Why are we using food for fuel?

You use food for fuel because you want stable food prices. Agriculture is insanely volatile on the production end, read weather, so if you want to make sure that you have enough planted any given year that if the yield is piss poor you still have enough float in the supply that prices don't spike to hell and gone. If you want to do that, you have to plant far more on an average year than you can use for food purposes just in case the harvest doesn't pan out(corn grows once a year, you can't just plug more in if the rain doesn't fall). If you plant far more an an average year than you can use for food, and all it gets used for is food, then prices tank and people stop planting it. So you need useful dumps that suck up the surplus planted in the interest of global food price stability. That's ethanol boys.
 
Farm Boy said:
You use food for fuel because you want stable food prices. Agriculture is insanely volatile on the production end, read weather, so if you want to make sure that you have enough planted any given year that if the yield is piss poor you still have enough float in the supply that prices don't spike to hell and gone. If you want to do that, you have to plant far more on an average year than you can use for food purposes just in case the harvest doesn't pan out(corn grows once a year, you can't just plug more in if the rain doesn't fall). If you plant far more an an average year than you can use for food, and all it gets used for is food, then prices tank and people stop planting it. So you need useful dumps that suck up the surplus planted in the interest of global food price stability. That's ethanol boys.
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Psh, just turn the extra food into candy and feed it to people.
 
To answer the OP:

We're using food for fuel because we're at risk of running into an energy crisis in the future, and so there's currently planning going on to reduce the negative effects of this crisis.

Biofuels are one putatively viable source of alternative energy for transportation. The other major theoretical source is switching to electric (or hydrogen, same thing, really) vehicles.

The problem was a lack of infrastructure and use for the EtOH, and there was little incentive to create infrastructure and uses for EtOH, because fuel is still cheaper. Therefore, the EtOH was subsidized with the understanding that corn would be in the initial source of EtOH ("food for fuel"). These subsidies are designed to phase out, but also buy time creating a market to use EtOH. Once there's infrastructure to use and distribute EtOH, then "market innovation" is intended to provide other sources of EtOH based on feasibility and affordability. And then, when fuel prices rise, EtOH will be more primed to be available as an alternative.

It's an attempt at foresight and also is "running an experiment" on one type of alternative energy, because when it comes to innovation the trick is to run a lot of different experiments and then let the results dictate the winners.
 
Direct ethanol subsidies from the federal government did expire. They're not in play. There are still some mandates going on about how much to use in that are in play.

warpus said:
A bit of a tangent, but I wish we would stop using corn as a source of sugar. It's really not very healthy and doesn't taste as good either.
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Refined sugar in general simply isn't good for you. It doesn't matter if it comes from corn, or sugar beets, or sugar cane. Refined sugar is unhealthy.

There was a pretty good study a couple years ago that raised concerns that HFCS was worse to ingest than refined sugar cane. The follow up study, by the same people, concluded that yes it's still bad for you, but eating sugar cane is functionally just as bad(with one caveat that HFCS may be a bit harder on the teeth if you don't brush properly). Taste is taste. If one prefers a different sweetener, it's available. They still have that "throwback" soda in Walmart and all that.
 
The reason why ethanol is big is because the corn lobby is hilariously overpowered. My minivan can take E85 and for a few months, I fueled up with it (cost 30 cents less than Regular) until I started noticing my car was running awful with it and I was fueling up more often anyway.

As a fuel for vehicles, it isn't that effective, nor is it "green" given the high amount of chemicals and oil you still need to use to get ethanol to market. For instance, you can't transport ethanol in existing for gas/oil, meaning you're going to have to use trucks which certainly do not run on E85.
 
Sonereal said:
The reason why ethanol is big is because the corn lobby is hilariously overpowered. My minivan can take E85 and for a few months, I fueled up with it (cost 30 cents less than Regular) until I started noticing my car was running awful with it and I was fueling up more often anyway.

As a fuel for vehicles, it isn't that effective, nor is it "green" given the high amount of chemicals and oil you still need to use to get ethanol to market. For instance, you can't transport ethanol in existing for gas/oil, meaning you're going to have to use trucks which certainly do not run on E85.
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Most semi-tractor trailer "trucks" run on diesel. They could, and certainly do use some, bio-diesel made generally from soybeans. People tend to overestimate the amount of chemicals that go on corn fields. Or they look at examples of corn farming in the 1970s with general purpose pesticides not commonly in use anymore.

Ethanol burns a little cleaner in a car than gasoline. It isn't quite as energy dense - it will decrease mileage somewhat relative to volume in the tank.
 
Huh, they're really expired? I thought they were supposed to phase out. What's the (mandated) reason for all of our EtOH production, then?
 
