7 ms·

The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a

by lutorm 12y ago

The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.

analog31 12y ago
Not to mention the greenhouse footprint of cattle farming. You can't really feed more people -- at least in the US -- because we already consume food in quantities that are arguably toxic. But you could turn the corn fields over to other kinds of crops. Disclaimer: I eat meat, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. Each side ( and oh boy are there sides ) cherry picks their own figures. I know that in Texas, the biggest reason people let family land that could be used for cow-farming go is taxation - there are Land Trusts that allow you to keep nominal control of the land while agreeing never to use it productively again, to get a tax abatement. Also, the lyrics to James McMurty's "South Dakota" from the new record are really interesting on this subject. I mean - we call noodging "eat your vegetables". I like vegetables just fine, but I like meat, too. I doubt the results of any of the analyses since anybody who gets paid to do the work will probably be biased by who pays them. And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Using acres of Western Kansas for grazing seems pretty low-impact relative to that.
  - Inception 12y ago
    >>It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. It is hard to say for certain, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the inputs required to raise cattle. Water, grain, antibiotics, petroleum based fuels to plant, harvest and transport the grain, petroleum based fertilizers to aid in growing the grain, and herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted organisms (I'm sure I missed something). Not to mention a few of the by-products such as manure and chemical run-off, methane emissions, and soil erosion (from conventional agriculture practices). The above describes a CAFO, which is where the majority of beef comes from. Managed intensive rotational grazing would be my preferred alternative, but there still wouldn't be enough land available to keep up with our consumption. >>And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Can you please site some of the sources that you are using to determine that vegetable farmers are receiving more subsidies than any other industry? I assume you meant "the biggest receivers of any sort of Agriculture subsidy", but I still don't think that is right.
    - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
      But I suspect that, dependent on the land in question, those inputs may vary widely. Nothing that can make you a modern living can be done with no footprint. But I am pretty sure just from examples of relatives and friends that this will definitely vary. Does that scale? Probably not well. But people have been ranching - even dryland ranching - since before fossil fuels were a serious consideration. Ever see the "ranches" towards Laredo in South Texas? My goodness, that is some rough country. Every living thing there is somehow armed or very, very fast. Here is why I say these things - my piano teacher's father in Northeast Oklahoma was one of the ones who reintroduced bison onto his land. Cattle are different from bison, but not that different. There's a Vast ocean of grass from the Rio Grande well into Canada, and four-legged critters eating it, making food is remarkably efficient. I can indeed point you to the book "Cadillac Desert" which does a rough sketch, with respect to the Central Valley farmers. This doesn't make them bad people. It just means these things are messy. We call the noodge "eat your vegetables" because it's a cliche. I eat good vegetables with great gusto these days; my taste has matured. But all things in balance.
maratd 12y ago
> You could feed way more people if you ate the corn We're already eating too much corn, no thank you. If you check the label on the packaged goods you buy, corn is pretty much in all of them in one form or another. We should grow less corn, let the cows eat grass, and have people eat people food (which might occasionally include a corn on the cob).
- lutorm 12y ago
  I agree with all those points. All I'm saying is that if you argue that using corn ethanol as fuel is bad because it's "burning food", then you have to confront all the other ways in which the agricultural system is not really about making food.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    cattle food is going into the food-system as a subsidy for human food... ie it is making high-quality proteing cheaper.... on the other hand, ethanol just makes people food more expensive....and it sucks as a fuel anyway (engineering reasons)...
    - bcg1 12y ago
      sucks because of "engineering reasons" - wow, thanks for the comment Corn-fed beef is not high-quality protein, it is usually feed lot beef laced with antibiotics, andreline and cortisol.
  - kissickas 12y ago
    Additionally, sugarcane-derived ethanol is far more efficient than the corn-based stuff we use in the US. I've seen numbers ranging from 3x to more than 7x more efficient than corn-based ethanol, which would mean that the use of ethanol could actually be a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, unlike what we get from using corn. No reason to demonize sustainable, renewable fuel - instead, we should look at the agriculture subsidies that "protect our farmers" and see how they're hurting everyone (including the farmers, affected arguably more than the rest of us by global warming) in the long run.
SixSigma 12y ago
Additional craziness, the subsidy means it's cheaper to buy corn than grow it! Thus making mixed agriculture farms rarer. So instead of using cow slurry to fertilise crops the US uses oil based fertiliser and has millions of gallons of cow slurry in lagoons.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I'm under the impression that the great majority of manure ends up spread on fields or sold to consumers. I guess you aren't saying it is being stored in lagoons forever, where does it go after sitting in a lagoon if it is not used as an amendment?
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
It's not like we're really short on food. People worldwide who can't eat, can't eat because they live in something like a failed state. If you can't have enough stability to be on the global finance network, you're left pretty far behind.
maxerickson 12y ago
Ethanol accounts for a large share of US corn consumption: http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx The chart is hard to read exact numbers from, there is a table available at the second link. 2008 was the last year that feed accounted for more than 1/2 of corn use (it still accounts for nearly 1/2 today, I'm not trying to be pedantic there, just adding information). Ethanol is clearly a big enough portion of consumption to be impacting the price of corn used for food, which isn't the same thing as burning edible food, but it's a reason to carefully consider what incentives are created by various government programs.

