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EPA Pressured To Drop Ethanol Mandate Due To Drought Time

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  • EPA Pressured To Drop Ethanol Mandate Due To Drought Time

    With record drought destroying crops across the country, corn prices are skyrocketing, and that is causing a world-wide ripple effect, including on the cost of the corn-derived gasoline additive ethanol.

    Corn prices are up 60 percent this summer, Christopher Hurt, a Purdue University economic professor, estimates. And now Democratic governors from Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and Arkansas have joined ranchers, poultry farmers and the United Nations director-general for food and agriculture in asking the Environmental Protection Agency to waive the federal requirement that gasoline contain 10 percent ethanol.

    "It's universally acknowledged that ethanol is raising the price of food," Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute said. "It's not lowering the price of gas. In fact, it may be raising the price of gas, and it's having a devastating environmental effect in terms of coastal pollution."

    Green says coastal "dead zones" may be increasing because of the run-off from fertilizer-intensive corn crops. But the human economic costs are potentially more severe.

    The Department of Agriculture estimates that food inflation will hit 3 percent to 3.5 percent this year, then 3 percent to 4 percent next year. The U.S. is the world's largest food exporter. For the poorest countries dependent on U.S. exports of corn, the impact may cost lives.

    (Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

  • #2
    They just keep trying to justify the price gouging don't they?
    Whiskey for my men ... and beer for their horses!

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    • #3
      More 'unintended consequences'.......heck, out here in Kansas we saw this happen immediately. Way before this year's drought. More government meddling in the marketplace. Don't think it's gouging....it's supply and demand. Farmers are baling the ditches and highway right of ways to make up feed shortages.
      Ed, Mary, & 'Earl'
      HRPT LongHaulers, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.


      Inside every old person is a young person wondering, "what the hell happened?"

      The man at the top of the mountain didn't fall there. -Vince Lombardi

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      • #4
        Brazil raises or lowers the % when the sugar crop is going to be low, so the price of sugar can stay low and stable. It would make sense to have an adjustable % in our gas when there is a bad year for corn. Even those of us who like ethanol have been saying that, but the people who want high corn prices are fighting against doing that, for obvious reasons.

        Part of it is the RFA wanting to keep ethanol an additive, because that is where the volume is right now, and last year when the VEETC was going away they blended almost 2 billion gallons more than they needed to and ran the prices up artificially to get the free government money before it ended. You cant blame ethanol completely for that, because the blenders credit that the VEETC was went to the oil companies that were blending it, not the ethanol producers. They were more than happy to supply that much more to keep the corn prices high.

        Until there is another major feedstock being used to produce ethanol, other than corn, the % needs to be adjustable to keep corn prices lower than they have been, and for things like the drought. The irrigated corn is doing ok, but most of the corn crop isnt irrigated. The messed up thing is there are so many other things to make fuel from, like kudzu, cattails, and municipal waste, but they wont because everyone has their mind set on corn.

        Nothing will happen because too many people want to get their fingers in the cookie jar.

        Sure an enjoying this $4.30 gas up here too!

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        • #5
          As we like to say in these parts,What a friggin racket! More Bull Sh&# !!!!

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          • #6
            The more expensive it gets, the less we use, the less we use, the 'greener' the planet. so the poor suffer... what the hell, they were suffering before right?

            soon as i win the lottery, i won't be worrying about this at all.
            Mike in Southwest Ohio

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            • #7
              drop all mandates

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              • #8
                Originally posted by SpiderGearsMan View Post
                drop all mandates
                Yeah,think anyone gettin paid on this deal? You would have to have your head inside your ass to think different.

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                • #9
                  In the early 80s, alcohol/gas mixes were the latest craze to fix all of our problems..... it died, in about the same amount of time this one will. Honestly, I think thumpn was smart to be brewing his own, because I honestly don't think that mandate will last another 5 years.
                  Doing it all wrong since 1966

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                  • #10
                    You mean the govt no longer subsidizes the farmers to not grow corn to keep the prices up?
                    BS'er formally known as Rebeldryver

                    Resident Instigator

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                    • #11
                      Grow Weed!!!!!!!!

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                      • #12
                        8.00 a gallon milk is not my thing, and we need to feed the tasty cattle I so enjoy eating. bottle their methane ... methane digester powered Dairies are here. I'd rather the corn be released to feed my cattle.
                        Flying south, with a flock of bird dogs.

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                        • #13
                          Ethanol should be discontinued altogether, its a big waste of resources, man power and time.
                          No one wants it but the big executives it created high paying jobs for.

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                          • #14
                            You shouldn't burn your food as fuel..... as a national policy specifically.

                            and i agree with skull....no one really asked for it except those who felt they could make a dime from it. and they marketed it to successfully create it as a national policy. bleh.
                            Mike in Southwest Ohio

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                            • #15
                              Farmers dont get paid not to plant corn anymore. They still get a check from the government based on how much corn they plant, and most say they dont need it, but it comes anyway.

                              As for getting rid of it, well if you like 7:1 compression and really high gas prices then sure, get rid of it. If you build an engine with the compression needed to really get some use out of ethanol, you will never want to go back to gas. If you modify a low compression engine like in any new car out there today, you will love the power and how long the engine lasts, and how long you can go between oil changes. Its an awesome fuel that you can make at home and run in any ICE very easily.

                              If you just stay steadfastly against it, bitch and moan about it, never actually try it, and call for getting rid of it, well you are climbing into the pocket of the people that supply you gasoline that wears out your engine and pollutes your air. Some of them even want to kill you. You will also never understand the difference between the two fuels. First hand knowledge goes a long way. Lots of things are blamed on ethanol that arent true or even based in reality. You can say ethanol ate this or that, but was it really tested? Some of us are testing it and not finding what so many people claim they heard or saw from someone else.

                              Oldsman could switch his EFI system to ethanol very easily, throw some E or C heads on his 455 with flat top slugs and have a hard running car that probably gets better mileage than he does on gas, with LOTS more power.

                              What we need is to get other stuff going so the pressure isnt on corn all the time, there is a ton of shit to make fuel from that isnt so dependent on weather. I am probably more pissed off about that than any of you are.

                              Also, most of the corn grown today goes to cattle feed, when if you ferment it first, then feed the cows, chickens and hogs what comes out after the alcohol is produced, they gain weight 17% faster, dont get burned out on it like they would on straight corn, and they produce far less methane from digesting it. They cant digest the starch in corn, so it is wasted in cattle feed, and ethanol only uses the starch leaving everything else the animals can digest. You get a two for one with corn.

                              The corn we feed animals and yeast is VERY different from the corn you eat on the cob or in cans of creamed corn. That is sweet corn, the cows eat white or field corn which is a very different variety. So we arent using our food for fuel, we are using things our food cant eat for fuel, and the feeding them the leftovers. Nobody in their right mind wants to eat white corn, unless they pick it early and dunk it in boiling water before the enzymes convert the sugar in the kernels to starch.

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