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I read the whole article and I still don't see how Big Ag misled anyone. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems that the author is trying to differentiate betw

I read the whole article and I still don't see how Big Ag misled anyone. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems that the author is trying to differentiate between growing corn for food vs growing the same corn for ethanol. I assume the entire reason the lobby exists is that farmers want to grow corn for food and ethanol. But the researcher lost interest before proving anything around there. Maybe ethanol is actually worse, but I didn't see any evidence in this article. Instead, this article is a master class in the red herring fallacy. Every person on the 'wrong' side of the issue has their sordid past and connections exposed, whether it's their association with Wall Street or the fact that they're a sex offender. Nevermind the science, the author just assumes that because the reader (presumably) has a certain political persuasion denigrating the other side will serve as a convincing argument.

lelandbatey 1y ago
The corn varieties grown for industrial ethanol production are mutually exclusive with the corn varieties grown for human consumption; you cannot use one for the other. They might as well be corn vs soy beans.
- in_cahoots 1y ago
  I assumed something similar. But the author presents this as some sort of trump card, as if the agriculture industry was suggesting farmers grow corn for ethanol instead of for food. And then the researcher lost interest before he could be proven right. Maybe he actually was right, but there's no evidence here.
- giantg2 1y ago
  I believe they grow field corn for animal feed as well as for ethanol. Technically some processed foods also use field corn. While there are a number of varieties of field corn, I don't believe any are exclusive to ethanol production and could be used in other capacities.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    > I believe they grow field corn for animal feed as well as for ethanol. I grow corn. I grow it to be sold. Whatever the buyer decides to do with it — be that feed it to animals, turn it into tortilla chips, make sweeteners, create plastic for 3D printers, produce ethanol, or even burn it in their furnace — is up to them.
- somat 1y ago
  Fun fact: corn farmers almost always rotate with soybeans to replenish the nitrogen in the soil. Also, most corn (and soybeans) is for animal food anyway. Very little of the corn grown in the US is for human consumption. My understanding(not a corn farmer but have watched a show by one on youtube) is the farmer will harvest the corn then dry and store it, selling over the course of a year or two, the ethanol plant is sort of the fallback option when they need to get rid if it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSB-8dn3CkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSB-8dn3CkI Personally, I am in the rapeseed bandwagon. Ethanol is not a very good fuel, better to be growing bio-diesel
  - kwk1 1y ago
    > little of the corn grown in the US is for human consumption. Yup, just as a point of reference, something like 70% of Illinois corn goes straight into Illinois hogs.
- 9rx 1y ago
  > The corn varieties grown for industrial ethanol production are mutually exclusive with the corn varieties grown for human consumption Not exactly. You wouldn't normally eat "industrial ethanol corn" off the cob, which is what you are probably trying to suggest, but it is often used in other corn-based food like tortilla chips, and, of course, its most infamous use: High-fructose corn syrup.
sien 1y ago
The EU does something impressively crazy burning 23 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2021. https://unece.org/media/press/372591 https://unece.org/media/press/372591 It's labeled as 'renewable' electricity.
- voxelghost 1y ago
  It's labeled 'renewable energy' (not electricity), if wood pellets are sourced from sustainable renewable forest growth. What is your argument?
  - knappe 1y ago
    That it isn't sustainable. As Eating the Earth points out, by growing trees to then cut them down again we're not accounting for the cost of using that same forested land for anything else, like a forest which is a great carbon sink. Instead burning wood pellets is considered renewable until you consider the cost of using that land for something else in which case it isn't a renewal resource.
    - lazide 1y ago
      That makes no sense with the definition of ‘renewable’. Trees grow again. They are renewed. What is this junk?
      - rini17 1y ago
        The soil gets depleted when biomass is consistently taken away. It might be possible to avoid it but that's cost center.
        lazide 1y ago
        Carbon comes from the atmosphere in this scenario. Crops can be rotated. Trees can be non-clear cut when harvested. None of this changes the definition of renewable.
knappe 1y ago
This is an excerpt from Eating the Earth. The entire point of the book is that when we consider land use, we're not accounting for other uses for that same land (or how other land would be used) because the land, prior to Searchinger's work in the field all calculations did not consider this factor. Even after Searchinger published their work showing the flaws on land use, it was often ignored. If you find the excerpt underwhelming, go read the book. I will warn you that in some ways it feels more like a memoir of Searchinger's life than a book on land use considerations, but, despite that, it still does a great job of showing how land use is still not being accounted for in all situations. I finished Eating the Earth last week and found it rather interesting to read.
- verisimi 1y ago
  > If you find the excerpt underwhelming, go read the book ... and be overwhelming underwhelmed?
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Corn and most ag subsidies are using taxpayer money for corporate welfare for mostly mega farming consortia with a smattering of medium and smaller farmers, who also can't exist in the rigged market without welfare. 5% of all US land, not just arable land, ALL land is used for mostly cow corn. It's absolute insanity. And then there's the federal US sugar cartel keeping prices artificially (no pun intended) high.
- AngryData 1y ago
  Crop subsidies are certainly poorly applied and poorly distributed, but we also need to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Crop subsidization is the only alternative to the granary system, which while decent still resulted in repeated famines for thousands of years basically everywhere, while no country that has decent crop subsidization ever has famine. Crop subsidization in general makes granaries 90% obsolete because you always aim to over produce crops and so even in bad years you still produce enough food despite the unexpectedly low yields. It also makes food prices WAY more stable so that a bad July doesn't cause wheat prices to double because there isn't enough to satisfy demand. It is really the only way to ensure you always produce extra food in a capitalist economy because otherwise margins are only like 2% while crop yields can swing 30% even without extraordinary weather events or storm damage. I do want to note though that corn is possibly one of the least useful crops to subsidize, it is one of the most robust and predictable food crops we grow, which is why so much of it is grown despite a large fraction of it's energy going into worthless stalk. More delicate crops that have larger and less predictable yield swings, like wheat, or something with delicate fruits that can't be stored long, likely deserve the majority of subsidization money that currently goes towards corn.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    The problem is, you almost always end up with a massive amount of overproduction. That either ends up diverted into fuel production, which raises ethical concerns on one side and prolongs the use of fossil fuels because it's "effectively free" and so stops people from switching over to electric mobility on the other side. And on top of that, many Western countries routinely dump their overproduction on Africa, where as a result of all that free aid, local food production industry has all but vanished. Up until the '00s, Simbabwe was known as "Africa's corn chamber" - that is long gone now.
scaramanga 1y ago
Yeah, the details are scattered through the article, so you've got to pay close attention. It says that the LCA that the industry produced ignored the carbon intensivity of draining wetland, creating more farmland, and fertilizing it. When that's accounted for (last 2 paragraphs, the bit of hagiography on Searchinger), biofuels isn't a climate policy anymore. Using an LCA that ignores the carbon emissions you're creating, misleads people, whether done on purpose or not. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861 "These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years"
hibikir 1y ago
It's also not the same corn varieties for different uses. Most of what we'd feed humans would be sweet corn, and that's not ideal for ethanol, or animal feed. If you look at total acreage planted, sweet corn is just 1% of the total crop.
lithos 1y ago
There are some loose numbers tosed around like agricultural ethanol being 2x the carbon emissions of big oil. While not circled around to properly destroying a wetland for farming, is also destroying a far more permanent carbon sink than a farm. ----- IMO the article is tripping over itself to tell a story and cares about that story far more than factual information. It could even help for some types of people, even if it's likely painful for the people reading from here.

