E15 to E85 coming to a pump near you!

Source: U.S. USDA. National Agricultural Statistics Service. Crop Production. March 8, 2013.

Corn is grown on over 400,000 U.S. farms.

Millions of farmers might be stretching it a bit....

And nothing is stopping the farmers from forming their own co-op to market their crops through, nothing is forcing them to go through one clearinghouse.

Some more food for thought:
Corn is the top crop for subsidy payments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year, guaranteeing demand, but US corn ethanol subsidies are between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion per year. Producers also benefited from a federal subsidy of 51 cents per gallon, additional state subsidies, and federal crop subsidies that can bring the total to 85 cents per gallon or more. However, the federal ethanol subsidy expired December 31, 2011.

Would the ethanol industry have survived and grown with any of this? I doubt it....

If it were not mandated to be blended into fuels today I am not sure it would survive either, there are too many issues with it.

stevie88's method of arguing: If you can't dazzle them with bullshit, baffle them with even more bullshit.

:huh

I call bullshit here. The law requires that 'billion's of gallons of a RENEWABLE fuel be blended into our national motor fuel pool. Says nothing about it being corn-starch derived ethanol. If you don't like it being ethanol, then I would suggest that you get off your dead butt and develop another alternative, otherwise stfu.

There is, in fact a limit on how much of the renewable fuel standard that, by law, can be obtained by corn-starch derived ethanol, and we've pretty much reached that limit. There is currently more ethanol production available than the market will bear. This glut (due to the 2008-10 recession) has served to weed out the speculators and has also resulted in the oil companies purchasing a large number of ethanol production facilities. Valero is now the #3 ethanol producer in the US, behind ADM & POET. This fact pisses me off, my company being a small, coorperatively owned, ethanol producer; the fact that a huge oil company now owns a major portion of the production capacity of a renewable like Etoh is a travesty.

If you do not believe that a portion of this country's fuel supply should be produced from a renewable source, then go ahead and keep nursing on petroleum's tit.

cheers,
melby

Melby, teaching these ignorant numbskulls anything is like fucking with a limp dick.

you are full of shit as a christmas turkey .. and gobble just as loud before turkey got wacked!!!

-------
CNN) -- Because of the severe heat and drought in the Midwest, global food prices are going up. Why? Because the U.S. is the leading producer and exporter of staple grains. We are for food production what Saudi Arabia is for oil production. Our crop shortages have ripple effects throughout the food system and disrupt the global markets, especially in the food-insecure nations. The U.S. hasn't reached 2008's level of high food prices yet because rice and wheat stocks are ample. These are the two most important food grains for human consumption worldwide.
Corn and soybean levels are extremely tight, and their prices have skyrocketed since June. However, these two grains are mostly used as livestock feeds. Corn is also diverted to produce ethanol because of our government mandate.
Opinion: Extreme heat and droughts -- a recipe for world food woes
Kay McDonald


Earlier this month, the United Nations urged the U.S. to ease its ethanol mandate. The origin of this policy goes back to 2005 when Congress set requirements of corn to be used for automotive fuel. In 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act greatly increased those requirements to improve air quality and become more energy secure. Behind the scenes, however, corn and other agricultural lobbyists were promoting the mandate to create a larger market for corn. Using current numbers, this year's ethanol mandate would theoretically require 44% of this year's corn crop, a third of which is recycled back as distillers grains for livestock feed.
We are being told by the ethanol producers, the corn growers and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that eliminating the ethanol mandate would not significantly reduce global food costs. But how could that be when roughly 14% of the world's corn crop is being converted into ethanol in the U.S.? In addition to corn being used for biofuel, taxpayer-subsidized biodiesel is using up more soybeans each year.

The Coming Food Crisis: Blame Ethanol?

A series of spikes in global food prices resulted in riots in 2008 and contributed to violent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. The culprit is a matter of considerable and frequently heated debate, but the most commonly cited candidates include market speculators, global warming and aggressive government renewable fuel mandates.
If you believe the folks at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Mass., the global food supply system is stumbling into a drought-induced supply shortage that could galvanize a global food crisis far more severe than those implicated in the widespread uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
In an updated version of a paper first published in September, Marco Lagi, Yavni Bar-Yam and Yaneer Bar-Yam considered the possible consequences of the prolonged drought in the mid-western United States, the worst in half a century, on global food prices. The analysis, which relied on a quantitative model of historical food prices, concluded that the drought could amplify the impact of market speculation and corn-to-ethanol conversion policies on the impending global food crisis by an order of magnitude. To

