Comments on: Ethanol: The Smell of (easy) Money http://starphoenixbase.com/?p=276 Your portal to the world of the near future and the dangers that lie ahead Sat, 29 Sep 2012 22:38:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: David L. Brown http://starphoenixbase.com/?p=276&cpage=1#comment-269 David L. Brown Wed, 29 Nov 2006 20:44:50 +0000 http://starphoenixbase.com/?p=276#comment-269 Hi Val -- As the world lurches toward widespread famine, the fact that a major portion of the United States corn production is going to make fake gasoline should be deemed a criminal act. The forecast is that half our corn crop will be diverted to ethanol within a few years, and with the U.S. as the world's leading source of grain for export this will lead to an international crisis of untold proportions. How will our leaders respond when tens or hundreds of millions are starving and we have no grain to sell? Whatever bad names we are called, we will deserve them. Also, considering that agricultural exports are our country's largest contributor to the balance of trade, how will it affect our economy. China, for example, is the world's largest producers of hogs, and is fast becoming a major customer for U.S. corn. As American consumers continue to buy every gewgaw imaginable marked MADE IN CHINA, what will the Chinese do with all those dollars if they can't spend them for American grain. That market alone is vast and growing as the Chinese fall behind in domestic farm productivity and they have a trillion dollars or more to spend, but we are going to turn our backs on them. We will be viewed by the world sort of as pre-Revolutionary France viewed Marie Antoinette when she remarked that the starving masses should eat cake. And look what happened to her? There is an old saying, something about "when all about you are losing their heads" ... well, that's where she found herself. What will happen to the U.S. when corn is worth $4, $5, $6 or more a bushel and there are starving nations with dollars to spend? You can bet that the investors in those dozens of ethanol plants are not going to shut down just to "do the right thing," and probably the government will keep on subsidizing this atrocity. More to the point, corn at those prices will probably push ethanol above the cost of petroleum-based gasoline so the whole thing will end up having no benefit for anyone except those investors and the subsidized farmers who will be feeding the distilleries. This money doesn't just smell, it stinks. -- David Hi Val — As the world lurches toward widespread famine, the fact that a major portion of the United States corn production is going to make fake gasoline should be deemed a criminal act. The forecast is that half our corn crop will be diverted to ethanol within a few years, and with the U.S. as the world’s leading source of grain for export this will lead to an international crisis of untold proportions. How will our leaders respond when tens or hundreds of millions are starving and we have no grain to sell? Whatever bad names we are called, we will deserve them.

Also, considering that agricultural exports are our country’s largest contributor to the balance of trade, how will it affect our economy. China, for example, is the world’s largest producers of hogs, and is fast becoming a major customer for U.S. corn. As American consumers continue to buy every gewgaw imaginable marked MADE IN CHINA, what will the Chinese do with all those dollars if they can’t spend them for American grain. That market alone is vast and growing as the Chinese fall behind in domestic farm productivity and they have a trillion dollars or more to spend, but we are going to turn our backs on them.

We will be viewed by the world sort of as pre-Revolutionary France viewed Marie Antoinette when she remarked that the starving masses should eat cake. And look what happened to her? There is an old saying, something about “when all about you are losing their heads” … well, that’s where she found herself.

What will happen to the U.S. when corn is worth $4, $5, $6 or more a bushel and there are starving nations with dollars to spend? You can bet that the investors in those dozens of ethanol plants are not going to shut down just to “do the right thing,” and probably the government will keep on subsidizing this atrocity. More to the point, corn at those prices will probably push ethanol above the cost of petroleum-based gasoline so the whole thing will end up having no benefit for anyone except those investors and the subsidized farmers who will be feeding the distilleries. This money doesn’t just smell, it stinks. — David

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