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That's because it makes no sense. The US consumes around 12 billion bushels of corn per year. Yes, some of that may be wasteful (corn syrup etc). But trying to
by greedo 5y ago
That's because it makes no sense. The US consumes around 12 billion bushels of corn per year. Yes, some of that may be wasteful (corn syrup etc). But trying to store 24 billion bushels of corn without loss is simply impossible. Each bushel is roughly 1.25 cubic feet, so 2 years would be 30B cf. Imagine a storage unit 2 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 300 feet tall.
- Retric 5y agoThe point is to feed people not cows or cars, so your estimate is significantly off base. A bushel of corn is 56 pounds. Assuming a very high 1lb of corn per person per day only gives 2 * 365 * 330 million / 56 * 1.25 = 5.4 billion cubic feet. Which still sounds insane except AT&T Stadium in Dallas is 0.1 billion cubic feet and cost only 1.3 billion to construct while including all sorts of stuff we don’t need. So roughly one building that size per state. Even if it was almost that expensive vs a more realistic 1/10th, the cost of corn + ethical subsides would hit that in roughly a decade and we would could then spend a 1 billion a year cooling the things while saving money. PS: Having just one building would look cool but would be a massive single point of failure. Also, you can store dry corn for quite a while even in non cryogenic conditions.