El_Machinae said:
Huh, they're really expired? I thought they were supposed to phase out. What's the (mandated) reason for all of our EtOH production, then?
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They may be phasing out, I'd have to look it up again. The mandates pertain to requiring a certain percentage of fuel be produced from bio-sources, most commonly ethanol. Which amounts to a similar result, but without the direct pricing support. You could look up ADM's building patterns over the last year or so and see the carnage of cancelled contracts regarding expanding infrastructure for ethanol production if you are interested.

I would assume the reason for the mandates is pretty much unchanged. Ethanol is far closer to competitive now than it was in the 1970s when the hubub all started but it, like every other energy source so far, fails to compete with the also-subsidized industries of fossil fuels.
 
Currently 1/3 of the corn crop is mandated to be made into Ethanol.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201208/s3564828.htm
Analysts say grain prices could fall if the drought-stricken United States reduces its ethanol mandate.

The mandate means that more than a third of corn produced in the US goes into making ethanol.

But with drought ruining the country's crops and pushing corn prices up, livestock farmers want the mandate reduced.
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Here is a good article on the Ethanol Mandate problem.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-knittel/ethanol-mandate-crisis_b_1833609.html
 
In today's world food and fuel are both essential resources to most people, so tying their prices together doesn't matter much. Most people in the industrialized world need both food and fuel, and can't live and work without either. In poorer countries it's a different story of course, but those aren't the places where biofuels are being produced.

Moreover, the production of ethanol is a way to convert a perishable commodity into a nonperishable, so to some degree the production of ethanol must be weighed against not producing anything, rather than the production of food that goes to market; corn must be sold cheep enough so that it is sold before it spoils, but ethanol can be warehoused and so can give more incentive for farming and therefor more corps that otherwise wouldn't be there.
 
It seems like the EU has gotten the decision right, or i planning to get the decision right. :thumbsup:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-eu-biofuels-idUSBRE8890SJ20120910
The draft rules, which will need the approval of EU governments and lawmakers, represent a major shift in Europe's much-criticized biofuel policy and a tacit admission by policymakers that the EU's 2020 biofuel target was flawed from the outset.

The plans also include a promise to end all public subsidies for crop-based biofuels after the current legislation expires in 2020, effectively ensuring the decline of a European sector now estimated to be worth 17 billion euros ($21.7 billion) a year.

"The (European) Commission is of the view that in the period after 2020, biofuels should only be subsidized if they lead to substantial greenhouse gas savings... and are not produced from crops used for food and feed," the draft said.

The International Council on Clean Transportation has predicted that any emissions savings from the EU's biofuel policy are likely to come from ethanol, while crop-based biodiesel has a worse carbon footprint than normal diesel.
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The biofuel I'm in favor of is biomass burning. The idea is that a region of land is allowed to grow wild and then the woody biomass is harvested for electricity production. Because the land is allowed to grow wild, it will allow biodiversity benefits to the plants and animals of the area and this increased biodiversity would allow a maximum level of biomass production. The side effect, obviously is that it would naturally select against large woody plants over time.

It's only an additional source of energy: it would not allow us to give up fossil fuels. It would buy time, though, for nuclear and solar to continue catching up. I wish biochar would become viable though. It seems like a win/win/lose (energy, carbon sequestration, biodiversity threats) which is where we're at for most of our options these days.

Most of us were small kids (or unborn) when the 1992 Rio Convention presented enough evidence that we should be worried about greenhouse gases. The baby-boomers have had more than 20 years to move towards addressing this problem. That decade, oil averaged about $30 per barrel. Last decade, ~$50. This decade will likely average over $100. Worried about the poor people and their food? Well, a tripling of fuel prices will contribute to that.
 
El_Machinae said:
The biofuel I'm in favor of is biomass burning. The idea is that a region of land is allowed to grow wild and then the woody biomass is harvested for electricity production. Because the land is allowed to grow wild, it will allow biodiversity benefits to the plants and animals of the area and this increased biodiversity would allow a maximum level of biomass production. The side effect, obviously is that it would naturally select against large woody plants over time.

It's only an additional source of energy: it would not allow us to give up fossil fuels. It would buy time, though, for nuclear and solar to continue catching up. I wish biochar would become viable though. It seems like a win/win/lose (energy, carbon sequestration, biodiversity threats) which is where we're at for most of our options these days.

Most of us were small kids (or unborn) when the 1992 Rio Convention presented enough evidence that we should be worried about greenhouse gases. The baby-boomers have had more than 20 years to move towards addressing this problem. That decade, oil averaged about $30 per barrel. Last decade, ~$50. This decade will likely average over $100. Worried about the poor people and their food? Well, a tripling of fuel prices will contribute to that.
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No crap. But it isn't the popular soundbite for the "green minded." It's one of the main points that regularly causes me to lose increments of faith in the mental competence of my fellow man.

Zelig said:
Psh, just turn the extra food into candy and feed it to people.
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Just realized I forgot to give you +2 points for this. :D
 
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