Recent droughts in the mid-western United States threaten to cause global catastrophe driven by a speculator amplified food price bubble. Here we show the effect of speculators on food prices using a validated quantitative model that accurately describes historical food prices. During the last six years, high and fluctuating food prices have led to widespread hunger and social unrest. While the spring of 2012 had a relative dip in the food prices, a massive drought in the American mid-west in June and July threatens to trigger another crisis . . .
An update to the original paper in February 2012 demonstrated that the model previously published . . . anticipated a new food crisis by the end of 2012 if adequate policy actions were not implemented. Here we provide a second update, evaluating the effects of the current drought on global food prices. We find that the drought may trigger the expected third food price bubble . . . to occur earlier than otherwise expected, beginning immediately . . . [and] rais[ing] prices well beyond an increase justified by the reduced supply caused by the droughts.
​

In other words, the sky may soon fall for those poor souls who are unable to stomach the marginal increase in food prices. At risk of reiterating the obvious, malnutrition is a matter of life or death.

A Mandate to Raise Food Prices

The cause of higher grocery bills isn’t the drought. It’s the failed federal ethanol policy.

Americans should understand that this year’s drought—the worst in 50 years—isn’t the primary reason for record-high food prices. The drought made things worse, but the leading driver of long-term increases in food costs is a deeply flawed federal mandate.
In 2005, Congress enacted the Renewable Fuel Standard to mandate the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. The cost of food commodities immediately began to rise. As a result, Americans have had to deal with some of the highest food prices on *record. While the drought will end at some point, the price increases caused by the ethanol mandate will continue unless the government reverses course.
Proponents of ethanol argue that it lowers greenhouse-gas emissions and gas prices, but these findings remain subject to intense debate. The higher food prices all Americans now pay are indisputable.
Under the federal mandate, Americans must use 15 billion gallons of ethanol in gasoline *annually by 2015. To meet this goal, 5.3 billion bushels of corn per year—equal to more than 40% of the 2011 corn crop—must be processed and burned as *ethanol, not used for food or livestock feed.
The result: higher prices across the entire food chain, from products directly containing corn to protein raised on corn feed and crops that compete with corn for farmland. That includes the bread on the table, the eggs at breakfast, the chicken or steak at dinner, and almost all dairy products.
Since the enactment of the ethanol mandate in 2005, the use of corn in ethanol has skyrocketed to more than five *billion bushels per year from 1.3 billion. Corn prices immediately began to rise, too, and in each year since they have exceeded the highest price seen between 1976 and 2006. Price increases also spread to other parts of the agricultural sector, as farmers switched to corn from other crops and livestock.
New research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (on behalf of the National Council of Chain *Restaurants) finds that by the time the mandate’s 2015 goals are met, it will have caused a 27% increase in corn prices. *Increased corn prices have *already led to higher prices for other commodities, such as soybeans (by up to 16%), pork (by up to 15%) and poultry (by up to 8%).

Cy don't waste your breath or the effort, they have been brainwashed and facts make no difference to them.

You wouldn't know a fact if it walked up and shook your hand.

The worst drought in 50 years is not the primary cause of higher food prices?! I suppose the primary cause of birth must not be pregnancy.

forcing conversion of some 37% of USA corn production into ethanol is the worst piece of shit legislation that's ever sneaked by the US public.

cannot remember another major bill of this magnitude that's now US law without seeing a single snippet on the news. normally Google news picks up syndicated news blurbs from all over the world. this bill was passed in stealth mode ...

IMHO if public had any inkling legislation was coming that forced purchase of ethanol with mandated 37% of corn crop (14% world) into ethanol. there would be wholesale protests by the general public.

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, if one takes out 37% of the total USA corn crop and force conversion into ethanol. result would be substantially higher prices for corn.

now with worst drought in decades .. combined with above policy will turn into nutritional disaster for people all over world living on edge of survival.

turning food into ethanol is plain stupid!!! it's not like USA has any lack of fuel. Oil production is highest in decades. combined with world's largest increase in natural gas production, resulting in a natural gas glut. USA has NO energy shortage.

opposite is true .. USA has a glut of energy!!!!
turning corn into fuel is flat stupid, unless you are on the receiving end of resulting MASSIVE PROFITS!!!

don't get me wrong .. I'm all for anyone making the max profit possible. but only with the market dictating price. for that to happen there must be unmolested competition in the market place.

when 37% of total corn production is mandated by law to be converted into ethanol .. regardless of weather conditions. that's a disaster waiting to happen.

So you think there is competition in the oil market? "Unmolested?" WTF are you on and how is that even an economic term?

Btw, pumping evermore CO2 into the atmosphere isn't a very good idea anyway and while we do have a natural gas glut, the fucksticks are flaring off untold mcf's of it in North Dakota. Then there is the very dirty shale oil coming from Canada, an environmental disaster in the making of untold magnitude.

