corn ethanol: food vs fuel
 

I say use it to make fuel

How Corn Syrup Might Be Making Us Hungry-and Fat - Yahoo! News

...so we can eat "normal" (non-engineered, false economy supportive, processed junk) food again? Where's the fun in that?:D

I say we need to stop subsidizing corn and start growing real food. the only reason that corn syrup is in everything we eat is because our government gives farmers a bonus to grow corn. IMO bio-fuels are a great thing, but corn ethanol is not the best choice. it takes too much space to grow.

The human body doesn't digest corn so it is a poor food--don't believe me, go eat some and see if it doesn't go right through you intact...

Actually, it's just the outer shell that we cannot digest because it is cellulose. We can digest the inner part just fine. But it is the outer part we see [and appears to be the whole kernel] when we look down and...well...yeah.

I saw this a few years back and thought some of you might want to see too:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Shoulda listened when your mama told you to chew your food :-)

I just thought it was funny the way some people go on about corn ethanol like it's swiping the corn flakes bowl off the table in front of a child about to eat it, or a taco right outta someone's mitts and they're left sitting there with their piehole hanging open, when it's just as likely the corn will be made into this awful syrupy stuff.

I'm not unfavorable to agricultural subsides, but relying only in one commodity is really quite risky.

Eat this: What

Zombie thread stalks the land. :eek:
Two things:

1. Creamed corn
   
2. The unused part of the biomass (stalks, leafs, tassels and cob) probably have similar potential as the kernels. Terra Preta or Cool Planet.

OK, three: Ethanol doesn't take food out of the mouths of people so much as beef cattle.

I still want to know who wrote that both Frank Lee and I post links to other sites without saying anything, because I feel that I pretty consistently post quotes and summaries when he does that.

From the second link:

Herbicide tolerance is not for industrial purposes? I missed that.

The only other purpose I can see is intentionally monkey-wrenching the biosphere.

A little off topic, but ethanol and biodiesel producers are going to combined cycle units that will generate enough electricity to be self sufficient and possibly push power onto the grid.

Ethanol should get cheaper.

I'll do you one better; any money not spent on producing food is taking food out of the mouths of people.

When I am faced with the choice of buying an iPhone, or feeding a person in a third-world for a year, my decision will have an opportunity cost.

Spending resources on ethanol for fuel is no more upsetting than spending resources on livestock. We all have options on how to appropriate funds, and our "vote" is cast with those dollars.

The only travesty is that subsidies distort the true cost of things while making politicians and a select minority of people (businesses) wealthy.

Intentionally monkey-wrenching the biosphere sounds more interesting than the millions of years of unintentional monkey-wrenching that has already occurred. Genetic engineering has been going on for ages, and only in the last micro-second of the existence of the universe are we intentionally shaping biology.

Like it or not, the future is genetically engineered everything. In general, we will all be better off for it, but no doubt there will be some negative outcomes as well.

If you use dollars, trickle-down voodoo will absorb your good intentions, and you end up feeding the army that oppresses that person. Send them Bitcoin directly.

Send 'em food directly- they need the energy to sustain out-reproducing their environment.