Are the days of Ethanol numbered??
 

Draw your own conclusion. I know lots of folks that would welcome this with open arms.

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...-numbered.aspx

as long as the droughts continue corn ethanol will be scaled back, though there are numerous other ethanol products being developed from ag byproducts, greenies won't let ethanol go away

Don't really know what to think...I'd like to think they would stop with the ethanol but I dont know if I really see that happening.

Corn is extremely water intensive to grow, here in the south. With our heat, it's a crap shoot at best without irrigation. The Corn Lobby is one of the strongest in DC so don't expect it to go away overnight or easily. While I agree that it's junk, my dad and uncles also agree but the checks have been berry berry good the past 10-15 years. Now, if they ever punch some holes in the ground they just might change their tune about ethanol.

ADM, Archer Daniels Midland, and other big agricultural companies are lobbying, paying big money, to support this. The politicians in the corn growing states are courting the corn state votes so it isn't going away. There is too much money swapping hands. The environmentalists love it because it helps the earth. The users of ethanol in gasoline don't like it but they don't get to vote the congressman and senators in the corn states out of office and it isn't a hot button item in the presidential elections. We can only hope to hold the line at 10% and not let it go to 15%. The outboard manufacturers say they won't warranty an engine that has run 15% ethanol.

And, if they would pull off the blinders, they'd see that it's doing quite the opposite. The destruction of rain forest in South America in the name of corn production is astronomical!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...tal-boondoggle

"In 2010 the U.S. took roughly 40 percent of the national corn crop that grows on some 30 million hectares of prime farmland and turned it into roughly 50 billion liters of the alcohol fuel. That's up from roughly 190 million liters a year in 1979 and just 13.6 billion liters as recently as 2005."

Yet, it "only accounts for 10% of consumer vehicles."

Something ain't right Jack.

One of the worst things that should be brought to attention of environmentalists is that the wet prairies up north are being tiled annd drained, and that virgin prairie is being tilled under for corn. Land enrolled in CRP is being tilled under as well, because the price of corn makes up for the fine you have to pay for failing to agree to the terms. South Louisiana used to be almost 2 million acres of prairie and got converted to ag, now only a few hundred acres remain. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you think of this happening up north, that is the Duck Factory being plowed under:eek:

You are correct. Check out the acres gone for CRP in North Dakota

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yep no good...no good...

We saw mostly corn being grown in and around the Devils Lake area of NoDak last Oct. The farmers are actually going down as close as possible to the sloughs to maximize their tillable land.
Dad drilled an exploritory well around Bismark 10 years ago and an acre of farm land then was between $250 and $500. With corn production and Bakken Shale the price has risen up to $5,000/ac all over NoDak and Eastern Montana.

Sucks, but I guess everyone would do the same:redface:

It is hard restore that too once its gone

Not too sure about restoration since the areas being tilled looked marginal as far as production. There are literally millions of acres of marsh up there in the region and more being created each year due to flooding. The water table has increased every year and they are building roads around the flooded areas non stop. Ask Casey about the road that ended in the middle of a marsh, still on map as navigable but stopped a couple miles down. I will throw this out and bash if you will but, more and more ducks winter where we hunted. Every organization has decried the loss of wetland in the prairie pot hole region as long as I can remember. Do you think they have done it to make sure they remain a viable entity in the quest for the duck hunters $$$$?

Makes sense as some ducks will conserve energy and not make the long flight down as long as they have food to eat. Those cornfields nearby provide the food, they conserve energy and many of those areas are not hunted so they are safe. You will notice that these states where you used to be able to just knock on a farmer's door and get permission to hunt are starting to attract more duck hunters. Pretty soon, those farmers are going to wise up and try and make some money off duck and goose hunters. Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska to name a few. ND and SD are not going to be far behind. Deer hunters skyrocketed land prices in places like Kansas and Oklahoma.

And one other thing to think about is cough cough cough climate change. Not going into manmade global warming debate or cycles or anything like that on here, but think about how many times 'in the old days' when you would duck hunt and have to bust ice while duck hunting and think about how many times the last few years that has happened (not very many). Flyways are changing before our eyes and its been well-documented in songbird species for many years. Ducks were doing it the whole time as well, and its probably happened many times in the past long before shotguns were around. Fulvous and black-bellied whistling ducks used to be a rarity, but now they expanded their breeding range north and are now seemingly sticking around for some of the big duck season. not sure where I am going with this:rotfl: I didn't fully understand the question though, sorry:rotfl:

What I found crazy was the push for ethanol because it will ease gasoline costs. E10 and regular gasoline is considerably cheaper around here than E30.

Come on man. Can you back that statement up? The loss of wetland in the prairie is nothing but fact. The Millions lost in CRP speak for itself in ND. CRP is pretty much the reason we had more breeding ducks in the US than Canada the past two years for the first time ever. These big flooded areas are being created due to drain off of small wetlands. Those big marshy areas are great for divers, but not so great for puddle ducks. The CRP acres create small temporary wetlands surrounded by a bunch of grass which is real productive to successful nesting. These newly flooded areas in the Spring produce tons of invertabrates which are the food of choice due to high protien during the breeding season. I believe a dry year on the prairie will really show us what's really happening up there. Luckily for us it looks like it will be wet again.

http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com...13/03/1abd.png

Brazil manufactures a lot more ethanol than the US and there main crop used is sugarcane. Their cars run on E15 to E100. I have read the US will be leaning more on Sugarcane and other crops, to cut down on corn issues. There are even companies making ethanol from algae. Dont think its going anywhere.

There is a lot of research being done on ethanol from biomass instead of using food products for fuel which in the long run does nothing for costs. Yea fuel cost goes down but food prices go up.

There is a new trend that can be seen right near Lake Charles as well that deals with biofuels. People are planting eucalyptus tree plantations:eek: The trees grow at an incredibly fast rate, something like 100 feet tall in ten years. The word is that these things will not be invasive and be able to get into the landscape, but we will have to see. Hopefull the new eucalyptus plantations will just be replanted where pine plantations formally were. Maybe we can import koalas over with them as well:)

The world has several billion people now and they all have to eat, so expanding the farmland is inevitable, BUT we have more oil and gas under us than we no what to do with and there is no reason to be growing 'fuel' when that land could be used for other things.

Also, there are already huge chunks of grasslands being purchased in Africa by investors. They wil be converting that into farmland as well. Imagine how cheap that labor will be over there.