lelandbatey 1y ago

The corn varieties grown for industrial ethanol production are mutually exclusive with the corn varieties grown for human consumption; you cannot use one for the other. They might as well be corn vs soy beans.

in_cahoots 1y ago
I assumed something similar. But the author presents this as some sort of trump card, as if the agriculture industry was suggesting farmers grow corn for ethanol instead of for food. And then the researcher lost interest before he could be proven right. Maybe he actually was right, but there's no evidence here.
giantg2 1y ago
I believe they grow field corn for animal feed as well as for ethanol. Technically some processed foods also use field corn. While there are a number of varieties of field corn, I don't believe any are exclusive to ethanol production and could be used in other capacities.
- 9rx 1y ago
  > I believe they grow field corn for animal feed as well as for ethanol. I grow corn. I grow it to be sold. Whatever the buyer decides to do with it — be that feed it to animals, turn it into tortilla chips, make sweeteners, create plastic for 3D printers, produce ethanol, or even burn it in their furnace — is up to them.
somat 1y ago
Fun fact: corn farmers almost always rotate with soybeans to replenish the nitrogen in the soil. Also, most corn (and soybeans) is for animal food anyway. Very little of the corn grown in the US is for human consumption. My understanding(not a corn farmer but have watched a show by one on youtube) is the farmer will harvest the corn then dry and store it, selling over the course of a year or two, the ethanol plant is sort of the fallback option when they need to get rid if it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSB-8dn3CkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSB-8dn3CkI Personally, I am in the rapeseed bandwagon. Ethanol is not a very good fuel, better to be growing bio-diesel
- kwk1 1y ago
  > little of the corn grown in the US is for human consumption. Yup, just as a point of reference, something like 70% of Illinois corn goes straight into Illinois hogs.
9rx 1y ago
> The corn varieties grown for industrial ethanol production are mutually exclusive with the corn varieties grown for human consumption Not exactly. You wouldn't normally eat "industrial ethanol corn" off the cob, which is what you are probably trying to suggest, but it is often used in other corn-based food like tortilla chips, and, of course, its most infamous use: High-fructose corn syrup.

