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Comment by guscost | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. Here's a good resource if you're looking for ethanol-free gas in the US and Canada: http://pure-gas.org

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The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.

Not to mention the greenhouse footprint of cattle farming. You can't really feed more people -- at least in the US -- because we already consume food in quantities that are arguably toxic. But you could turn the corn fields over to other kinds of crops.

Disclaimer: I eat meat, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week.

It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. Each side ( and oh boy are there sides ) cherry picks their own figures.

I know that in Texas, the biggest reason people let family land that could be used for cow-farming go is taxation - there are Land Trusts that allow you to keep nominal control of the land while agreeing never to use it productively again, to get a tax abatement.

Also, the lyrics to James McMurty's "South Dakota" from the new record are really interesting on this subject.

I mean - we call noodging "eat your vegetables". I like vegetables just fine, but I like meat, too. I doubt the results of any of the analyses since anybody who gets paid to do the work will probably be biased by who pays them.

And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Using acres of Western Kansas for grazing seems pretty low-impact relative to that.

>>It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is.

It is hard to say for certain, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the inputs required to raise cattle. Water, grain, antibiotics, petroleum based fuels to plant, harvest and transport the grain, petroleum based fertilizers to aid in growing the grain, and herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted organisms (I'm sure I missed something).

Not to mention a few of the by-products such as manure and chemical run-off, methane emissions, and soil erosion (from conventional agriculture practices).

The above describes a CAFO, which is where the majority of beef comes from. Managed intensive rotational grazing would be my preferred alternative, but there still wouldn't be enough land available to keep up with our consumption.

>>And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers.

Can you please site some of the sources that you are using to determine that vegetable farmers are receiving more subsidies than any other industry? I assume you meant "the biggest receivers of any sort of Agriculture subsidy", but I still don't think that is right.

But I suspect that, dependent on the land in question, those inputs may vary widely. Nothing that can make you a modern living can be done with no footprint. But I am pretty sure just from examples of relatives and friends that this will definitely vary. Does that scale? Probably not well. But people have been ranching - even dryland ranching - since before fossil fuels were a serious consideration. Ever see the "ranches" towards Laredo in South Texas? My goodness, that is some rough country. Every living thing there is somehow armed or very, very fast.

Here is why I say these things - my piano teacher's father in Northeast Oklahoma was one of the ones who reintroduced bison onto his land. Cattle are different from bison, but not that different. There's a Vast ocean of grass from the Rio Grande well into Canada, and four-legged critters eating it, making food is remarkably efficient.

I can indeed point you to the book "Cadillac Desert" which does a rough sketch, with respect to the Central Valley farmers. This doesn't make them bad people. It just means these things are messy.

We call the noodge "eat your vegetables" because it's a cliche. I eat good vegetables with great gusto these days; my taste has matured. But all things in balance.

> You could feed way more people if you ate the corn

We're already eating too much corn, no thank you. If you check the label on the packaged goods you buy, corn is pretty much in all of them in one form or another.

We should grow less corn, let the cows eat grass, and have people eat people food (which might occasionally include a corn on the cob).

I agree with all those points. All I'm saying is that if you argue that using corn ethanol as fuel is bad because it's "burning food", then you have to confront all the other ways in which the agricultural system is not really about making food.

cattle food is going into the food-system as a subsidy for human food... ie it is making high-quality proteing cheaper....

on the other hand, ethanol just makes people food more expensive....and it sucks as a fuel anyway (engineering reasons)...

sucks because of "engineering reasons" - wow, thanks for the comment

Corn-fed beef is not high-quality protein, it is usually feed lot beef laced with antibiotics, andreline and cortisol.

Additionally, sugarcane-derived ethanol is far more efficient than the corn-based stuff we use in the US. I've seen numbers ranging from 3x to more than 7x more efficient than corn-based ethanol, which would mean that the use of ethanol could actually be a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, unlike what we get from using corn.

No reason to demonize sustainable, renewable fuel - instead, we should look at the agriculture subsidies that "protect our farmers" and see how they're hurting everyone (including the farmers, affected arguably more than the rest of us by global warming) in the long run.

Ag subsidies seem to mainly stabilize price regimes. There would arguably be costs associated with increased risk of production if the subsidies were not in place.

They might be obsolete, but the fraction of people's time spent on food (both as producers and consumers ) continues to decline. It's also argued that the availability of abundant food is a legitimate public good.

Our levels of food security in the First World are recent. I doubt anyone from... say, 1850 would put food security in terms of a human right as we now do.

