Is Ethanol Robbing Me Of MPG?

[johnpr]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Have you seriously looked at food subsidies?
Are you familiar with the term dumping before you say high food prices is bad for the third world?

a couple other things to note, 1:the corn that is used for ethanol production is animal feed grain corn, I'm sure that you dont eat that, and then the byproduct from from producing ethanol is used to feed animals, not much of a loss there, getting two uses from one item. 2: beer companies are now putting theire waste product into ethanol production

anyhow, today the price for e85 is 2.89 USD while regular is 3.85 USD sounds like a fair traidoff even if you lose a couple mpg.

[LostCause]

The corn used for animal feed is also used in a vast amount of consumer food products. While we eat sweet corn, the dimpled stuff is what gets turned into HFCS. Food is cheap because HFCS is cheap.

I think the real issue is unsustainable farming practices. The Ogallala water table is being quickly depleted, excess nitrates and other nutrients are creating dead zones in the Mississippi Gulf, and virgin land is being cleared to support an industry that can't possibly hope to make a dent in energy use.

Based on the amount of water, energy, and land needed to grow crops, biofuels will be nothing more than a tiny piece of the energy collage. It'll make a few rich farmers richer, though.

- LostCause