sien 1y ago

The EU does something impressively crazy burning 23 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2021. https://unece.org/media/press/372591 https://unece.org/media/press/372591 It's labeled as 'renewable' electricity.

voxelghost 1y ago
It's labeled 'renewable energy' (not electricity), if wood pellets are sourced from sustainable renewable forest growth. What is your argument?
- knappe 1y ago
  That it isn't sustainable. As Eating the Earth points out, by growing trees to then cut them down again we're not accounting for the cost of using that same forested land for anything else, like a forest which is a great carbon sink. Instead burning wood pellets is considered renewable until you consider the cost of using that land for something else in which case it isn't a renewal resource.
  - lazide 1y ago
    That makes no sense with the definition of ‘renewable’. Trees grow again. They are renewed. What is this junk?
    - rini17 1y ago
      The soil gets depleted when biomass is consistently taken away. It might be possible to avoid it but that's cost center.
      - lazide 1y ago
        Carbon comes from the atmosphere in this scenario. Crops can be rotated. Trees can be non-clear cut when harvested. None of this changes the definition of renewable.

knappe 1y ago

This is an excerpt from Eating the Earth. The entire point of the book is that when we consider land use, we're not accounting for other uses for that same land (or how other land would be used) because the land, prior to Searchinger's work in the field all calculations did not consider this factor. Even after Searchinger published their work showing the flaws on land use, it was often ignored. If you find the excerpt underwhelming, go read the book. I will warn you that in some ways it feels more like a memoir of Searchinger's life than a book on land use considerations, but, despite that, it still does a great job of showing how land use is still not being accounted for in all situations. I finished Eating the Earth last week and found it rather interesting to read.

verisimi 1y ago
> If you find the excerpt underwhelming, go read the book ... and be overwhelming underwhelmed?

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Corn and most ag subsidies are using taxpayer money for corporate welfare for mostly mega farming consortia with a smattering of medium and smaller farmers, who also can't exist in the rigged market without welfare. 5% of all US land, not just arable land, ALL land is used for mostly cow corn. It's absolute insanity. And then there's the federal US sugar cartel keeping prices artificially (no pun intended) high.

AngryData 1y ago
Crop subsidies are certainly poorly applied and poorly distributed, but we also need to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Crop subsidization is the only alternative to the granary system, which while decent still resulted in repeated famines for thousands of years basically everywhere, while no country that has decent crop subsidization ever has famine. Crop subsidization in general makes granaries 90% obsolete because you always aim to over produce crops and so even in bad years you still produce enough food despite the unexpectedly low yields. It also makes food prices WAY more stable so that a bad July doesn't cause wheat prices to double because there isn't enough to satisfy demand. It is really the only way to ensure you always produce extra food in a capitalist economy because otherwise margins are only like 2% while crop yields can swing 30% even without extraordinary weather events or storm damage. I do want to note though that corn is possibly one of the least useful crops to subsidize, it is one of the most robust and predictable food crops we grow, which is why so much of it is grown despite a large fraction of it's energy going into worthless stalk. More delicate crops that have larger and less predictable yield swings, like wheat, or something with delicate fruits that can't be stored long, likely deserve the majority of subsidization money that currently goes towards corn.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  The problem is, you almost always end up with a massive amount of overproduction. That either ends up diverted into fuel production, which raises ethical concerns on one side and prolongs the use of fossil fuels because it's "effectively free" and so stops people from switching over to electric mobility on the other side. And on top of that, many Western countries routinely dump their overproduction on Africa, where as a result of all that free aid, local food production industry has all but vanished. Up until the '00s, Simbabwe was known as "Africa's corn chamber" - that is long gone now.

scaramanga 1y ago

Yeah, the details are scattered through the article, so you've got to pay close attention. It says that the LCA that the industry produced ignored the carbon intensivity of draining wetland, creating more farmland, and fertilizing it. When that's accounted for (last 2 paragraphs, the bit of hagiography on Searchinger), biofuels isn't a climate policy anymore. Using an LCA that ignores the carbon emissions you're creating, misleads people, whether done on purpose or not. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861 "These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years"

hibikir 1y ago

It's also not the same corn varieties for different uses. Most of what we'd feed humans would be sweet corn, and that's not ideal for ethanol, or animal feed. If you look at total acreage planted, sweet corn is just 1% of the total crop.

lithos 1y ago

There are some loose numbers tosed around like agricultural ethanol being 2x the carbon emissions of big oil. While not circled around to properly destroying a wetland for farming, is also destroying a far more permanent carbon sink than a farm. ----- IMO the article is tripping over itself to tell a story and cares about that story far more than factual information. It could even help for some types of people, even if it's likely painful for the people reading from here.