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I hope everyone that has posted here will read this post. OK, Soybeans are used to make two things. Soybean meal, and soybean oil. Meal is used in animal feed, oil is used for many things. Cooking oil being one of the big uses. All we have done with corn here is do the exact same thing. The starch in corn goes to Ethanol, and the dried distillers grain is the total protein content that was in the corn to start with. None of it is lost. It is concentrated and is a very good protein source for livestock. We export the stuff too because other countries have found that it is such a good source of protein. Takes less storage to store the same amount of protein in ddgs as it would the same amount of protein in a bushel of corn.
The food verses fuel argument is a farce. We are not loosing the food content of the corn which is the protein. We are just getting more out of a bushel of corn than just feeding it straight to cows. The high price of beef is just what was mentioned earlier. The droughts of 2011 and 2012 dried up pastures in the main cattle areas in the country to the point that the cows would either starve, or they had to be slaughtered. We have the smallest cattle herd in the US right now since the 1960s. THAT IS WHY BEEF PRICES ARE HIGH!!!!!! Corn prices right now are below cost of production. THE PRICE OF CORN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF CATTLE!!!!!!! or vice versa. The price of cattle and corn is decided in two places. The Chicago Board of trade futures market, and the local elevators for corn and auction houses for cattle. The elevators have their own price based off of Chicago Board of Trade Most of the time, they pay under Chicago by 10 to 40 cents. So Farmers don't even get what Chicago is posting. Take moisture charges or drying cost into it and it is lowered even more.
If corn was causing all the prices in the grocery stores to go up, then why haven't they come down since corn has fallen so much? Why don't You ask the grocers manufacturers association that one. They were blaming Ethanol for higher prices in the grocery stores but have all of a sudden gotten real quiet now that farmers have produced enough corn for food, fuel, and have a 2 billion bushel carryover which means we at the beginning of the next corn marketing year will have 2 billion bushels still in the bins at the beginning of the next harvest. That is why corn prices have tanked.
OK, lets talk about Ethanol price. It is also priced on a futures market with regional and local hubs putting their own basis price on it. YES! IT HAS LESS BTU's THAN GAS BUT IS PRICED TO REFLECT THAT!
That talk of that it is cost prohibitive because You burn more fuel making corn than you get ethanol out of it is BS! it is going to get raised anyway and read the first part of this post! It is food and fuel not one or the other.
Some here are saying exactly what the oil industry has put out about Ethanol. Don't buy that load of crap either. They have had a monopoly on the energy market since the beginning. They don't like the fact that they lost 10% of their market share and are bent on putting out misinformation about Ethanol to remove a burgeoning competing energy source.
I have been running E10 in a 1983 international dump truck for 15 years and it has not given me one minutes worth of trouble. No additive, no nothing. I have also run it in my boat for that same length of time. I did run a water separator on my boat a couple years ago but have not had any trouble prior. I only did that because a boat gas tank system is not a sealed system like a car gas tank is. You will not get any water from the air in your car gas tank because it is sealed. That E10 can sit in a car for a long time. But Like someone else said before, even straight gas can go bad. If any of it is a year old, you might want to dump it.
It is Alcohol. it burns hotter than gas so it burns cleaner. Period. Brazil has been burning E100 for years with no problems. They go back and forth on the blends to put the cheapest fuel in their cars. They introduced competition into their gasoline market and it has helped them. If they can do it down there, then why in the heck can't we do it here??? I can't understand for the life of me why some people would rather get their oil from some country that hates our guts and wants to kill us than buy it from right here in the US. I have 3 chainsaws, a weedeater, a leafblower, a hedge trimmer, 2 boats and several other gas engines that have run fine for years off of E10.
I have shot holes in the whole Cattle Price deal, The whole food versus fuel deal, the whole burning corn in the tank deal, have personal success as using it as a fuel and after 15 years of it being around, I just don't see what the big deal is? If you are afraid of it, treat your gas. Thats all. Those guys on Crappiemasters promoting it are just trying to get the word out on it because of the bad PR campaign that the OIL industry, the Grocers manufacturers association, and the National Cattlemen s Beef Association have put out against Ethanol. They have their own political or economical reasons to do away with Ethanol.
Are Farmers getting rich off of Ethanol? No! Current corn prices are below cost of production. This is with roughly a 2 Billion bushel carry over. If You cut Ethanol off of corn right now, You Will dump almost 5 billion more bushels onto corn supplies and decimate the market for years. This will cause a 1980's style farm crisis and we will lose thousands of farmers to bankruptcy. When You only have 3 to 400,000 true commercial farmers left in this country, that is scary. I did not grow corn last year because the price was too low then. It is really bad now.
Here is the choice that the taxpayers have. You can either pay taxes and have that money spent on farm safety nets that bail farmers out with your money, or you can not have to worry about as much of your tax money and buy a product that originated with a farmer and burn it in your gas tank. One way or the other, You are going to pay something that is going to end up in a farmers pocket. Farmers are the only people that get punished for doing a good job. We overproduce so You don't run out. And If You want to gripe about Farmers, DON'T DO IT WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL!!!!!CF
