One more thing I would like to point out on the corn- food-ethanol debate is
that making ethanol uses only the starch in corn. The protein is still there
and is used as a high quality feed, called dried distillers grains or DDG.
It is mostly feed to cattle. The most effecient ethanol plants have a feed
lot next to them and the solids are feed wet to the cattle saving the energy
usually used to dry the stuff. The cattle manure is used as a source of
methane for energy to run the ethanol plant. It still requires additional
energy, but every savings helps. There are other byproducts of the process
to, but my point is a lot of the corn still is used as food. The main study
the media likes to quote to discredit ethanol was done about 20 years ago
and is hopelessly out of date.

"william" wrote in message
news:Ezrgi.2194$s%.324@trnddc02...
One point to consider when you complain about the price of corn is, $2.00
corn cannot be produced without taxpayer funded price supports, This
morning we could contract corn for December 07' delivery at $3.38 and you
can cut about 30 cents off that for various quality discounts. A farmer is
not getting rich on $3 corn with the much higher input cost we have had in
the past few years. Actually he still needs good weather and careful
managment to make anything. Bottom line, corn is still going to cost the
consumer either at the store or in taxes.
Second point, it was never planned to replace gasoline, just one of many
alternate energy sources and none of them are cheap. The days of cheap
energy are gone and anything that uses energy is going to cost more in the
future including food. I'm afraid food prices are just starting to go up
and will continue so.

"cavelamb himself" wrote in message
k.net...
I am remimded of a quote that said, "when otherwise intelligent people
do stupid stuff, there is usually politics involved".

So not only do we pay more for less power in out auto fuel...


http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/20...nd-for-ethanol