Originally Posted By: Hermann
Originally Posted By: A_Harman
In all years that E85 has been out, I've never seen it priced that low.
That is why ethanol is the biggest farce ever unleashed upon America. Food for fuel, stupid. Plus it is wasting billions of gallons of water.
The biggest "farce" is the idea that the food supply is diminished due to biofuel production.
Sad I have to repeat this again.... and you can check all this out for yourself.
80% of the total US corn production is used for livestock feed. Also, of the total US corn production, 40% is used for ethanol production. The human consumption portion of the total corn production is NOT AFFECTED!
Of the corn that is fed to livestock, most of the starches in the corn just pass thru. Cattle use the lysine from the corn and do not digest the starches. The starches, are what is used for ethanol production. So..... why not use some of the corn production for ethanol and use the resulting Dried Distillers Grain, which is primarily lysine based protein that livestock can actually use, in livestock production. This reduces feedlot runoff wastes and provides a fuel for automotive use. There is no "waste", but in fact, there is greater utilization of the nation's corn production.
It does not "waste" billions of gallons of water. True, it uses a large amount of water, but most of it is recycled, and what does get evaporated into the atmosphere just returns to the normal water cycle that has gone on since the world began. Seems some think that the water used in biofuel production is forever lost. Sad the public school system did such a lousy job.