The irony is that petroleum products are an input into ethanol-corn production. How much I don't know; but the present subsidy regime nearly guarantees some measure of overproduction.

There isn't enough grass to 'let the cows eat' while sustaining affordability for lower income people. That's why they switched to corn, much better density of calories.

It is not absolutely essential that lower income people eat beef. More importantly, the state should not be allowed to waste tax payer money on the ridiculous idea that lower income people must have beef to eat.

Why on earth should my tax dollars go to a steak party?

Pardon the pun, but your complaints are incredibly rarified. No one's having a steak party, they're eating burgers and tacos in between their long shifts because of lack of fresh produce and time to cook it.

The government cannot subsidize fresh produce instead of the beef industry?

The average voter feels a burger/taco/burrito is tastier and 'American'.

The average voter probably has also not had /good/ experiences with salads that are actually tasty for reasons other than bacon. (Can we PLEASE stop adding bacon to /everything/ (at least as a default?); some of us just don't like the smokey taste.)

They do. Heavily.

There is an argument that says the Central Valley of California farmers basically funded Reagan's White House run in 1980. Carter was going after payments for all that water...

social and society have common root. The great unwashed also like to eat protein and voting power.

And, as a result, we've created the nightmare situation where we fill the animals we eat with antibiotics since we feed them foods that they're not adapted to eat. Not only are we helping to create antibiotic-resistant superbugs but the antibiotics in food also reduce the beneficial gut bacteria that we need to be healthy.

There was a time when people didn't eat meat with every meal...many people believe it's actually healthier. If people can't afford to eat grass-fed meat with every meal, the simple answer is to not eat meat with every meal...poor people can eat vegetables too and will probably be healthier for it.

> There was a time when people didn't eat meat with every meal.

Yeah. There was also a time when 8-year-olds did a full day's work in the mines and malnourishment was the norm.

You should think about the complexity involved in eating a healthy vegetarian diet before you start being dismissive of it. Meat is easier in some significant ways.

You're putting words in his mouth. He never said to not eat meat. He said not to eat it at every meal. You don't need to eat sausage and bacon at breakfast, a rack of ribs and half a chicken at lunch, and a 1/2 lb steak at supper to get your daily intake of meat-provided nutrients. The sad truth is that far too many people eat meat at every single meal, and it's just not natural for us. Balance.

Don't confuse availability with what is "natural". Eating (lean) meat at every meal is quite natural and has been common in some societies where it was plentiful.

You should think about the complexity involved in eating a healthy vegetarian diet before you start being dismissive of it.

Lets not blow the difficulty of being a vegetarian out of proportion. Eating a healthy vegan diet is still difficult. Eating a healthy vegetarian diet is not. There are plenty of cook books describing varied and balanced vegetarian meals. There are plenty of restaurants that serve good vegetarian meals and many supermarkets (at least in Western Europe) also provide the necessary ingredients.

(I have been a vegetarian for 16 years now, almost half of my life.)

And there's plenty of people who live in places where it's impossible to get any fresh vegetables, much less enough of a variety to provide all the amino acids necessary for someone who isn't eating meat.

The US is not one of those places, I would hope.

It definitely is. http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi....

I would imagine that the antibiotics in cattle issue is far more closely related to factory farming in confined quarters than anything to do with what kind of food they are primarily eating.

The two are not mutually exclusive; each carries a significant tax on the animal's health and immune system.

Humans are fairly unique in our dietary flexibility; most other animals are evolutionarily adapted to a narrow range of foods. Corn provides caloric energy, but little more; a cow needs to eat grass, and move around, in order to be healthy.

There's a class of antibiotics (ionophores) that are used in cattle feed specifically to manage issues with grain feeding. They reduce incidence of "bloat", and increase feed efficiency. They are also used with other feeds, but the purpose is still to manage digestion issues.

I think there is more use of other antibiotics to treat sickness in feedlots though.

(as an aside, this pdf has an amazing and disturbing illustration of severe bloat on the third page: https://www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/p... Warning: it shows material ejecting from a medical opening in a rumen.)

> There isn't enough grass to 'let the cows eat' while sustaining affordability for lower income people.

I'm pretty sure there's no shortage of grass. If we turn some of those corn fields into grazing fields, there would be even more grass.

The reason they use corn is because it fattens up the cow much faster and to a far greater degree.

So yeah, switching to grass will increase the price of beef on a per pound basis. Label the meat. Let people choose. Stick a "fed with corn" or "fed with grass" sticker on it. I'll happily pay twice as much knowing the animal didn't eat crap.

