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POPSFarming superpower Brazil spreads its know-how Planaltino, Brazil - As a young soil scientist, Edson Lobato looked out at the vast savanna of central Brazil and imagined fields of soy, corn, and cotton where most saw an inhospitable mass of red earth and tangled trees. His friends and family urged him to take his agronomy degree elsewhere, somewhere it would make a difference. But he joined Brazil's agricultural and livestock research agency (Embrapa) and relocated to the country's heartland, called the cerrado, where there was, at the time, little besides wooded plains, termites, and deer. Embrapa then set out to prove that those soils could produce like the most efficient cropland of Idaho. The agency poured millions into research. It sent teams of scientists like Mr. Lobato to the American Midwest to glean as much know-how as possible. Today his vision has helped turn Brazil into the world's largest exporter of soybeans, beef, chicken, orange juice, ethanol, and sugar.
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POPSOctober Surprise ~ 14 Inches Of Snow Fell At High Point State Park
To continue passing legislation to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) or other “greenhouse gases” isn’t just stupid, it is lethal. What people are going to need more of is the energy to heat their homes and workplaces. Thwarting the building of more coal-fired or nuclear plants to generate electricity is suicidal. That is, however, exactly what Congress intends to do and we can anticipate blizzard of legislation, instituting “cap-and-trade” requirements, increases in ethanol requirements, and a host of other poisonous legislation that will severely handicap any recovery from the current financial crisis and inflict a host of allegedly “unintended” consequences. One of those consequences were the food riots that occurred earlier this year around the world when the price of corn rose in response to U.S. mandates that ethanol be used along with gasoline. Proposed increases in such ethanol use will require engineering changes in new automobiles . . . .
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POPSTurning Bacteria into Plastic Factories Cost will be the ultimate factor in whether this someday becomes a widely used plastic-making process; Genomatica says it's not sure how much its E. coli–produced BDO will cost, noting that results thus far have been confined to the lab.
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POPSObama and Iowa In this week's National Journal, the magazine's regular "Insider's Poll" asks Democratic and Republican luminaries (pollsters, strategists, and so on) which state is Obama's top pickup opportunity. Iowa ranks at the top for both groups. In the clip, James Barnes fleshes out a bit why. Note the importance of ethanol.
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POPSLet Them Eat Rice: Washington's Unedifying Ethanol Food Fight And what about the impact of the Chinese livestock and meat complex, alluded to by Senator Grassley? According to China expert, Darrell Ray, Director of the University of Tennessee's Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, "China has not been importing corn to grow her livestock industry. China continues to export more corn that she imports. With regard to grains, China has been taking care of China as if it were a planet on to its own, completely independent of what is happening elsewhere. . . .To attribute today's international grain prices to China essentially assumes that beginning two years ago the market decided there may be a need for China to become a net importer of some corn in the future, say 2012, and so bid-up the price of corn by double." As this "let them eat rice" soundbite made clear, the debate over the food versus fuel issue is about as undignified as a full out real food fight at a summer camp cafeteria.
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POPSEPA Refuses to Cut Ethanol Requirements "Response to the decision fell along predictable lines: The Environmental Working Group's director of government affairs, Sandra Schubert, called the mandate "misguided" and said it was "forcing farmers to plow up marginal land and wildlife habitat while increasing global warming and dumping toxic fertilizers and pesticides into our precious water sources." "America should be focusing on viable clean energy solutions like conservation, solar and wind," she said. The president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Jim Greenwood, said the decision sent "a strong message that we must continue moving forward toward sustainable production of advanced biofuels" to cut dependence on important oil and to increase biofuel production from non-food sources. His organization represents biotech companies, among others involved in expanding the use of biofuels.""
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POPSEPA Rejects Ethanol Waiver For Texas Cattle Ranchers Scott Faber with the Grocery Manufacturers Association says more than a third of the corn crop now goes to fuel and that increases the cost of food. Faber says food prices have already risen around 6 percent and critics say ethanol hasn't lived up to its promise. It was supposed to cut pollution and reduce demand for oil. Frank O'Donnell is with Clean Air Watch. It's not often he agrees with Texas, but he does today. He says the EPA got it wrong. Frank O'Donnell: We are actually seeing more air pollution this summer than last. Now, maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not, but we've got more ethanol and we've got more smog. Groups against today's decision plan to lobby Congress to ease the ethanol mandate.
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POPSEnvironmentalists Hold On Congress What's the political response to our energy problems? It's more congressional and White House kowtowing to environmentalists, farmers and multi-billion dollar corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland. Their “solution," rather than to solve our oil supply problem by permitting drilling for the billions upon billions of barrels of oil beneath the surface of our country, is to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandates that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as pork, beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. Ethanol production has led to increases in other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat. Since the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter, higher grain prices have had a huge impact on food prices worldwide.
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POPSMagical Thinking vs. Reality amount to $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon, or 42 to 55 percent of ethanol's wholesale market price. Ethanol does not reduce gasoline prices. If you lived in urban areas that used reformulated gasoline last summer -- that's the environmentally "clean" gasoline required for areas with air pollution problems -- you might have paid up to 60 cents a gallon more for gasoline. That's because the federal government required oil refineries to use 4 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, regardless of price, and gas pump prices last summer reflected the fact that ethanol was twice as expensive as conventional gas in wholesale markets, and far more costly to deliver. The truth is that if ethanol has commercial merit, it doesn't need the subsidy. And if it doesn't, no amount of subsidy will bestow it.
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POPSFlooding Spurs Ethanol Backlash But others remain strongly in support of biofuels. "Abandoning our commitment to ethanol and biofuels, as some would suggest we do, would do nothing to provide meaningful relief from high grain prices today or in the future," said Bob Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association. "It would absolutely force the price of gas through the roof and require the import of more record-high foreign oil."
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POPSEthanol: The Fuel To Nowhere Farm belt support for reducing or eliminating the corn ethanol mandate was higher once respondents were informed that two studies, one from Princeton University and another from the University of Minnesota, found that ethanol contributes more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than does conventional gasoline. It does so, in part, because it encourages the clearing of so-called carbon sinks, such as rain forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, to produce crops for ethanol production. "We shouldn't sacrifice food for fuel, nor should we sacrifice carbon sinks for fuel," said Ridenour. "Ethanol is costing us as taxpayers, it is costing us as consumers, and it is costing us important environmental resources while providing little-to-no benefit for most of us in return. Ethanol is the fuel to nowhere. Like the infamous 'bridge to nowhere' earmark, ethanol mandates mean we all pay enormous costs so a few can benefit."
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POPS Tremendous Range Of Unintended Consequences On the losing side of the equation have been cattle, hog and chicken producers, as well as consumers. The government’s latest projection, released Friday, is that food prices this year will rise as much as 5.5 percent. Some products, including cereals and eggs, are expected to rise about 10 percent. The idea of easing ethanol mandates, while it would also lower the price of corn, is contentious. Keith Collins, the former Agriculture Department chief economist, will release a study on Monday saying that as much as half of the sharp increase in corn prices over the last few years is due to the demands of ethanol production. “We’ve seen a tremendous range of unintended consequences” from the requirement that increasing amounts of ethanol be blended into gasoline. The White House will be forced to confront the ethanol issue next month. States are allowed to asked for waivers of the mandate for corn ethanol on the ground that it is harming the economy or the environment.
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