[Peace-discuss] Ethanol - is it really sustainable?

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary defined
*Oats:* A grain, which in England is generally given to horses,
but in Scotland appears to support the people.

- from the Meatingplace newsletter
As the federal government continues to press for more renewable fuels
production from grain-based ethanol, input prices will likely continue 
to increase
and cut into poultry companies' profit margins unless processors 
continue to raise prices,
Tom Elam, agricultural economist and president of FarmEcon LLC,
said during the National Turkey Federation's annual convention Sunday,
"We've entered a new plateau [for] feed costs," he said. "$5.50 per 
bushel corn could be the new norm."
To put the ethanol situation into perspective, Elam said that, according 
to his calculations,
 /a 20-gallon vehicle gas tank filled with E10, a 90 percent gasoline/10 
percent ethanol blend,
is comprised of enough corn to feed a 25-pound turkey or seven 
five-pound broilers.
/
He added that universal use of E85, or an 85 percent ethanol/15 percent 
gasoline blend,
in the United States would consume almost all of the world's grain supply.
To return grain prices to more manageable levels, Elam said either gas 
prices will have to
substantially drop or the government must change its energy policy.
"There is an unlimited market for ethanol if it is prices competitively 
with gasoline," he said.

President Bush in December signed into law the Energy Independence and 
Security Act of 2007,
which includes a 36 billion gallon renewable fuel mandate, to be 
achieved by 2022.

****
The ethanol craze in the USA has automobiles and people competing for 
grains.
Since now the price of food is linked to the price of Oil, poor 
countries who
lack the economic clout to compete with automobiles are unable to buy 
grains.

There is money channeled through outfits like the FAO, but the rising 
cost of grains due
to ethanol production has more than doubled grain prices already and the 
same amount of
money buys less than half as much grain to send to the starving people 
of the world.

There are implications that go deeper than the price of food worldwide which
is bound to rise, as grain prices force ripples in all directions.

***
Every so many years, agriculture in the US experiences a drought.  Drought
cycles have been documented for millennia.  We have had
a few pretty strong droughts in the recent past.  Nationwide losses from 
the U.S. drought of
1988 exceeded $40 billion,exceeding the losses caused by Hurricane 
Andrew in 1992,
the Mississippi River floods of 1993, and the San Francisco earthquake 
in 1989.
In some areas of the world, the effects of drought can be far more severe.
In the Horn of Africa the 1984--1985 drought led to a famine which 
killed 750,000 people.
The seven year DustBowl drought of the 1930s is considered to be a short 
drought as droughts go.
We are actually due for a drought in 2008. 






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