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The food vs. fuel argument is total propaganda anyhow. As mentioned above, most US corn is used for cattle feed ... and incidentally is only DIVERTED for ethan
by bcg1 12y ago
The food vs. fuel argument is total propaganda anyhow. As mentioned above, most US corn is used for cattle feed ... and incidentally is only DIVERTED for ethanol production. Even if it wasn't, over 90% of the corn produced in the US is GMO corn that is probably unfit for human consumption anyhow (I suspect GMOs are the tobacco of the 21st century, but only time will tell).
The by-product of large-scale ethanol production is large amounts of dried distillers grains (DDGS). The starch that is consumed during distillation is not nutritional for the cows anyhow, and the DDGS are sold as a HIGH QUALITY feed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains).
That said, large scale ethanol production is not the best way to produce fuel, especially when it could be quite easily distilled on site where it is harvested to greatly decrease the energy input for producing the fuel. It is not a coincidence that many large ethanol plants are owned by oil companies... this would be like Microsoft buying Red Hat, adding dependencies on ActiveX to the kernel, and then claiming that their studies show that Linux is total shit.
Also, whether or not you have a law, they'll still add ethanol to the gas to increase the octane and act as an oxygenator, so I agree that tax subsidies and mandates need to end... also wars, political corruption, the income tax, and mass surveillance, but you have to start somewhere I guess.