Makes sense doesn't it. Convert food stocks, grown on arable land easily devoted to a variety of uses, to fuel. Use almost as much energy to make the fuel as the fuel actually yields. Yep, makes sense to me.
making bio-diesel from sewerage waste. Will not meet our current fuel usage but can go some way to meeting current demand, uses a waste (shit) to make a fuel and does not lock up arable land (grows on sewerage ponds). Moreover it cleans the water.
And farmer's income and our cars are of primary importance of course. Our mouths and stomachs take second fiddle. Point taken.
Question. Where are the bees? Another part of the equation eventually driving us to starvation. Think bigger than just the things mentioned. Who and what and why stands to gain from this? Dave
Yes. Something that escapes lawmakers and the judicial system is that the U.S. paid farmers to grow tobacco in early 60s in the form of a farming subsidy. I won't forget it. Dave
"Almost a quarter of this year?s US corn crop is expected to be turned into fuel. Drought in Australia has added to the food prices spike, which is feeding through to world inflation."
I swear to Gawd I'd be much happier if we went back to the horse and buggy days.
Wonder what the mpb (mile per bushel) for horses is?
I still don't understand why biofuel is being manufactured from food instead of waste! There are tons and tons of weeds and corn STALKS that can be used instead. Wheat straw, millet, milo and sorghum straw (hell any stalks left over from ANY grain crops) as well as the non-edible tops from root crops.
All it really takes is digestible cellulose.
What am I missing here?
A bit of BS perhaps?
Speaking of BS, methane can also be compressed and used as a liquid fuel and heaven knows there is enough sh** being produced!
I am involved with a client that is breaking in to the biofuel world. They have perfected a process that turns meat-processing sludge (they are working primarily with chicken plant sludge which is basically everything that is left over at the end of the production run) into the appropriate amino acid base for a biofuel blend. This sludge is run through a *cleaning* process which has a yield rate of roughly 80% usable material to garbage and then it is refined which drops the final yield another 10%. The end product is then blended with diesel at varying rates depending on the needs of the final consumer. It's an up and coming industry and they are very secretive about the processes, etc so I don't have any idea what kind of energy use is required to render the final product, but was told that the rendering process does require more work than does Palm or Corn (the 2 most prolific oil bases currently used) , but that overall, their cost per gallon is quite a bit less due the to cost of raw material and transportation vs the other
(Most of the Palm oil is shipped in from Africa and there is not as great a density in farms producing corn for fuel as compared to the relatively high density iseen n the poultry processing areas.
Omelet wrote in news:omp snipped-for-privacy@news.giganews.com:
You put them on the lawn. (I do that with all three of mine.) What they produce from trimming the lawn gets fed back to the garden in time.
Don't think that a good buggy and harness and horse cost any less than a car, though, those days are pretty much gone. And my big boy produces more than his share of methane -- and it's usually when I'm grooming his tail.
Charlie, It appears that the "New Deal" for farmers was laid to rest in the 70s after it had been whittled at for a generation. The original deal was where the government would loan the farmer money to hold the crop off the market until prices went higher. If they didn't go higher, the government kept the crop and they called it even. The reasoning being that it was in the nations interest to lay away food for bad time and to support the farmers who grew it. In the 1970s the above got changed to price supports. The government decided what a fair price was and paid the farmer the difference. Thing is as the government determined price has dropped, farmers raise more to cover expenses, causing in turn a lowering if price supports. By now the farmer gets about 4 cents to the dollar for their crop, uh, commodity.
The main benefactors of the commodity price collapse for corn is Archer Daniel Midlands and, Cargill.
The price collapse realy started in the 50s with the introduction of chemical fertilizers. Previously, farmers had used crop rotation and manure to invigorate their land. Now there is no need for crop rotation, meaning more corn and lower prices.
According to Michael Pollard's book,"Omnivore's Delimma"
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takes a little over 1 petroleum calorie to produce 1 calorie of edible corn (pg. 46, 1st paragraph). There is the possibility of using the entire plant by converting the cellulose back to sugar but I don't know what energy investment that would entail.
Funny thing though, before using crop rotation and farm manure, you got
2 food calories out for everyone put in and the environment was a hell of a lot healthier.
How you making out with your clay?
- Bill Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
P.S. Jan I wish I had known that this book was continuation from Pollard's previous book, "The Botany of Desire". Damn, this is turning into a serious amount of summer reading.
And until this point, much af what was produced on the farm remained on the farm. I can't recall the percentage of produce that left the farm, but it was fairly low.
Nearly every forty or eighty had a farm and family. Most, if not all of the family food was produced and processed on the farm.
Stock was taken to a local or regional processing plant and was processed and distributed to local stores. Stores sold local eggs and produce, in season. You see what we have now. People were trying to make a living and life for their families and communities, not trying to become quadrazillionaires.
I well remember the taste of real pork and beef, real eggs and real milk. Ever notice how pork and chicken kinda taste the same nowadays?
Back in the fifties and sixties, the local farmers also provided good summer jobs for us kids. Before Monsanto, we walked bean fields, cutting out the weeds. We made hay all summer.
Now there is little work for our young, even less meaningful work. Gardening can be return to this, a reconnection with the natural world and the natural rhythms of life. To the quietness of nature and mind the working the dirt can bring.
Ha! Always one to make me think, aincha? I am holding off to see some results on my friends pastures and research a bit more.
After I left the bright lights and tall buildings behind, I spent several years going broke by helping the local farmers and doing other odd work, like cleaning chimneys (like that wasn't hazardous). This was in the area in which I grew up.
One older farmer I regularly helped work cattle, still kept a team of Belgians and would always work about ten acres of corn with them along with giving the neighbors sleigh rides in the winter. It was *so* peaceful watching them and hearing only the squeaking of harness and implements. Nothing to drown out the sound of everything else in the vicinity.
For sure, it would have been hard work, but I think that was better than today's alternative. And healthier.
Care, and thanks for bringing this to mind Charlie
Chicken plant sludge? We call that sausage. There is nothing left over. Nothing but the horrid smell of a charnel house. Even the feathers are feed to cows for protein. The way this works is that cattle and chickens are basically corn, because corn is cheap. The corn in turn is based on petroleum (fertilizer, insecticides and fuel for the tractor) that is owned by people who hate us because we are trying to take it away from them (and have been since [1953?], when we sent Kermit Roosevelt (CIA) to Iran to over throw the legally elected government of Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq and install our ruthless puppet the Shah. [ and people wonder why they don't like us]). I presume that this isn't a pitch and, that you are just trying to pass along information, for which I appreciate the thought, BUT you don't make biodiesel from amino acids. You make protein from amino acids and, fuel from carbohydrates, like sugar or, hydrocarbons, like oil.
Your friend might want to get his money back. Bush SAYS he is pushing for fuel cells.
Looks like the price of beef is going to skyrocket, if'ns we feed both the corn and chickenshit/feathers to our cars.
Holy shit, horrid doesn't even describe it. I've driven by these places, in southern MO and northern ARK. In our end of the state someone is always fighting with, and usually losing to, the pork producers and the state. Premium Farms has emptied a large part of a neighboring county with the stench and pollution. I shit you not, if you even walk in one of those buildings for a few seconds, the reek is nigh on impossible to remove from your skin and clothing. I don't give a crap what they claim and "verify", they are destroying large areas of the environment, let alone the independent producers, of which there are few left. Money talks and pigshit reeks.
There would be a whole lot less fast food eaten if people could drive by and see and smell these places. Tyson? Hormel? Patooie.
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