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In my area of the US, a good percentage of the majority crop (corn) goes to produce alcohol to burn as fuel. So we pour poisons and fertilizer on the land and b
by kraussvonespy 6y ago
In my area of the US, a good percentage of the majority crop (corn) goes to produce alcohol to burn as fuel. So we pour poisons and fertilizer on the land and burn huge amounts of petroleum to produce a seriously inefficient crop to supplement an energy source that doesn't need supplementing. Just to give farmers something to do and to keep the CEOs of the chemical companies in yachts and private jets.
This kind of reminds me of the Soviet whaling program that almost wiped out entire species of whales for no reason other than the 5 year plan said that they needed to continue whaling.
- godtoldmetodoit 6y agoEthanol is such a disaster. Is there any legitimate reason for ethanol production to be a thing outside of subsidizing mega farmers? Can we just cut them checks instead?
- kraussvonespy 6y agoIf you peel back all of the propaganda, no, there's no legitimate reason to produce ethanol. It's just a way to continue to feed money into the farming-industrial complex (farmers, chemical companies, implement companies, seed companies, ethanol manufacturers, etc.) Even if the crop that was grown to make ethanol was less stupid (sugar beets for example), it still wouldn't make much sense.
- kraussvonespy 6y agoFor the record, I just found a reference that states that ~40% of corn grown in the US gets turned into ethanol. 40%. We consume somewhere between a half a gallon and a full gallon of petroleum (between fuel for the machines, production of chemicals, etc.) for every gallon of ethanol we get out of the process. There is no justification for this other than make-work for farmers, chemical companies and the whole ethanol-industrial complex.