Maggie's Farm

New Junkie,

That ethanol link is just "horribly" inaccurate. It's just "chock-full" of mistakes. Let me give you just ONE example.

Less than 10 gallons of diesel is required to grow 155 bushels (avg yield) of corn, plus 2,800 lbs of distillers grains (a slightly better cattle feed that the corn that it came from.) btw, over 95% of that stuff you see growing out there is livestock feed - mostly cattle.

The breakdown for a bushel of corn is: 1/3 ethanol, 1/3 distillers grains/ 1/3 CO2 (which is being used more, and more to flood old oil wells to bring back production, btw.)

Okay, so now; you're getting 2.9 gallons of ethanol (not 2.5 as they stated) per bu of corn, Plus about .3 gallons of corn oil (biodiesel.) Plus 16 lbs of distillers grains, plus 18 lbs of CO2 (remember, this is just being recycled as it would if a plant grew, and died.)

So, we're up to 490 gallons of ethanol/biodiesel (by the way, in an optimized engine the ethanol is just as "efficient" as either gasoline, or diesel,) Plus the 2800 lbs of cattle feed (you know, the stuff that the corn was intended for in the first place;)

AND, ALL THIS from less than ten gallons of diesel. If we double this amount to account for the natural gas used in the manufacture of the fertilizer, and processing of the seed corn, you're still looking at about a 37 : 1 return on energy in the "Growing" phase.

The "Processing" numbers were just as bad, but, I grow weary.

In Closing: Beware of biofuels propaganda right now. There are Farm/Energy Bills being marked up in Congress, as we speak.

Weary - syn. Lazy :)


NJ, there's an Energy, and Farm Bill being debated in Congress. It has huge implications for Oil, and Ethanol. There has just been a Flood of these articles the last couple of week. Several out of Europe. I just finally decided I couldn't/wouldn't respond to them all. I wanted to refute at least a few points, here, because I love coming to this website.

But, Lordy Mercy, I'm telling you; It's frustrating.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement. I needed that.

'Nite.