by lutorm 12y ago

analog31 12y ago

Not to mention the greenhouse footprint of cattle farming. You can't really feed more people -- at least in the US -- because we already consume food in quantities that are arguably toxic. But you could turn the corn fields over to other kinds of crops. Disclaimer: I eat meat, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago
It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. Each side ( and oh boy are there sides ) cherry picks their own figures. I know that in Texas, the biggest reason people let family land that could be used for cow-farming go is taxation - there are Land Trusts that allow you to keep nominal control of the land while agreeing never to use it productively again, to get a tax abatement. Also, the lyrics to James McMurty's "South Dakota" from the new record are really interesting on this subject. I mean - we call noodging "eat your vegetables". I like vegetables just fine, but I like meat, too. I doubt the results of any of the analyses since anybody who gets paid to do the work will probably be biased by who pays them. And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Using acres of Western Kansas for grazing seems pretty low-impact relative to that.
- Inception 12y ago
  >>It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. It is hard to say for certain, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the inputs required to raise cattle. Water, grain, antibiotics, petroleum based fuels to plant, harvest and transport the grain, petroleum based fertilizers to aid in growing the grain, and herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted organisms (I'm sure I missed something). Not to mention a few of the by-products such as manure and chemical run-off, methane emissions, and soil erosion (from conventional agriculture practices). The above describes a CAFO, which is where the majority of beef comes from. Managed intensive rotational grazing would be my preferred alternative, but there still wouldn't be enough land available to keep up with our consumption. >>And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Can you please site some of the sources that you are using to determine that vegetable farmers are receiving more subsidies than any other industry? I assume you meant "the biggest receivers of any sort of Agriculture subsidy", but I still don't think that is right.
  - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
    But I suspect that, dependent on the land in question, those inputs may vary widely. Nothing that can make you a modern living can be done with no footprint. But I am pretty sure just from examples of relatives and friends that this will definitely vary. Does that scale? Probably not well. But people have been ranching - even dryland ranching - since before fossil fuels were a serious consideration. Ever see the "ranches" towards Laredo in South Texas? My goodness, that is some rough country. Every living thing there is somehow armed or very, very fast. Here is why I say these things - my piano teacher's father in Northeast Oklahoma was one of the ones who reintroduced bison onto his land. Cattle are different from bison, but not that different. There's a Vast ocean of grass from the Rio Grande well into Canada, and four-legged critters eating it, making food is remarkably efficient. I can indeed point you to the book "Cadillac Desert" which does a rough sketch, with respect to the Central Valley farmers. This doesn't make them bad people. It just means these things are messy. We call the noodge "eat your vegetables" because it's a cliche. I eat good vegetables with great gusto these days; my taste has matured. But all things in balance.

maratd 12y ago

> You could feed way more people if you ate the corn We're already eating too much corn, no thank you. If you check the label on the packaged goods you buy, corn is pretty much in all of them in one form or another. We should grow less corn, let the cows eat grass, and have people eat people food (which might occasionally include a corn on the cob).

lutorm 12y ago
I agree with all those points. All I'm saying is that if you argue that using corn ethanol as fuel is bad because it's "burning food", then you have to confront all the other ways in which the agricultural system is not really about making food.
- 001sky 12y ago
  cattle food is going into the food-system as a subsidy for human food... ie it is making high-quality proteing cheaper.... on the other hand, ethanol just makes people food more expensive....and it sucks as a fuel anyway (engineering reasons)...
  - bcg1 12y ago
    sucks because of "engineering reasons" - wow, thanks for the comment Corn-fed beef is not high-quality protein, it is usually feed lot beef laced with antibiotics, andreline and cortisol.
- kissickas 12y ago
  Additionally, sugarcane-derived ethanol is far more efficient than the corn-based stuff we use in the US. I've seen numbers ranging from 3x to more than 7x more efficient than corn-based ethanol, which would mean that the use of ethanol could actually be a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, unlike what we get from using corn. No reason to demonize sustainable, renewable fuel - instead, we should look at the agriculture subsidies that "protect our farmers" and see how they're hurting everyone (including the farmers, affected arguably more than the rest of us by global warming) in the long run.

SixSigma 12y ago

Additional craziness, the subsidy means it's cheaper to buy corn than grow it! Thus making mixed agriculture farms rarer. So instead of using cow slurry to fertilise crops the US uses oil based fertiliser and has millions of gallons of cow slurry in lagoons.

maxerickson 12y ago
I'm under the impression that the great majority of manure ends up spread on fields or sold to consumers. I guess you aren't saying it is being stored in lagoons forever, where does it go after sitting in a lagoon if it is not used as an amendment?

ArkyBeagle 12y ago

It's not like we're really short on food. People worldwide who can't eat, can't eat because they live in something like a failed state. If you can't have enough stability to be on the global finance network, you're left pretty far behind.

maxerickson 12y ago

Ethanol accounts for a large share of US corn consumption: http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx The chart is hard to read exact numbers from, there is a table available at the second link. 2008 was the last year that feed accounted for more than 1/2 of corn use (it still accounts for nearly 1/2 today, I'm not trying to be pedantic there, just adding information). Ethanol is clearly a big enough portion of consumption to be impacting the price of corn used for food, which isn't the same thing as burning edible food, but it's a reason to carefully consider what incentives are created by various government programs.