brown corn (no green at all) as far as I could see. Hell with ADM and the stupid Big Ethanol industry, I'm just concerned how it will effect the whisky distilleries.
 
OK -- The weenie in me made me do it.....

The internet is a wonderful thing......sometimes. All this inflation data (CPI) on the BLS site and commodity information on Indexmundi.com.....you can really see the historical shift in prices. As such, gasoline and corn prices both dropped in the late 80's and 90's, when adjusted for inflation. Gasoline returned to the 1984 prices in 2005 while corn didn't recover until 2011. Of course, these values only reflect US dollar inflation and may not accurately show the impact of exchange rates.



Corn & Gas.emf.png
 
Having just ridden across MT, ND, SD, IO, IL, IN, OH, I noticed all the corn was stunted and brown apparently for lack of water. IL, IN, and OH seemed particularly hard hit with fields of brown corn (no green at all) as far as I could see. Hell with ADM and the stupid Big Ethanol industry, I'm just concerned how it will effect the whisky distilleries.

The corn is brown because its almost fall and what your seeing is feed corn not sweet corn so its not harvested until it dries up to a certain degree. If I understand correctly the moisture level is different for corn that will be turned in to grain to be used in different products as opposed to that which is harvested for animal feed but regardless its brown because its harvest time not because the lack of water.
 
That inflation adjusted graph for corn price is apparently yet another case of lying with numbers- by using some weird way of trying to factor out inflation.
1984 is ancient history and of no relevance to today- and it wasn't exactly a high point in our economy, either.

A significant problem with current corn prices is the ripple effect on all food prices. I do my own food shopping so can't help but notice that many food prices are up more than 20% in the last year or 2. While it doesn't do much to me economically, it is certainly a significant issue for the increasing number of working poor in this country. The same Washington folks who gave the subsidy to big agribusiness for EtOH are now cutting food stamps for the poor.

Locally, this year we've got a early season start on the usual end of year uptick in property thefts and burglaries- to the extent that the local PD has issued neighborhood specific warnings in print and online to those living in the impacted (all low income) neighborhoods. I wonder if this will become a permanent problem.
 
Getting off carbon based fuels is great in theory but a real long way from ever happening. The only trend that seems inevitable is natural gas replacing a lot of coal use over the next 10-20 years (no sympathy from me for coal users or producers who have done more than their share of environmental destruction for a long time).

Today we can barely make an electric car and haven't yet come close to making any at a competitive average price. Electric trucks and other heavy long haul stuff are even less likely in the near future. Battery technology isn't seeing any breakthroughs and that stored electricity has to come from someplace.

Solar and wind both would eat large amounts of land to produce serious power (though when compared to all the flooded land consumed to make fairly low hydro amounts they might not look so bad) and nuclear is always opposed despite its generally good safety record (outside of Russia's stupid plant design that lead to Chernobyl, even 3 Mile Island produced more hype than real problems).

I figure there is a 50/50 chance I might see electric cages in common use eventually but virtually no progression to anything other than increased natural gas use (possibly even for trucks, etc) with only a tiny bit of wind and solar. Heck, here in NC we're wasting about 5 years just talking about where wind generators could go offshore, despite having what is easily the most wind favorable offshore location in the country (lots of square miles of water under 100 ft deep going almost 50 miles offshore in many places, plenty of wind, etc). The negative arguments are virtually all "we don't want to see a wind generator from the beach" Depending on height, the might need to be 15 miles or a bit more offshore to do that....
 
Today we can barely make an electric car and haven't yet come close to making any at a competitive average price. Electric trucks and other heavy long haul stuff are even less likely in the near future. Battery technology isn't seeing any breakthroughs and that stored electricity has to come from someplace.

Trains, ships, cars, etc.............Hybrid technology has been here for a few decades and is here to stay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel-electric

When you speak of batteries........you have to expand your mind to include any reaction that yields electricity.

In regards to stationary power production, the current utility rates for electricity pretty much preclude any new plant construction, excluding the rare case of exiting plant failure. Accordingly, 60+ year old coal plants stay in production using replacement parts from third world suppliers that carter to the third world plants constructed at the end of the colonial era in Asia, Africa and South America.
 
I figure there is a 50/50 chance I might see electric cages in common use eventually but virtually no progression to anything other than increased natural gas use (possibly even for trucks, etc) with only a tiny bit of wind and solar. Heck, here in NC we're wasting about 5 years just talking about where wind generators could go offshore, despite having what is easily the most wind favorable offshore location in the country (lots of square miles of water under 100 ft deep going almost 50 miles offshore in many places, plenty of wind, etc). The negative arguments are virtually all "we don't want to see a wind generator from the beach" Depending on height, the might need to be 15 miles or a bit more offshore to do that....

There was, for a time, talk of putting up a sizable wind farm off the Texas Gulf coast. They assured everyone that it would be far enough off shore to "not" be visible from the beach. Then hurricane Ike paid us a little visit and all those plans flew smooth out the window! Oh well! ;)
 
A significant problem with current corn prices is the ripple effect on all food prices.

Don't you think the price of fuel might have something to do with the price of corn?? Notice, how well the price of corn and fuel tracked between 1984 and 2000? But then what.........the price of fuel started to increase around 2000, but corn didn't. Where did that production cost go?
 
I live in Canada and I have not seen any gas only option. Every pump I see has ethanol.
For years in Ontario, Shell V Power has been ethanol free. I've been told that Shell now sells ethanol free V Power in all Canadian provinces.
 
According to some, ethanol "credits" now adding over $1 per gallon to our gasoline.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/blame-ethanol-spike-gasoline-prices-lutz-125424933.html

Considering that the per gallon wholesale price of ethanol has been lower than that of Unleaded regular since 2010, I don't see how the analyst can make his claim. As is, the loss of sales in the ethanol market is depressing corn commodity prices.

But, the claim will receive lots of air play on some news outlets and that is how the analyst markets his services.......
 
Great reference above. Once again, the public screwed by big banks, and Congress can claim credit.

Manipulation of a credit market? I wonder if the folks at AIG offer an insurance plan against the losses? Collateralized debt obligations anybody?

This issue is different than the discussion on the cost of ethanol and gasoline, but the operating cost to the blenders has to be dealt with. As noted in the NY Times story, the credit market was based on the premise of increasing fuel (gasoline) demand and benchmark quantities of ethanol use. Since the market for gasoline (gallons sold) has dropped, the credit system is now upside down and the value of the credits has become a speculative item for some banks and other Wall Street wunderkinds.
 
Considering that the per gallon wholesale price of ethanol has been lower than that of Unleaded regular since 2010, I don't see how the analyst can make his claim. As is, the loss of sales in the ethanol market is depressing corn commodity prices.

But, the claim will receive lots of air play on some news outlets and that is how the analyst markets his services.......

The wholesale price is a sham as the subsidy (which obviously comes from our pocket) equals "paying" for ethanol "before" it gets priced or pumped & becomes a part of the wholesale price plus whatever role it's production takes through use of much petroleum in first place.Those trucks & tractors don't run on corn juice very often.
 
from what I remember about ethanol production in my state, tax supported ethanol plants were constructed over the last several decades, hundreds of millions, probably well into the billions by now, and then run by, one would guess, well politically connected buddies of whatever party happened to be in power? It's the reverse Midas touch. If it doesn't work, throw some more of the people's labor at it, make a speech or two about the wonderfully brilliant public servants, and build some more plants while raving about an environmentally useless irrational use of a food product. should be great fun when the truth about the real costs of ethanol finally get exposed, say in about fifty years. that's a one cents worth of IMO.
 
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