2 ms·
The trouble with corn is that its yield band is huge. Get a good growing year and suddenly you have twice as much as you need — and more than you can store, lea
by 9rx 1y ago
The trouble with corn is that its yield band is huge. Get a good growing year and suddenly you have twice as much as you need — and more than you can store, leaving it out to rot. Recapturing that energy as fuel instead of disappearing waste heat is a win and what corn-based ethanol was introduced for.
The trouble with humans is that they aren't very good at moderation. As soon as they see a little opportunity to do something good they take it to the extreme, to the point that it is no longer good.
- trollbridge 1y agoExcess corn crops in the 1800s were used to make (corn mash) whisky.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 1y agoThe other problem is that the equipment to turn corn into ethanol isn't free, either to buy or to maintain. It's not economical to leave it idle during poor yield years.
- 9rx 1y ago> It's not economical to leave it idle during poor yield years. Poor yield implies high prices. It is not economical for anything but to leave it idle. And, as you'd expect, when corn was expensive a few years ago many ethanol plants did shut down. For a short while around 2010, following a massive glut of corn through the early 2000s, the US government was paying ethanol producers to produce when corn was otherwise too expensive to work economically in an effort to jumpstart the industry. But those days are long behind us.