We need to wean the country off oil and go green in a large way ASAP.

the real question is WTF are you on?

how much of the government teat are you on?
round figures is close enough .. how much did you personally benefit from USA government's mandate $$$?

all total ..how much did you personally gain from the $$$ 6 BILLION per year from USA tax payers?

bottom line .. ethanol mandate SUCKS for anyone not directly involved with corn production and/or conversion to ethanol, forced blend into our fuel supply....etc.

but sure is good for anyone making MASSIVE PROFITS directly from corn!!!

Ad hominem attack is exactly what I expected at this point, I have not bought into the propaganda you have posted and have countered it with researched facts that did not agree with the BS you posted through this thread.

And the question of how much you have personally profited from the $6 billion pumped into the corn ethanol industry is a very good one.

No, it's not at all. If I've made millions or zero dollars has absolutely no bearing on the fact that ethanol has lowered fuel prices and helped reduce our CO2 footprint.

Can you even into science?

Lowered fuel prices via subsidies which come from taxes which need to either go up to support the subsidies or else the subsidies add to the national debt. Coincidentally, it has also given us a fuel that is less efficient, with a lower energy density than pure gasoline.

If biofuels were a viable product, they wouldn't have needed a mandate, companies would have started providing this on their own, rather than an entire industry springing up out of nowhere, supported by our tax money, just because the government says it must exist. Some day, when technology arrives to efficiently break down cellulose to produce ethanol, for example, it may make sense. Making ethanol from food crops for anything other than human consumption is a bad long term solution.

I fully support producing ethanol for human consumption. In fact, if I wasn't working tonight, I would likely consume some in the form of bourbon.

See, you keep chasing your tail. It's added 10% to our fuel supply and there are no subsidies going to its production. You keep going back to that old argument of its viability, blah, blah, blah while conveniently ignoring the monopoly position that oil companies have in motor fuel distribution and it's retail sale. Without the mandate, oil companies will not use it. Actually they will use it after they buy the ethanol plants for pennies on the dollar, then you'll still get your ethanol but Exon will get all your fuel money instead of only 90% of it.



Btw, it didn't just spring up out of nowhere, this goes back decades and corn hasn't been just a food crop in a very long time either oh, and when did an oil company ever march off to war to defend our country? Plenty of farmers have you know.

So, you're unaware of the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that at least 37% of the 2011-2012 crop be converted to ethanol, which we will be forced to buy. If that's not a subsidy in the form of a mandated artificial demand, what is it? The mandate is so big, subsidies don't matter any more. (BTW, we paid about $6 billion in subsidies in 2011.) As citizens of this country we are forced to buy fuel that has less energy than gasoline and causes damage. Demand stays artificially high than it would in a free market. The only people benefiting from this are corn farmers, since the price of corn is about triple what it was pre-mandate.


How 'bout this: I invent a widget, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z86V_ICUCD4 Pretty useless, you'll agree. But my Congressmen realize that if we put a lot of people to work, that's new jobs. So they pass a Useless Machine Standard, requiring that all households have a least one. Voila! Demand! Millions of Useless Machines are made and sold. An artificial demand propped up by a mandate. If you mandate that 37% of electronics made in this country are Useless Machines, the manufactures get rich, at our expense, because the government said so. No other reason.
Well, you might think that's stupid and farfetched. Substitute 'ethanol' for "Useless Machine" and tell me what's different. I'll tell you what's different: It's your ox being gored. Your previous posts border on idolatry of methanol, against science and common sense, so you're obviously vested in the industry.

So, give me a few examples of other uses for corn. The food, not the leftovers. How long, before subsidies went into effect, was ethanol produced on a large scale for willing buyers? I'm going to ignore the last sentence, it's a non sequitur in line with ad hominem attacks. Straight from the Liberal Argument Handbook- if you're losing based on facts, insult the other party and change the subject.

Back to you, proponent of the Useless Fuel.


1911fan

That $6B subsidy in 2011 was a tax credit to the blenders, i.e. oil companies. The result of that was cheaper fuel costs to the taxpayer by a roughly equivalent amount. That of course has since expired. Fortunately consumers primary benefit of ethanol is in increasing the country's motor fuel supply 10%. This is huge in helping reduce fuel costs.

Again I ask you to show me where this magical free market in motor fuel exists. You ignore that because you know it doesn't exist and that fact negates all your Randian bs.

The crayons you scribble with contain corn. Google is your friend here if you want to learn something.

That last question was a legit question. When was the last time an oil company fought to defend the country rather than the other way around?