We already do this with eggs. Lots of labeling. There's no reason we can't extend this to poultry and beef.

> I'm pretty sure there's no shortage of grass.

Then you should check your confidence level, because you're wrong. Most of the available USA grazing territory is already cow-burnt, and that's before you get things like the extreme droughts of recent years causing mass cattle slaughter and die-offs. And mind you all but a rounding error of these cattle are finished on grain feedlots.

This is already happening; I can now find labeled grass-fed beef at regular groceries as well as Whole Foods. It's expensive enough, though, that it's still relatively niche in terms of volume, especially after factoring in fast food and Sysco restaurants.

If that's the case why can other countries like the UK feed cattle on primarily grass? Admitidely the population is lower, but so is the amount of grazing land as I understand.

You might want to prefer population density over population as a metric: the population density of the UK is _much_ higher than that of the US. IIRC, this is true even east of the Mississippi.

Pasture is probably higher quality in the UK though, owing to the wet climate, which would compensate for there being less pasture.

> If you check the label on the packaged goods you buy, corn is pretty much in all of them in one form or another.

Well yeah: corn grows really well in the American Midwest; it's pretty cool that we're able to make so many products from it (kinda like the work George Washington Carver did with peanuts, which grow very well in the South).

It's also an efficient crop as it uses the C4 pathway, and as you've said can be reprocessed infinite ways, even as gas as you see here. Great for an industrialized market economy.

Additional craziness, the subsidy means it's cheaper to buy corn than grow it! Thus making mixed agriculture farms rarer.

So instead of using cow slurry to fertilise crops the US uses oil based fertiliser and has millions of gallons of cow slurry in lagoons.

I'm under the impression that the great majority of manure ends up spread on fields or sold to consumers. I guess you aren't saying it is being stored in lagoons forever, where does it go after sitting in a lagoon if it is not used as an amendment?

It's not like we're really short on food.

People worldwide who can't eat, can't eat because they live in something like a failed state. If you can't have enough stability to be on the global finance network, you're left pretty far behind.

Ethanol accounts for a large share of US corn consumption:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx

The chart is hard to read exact numbers from, there is a table available at the second link. 2008 was the last year that feed accounted for more than 1/2 of corn use (it still accounts for nearly 1/2 today, I'm not trying to be pedantic there, just adding information).

Ethanol is clearly a big enough portion of consumption to be impacting the price of corn used for food, which isn't the same thing as burning edible food, but it's a reason to carefully consider what incentives are created by various government programs.

I've always wondered about this argument in an environment suffering from an obesity epidemic, often blamed on another corn product, high-fructose corn syrup.

Having lived in many different countries, the cost of food in the US is incredibly low. I assume (and have heard) this is mostly a result of subsidies to farmers.

All the while, US exports of 'corn based products', which I assume is also corn, has continued to grow http://www.fas.usda.gov/data/us-exports-corn-based-products-....

This is an important point, American farm output is strongly manipulated by other subsidies and regulations. But I don't think there's any reason to believe that rising domestic corn prices would not have an effect on the larger domestic and foreign food markets, or that the effect would be good.

I'm hopeful that normalized relations with Cuba will be the end of our crazy corn subsidies. If you want to make ethanol, sugarcane is 7x more energy efficient in producing ethanol compared to corn, and you can produce twice as much ethanol from an acre of sugarcane as an acre of corn[1]. And if you want to sweeten food and beverages, the same energy efficiency applies to cane sugar harvesting: you can get more sugar with less harvesting energy per acre of sugarcane than corn. (Although there's little science supporting cane sugar being healthier than high-fructose corn syrup.)

It seems like the Cuba detente has broken a constituent stalemate in Congress: a small group of Florida sugarcane farmers corner the market on US cane sugar and no one has wanted to normalize relations and import sugarcane from Cuba because of those farmers' political clout, even though our countries' comparative advantage should dictate growing sugarcane in poor, developing Cuba and exporting it for food and ethanol use in the US.[2] There's been a gentlemen's agreement among senators that props up these farm subsidies because no one wants to rock the boat and jeopardize their own state's subsidies, but California is pushing back as our farmers get hammered by drought and Florida now has little to lose for opposing Midwestern farmers' lucrative corn subsidies.

[1] https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/...

[2] http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tast...

This comment provides so much insight into an issue I know very little about. Just thought an up vote was not enough here. Thank you.

Very unlikely. The USA sugar policy is older than the corn policy, why would trade with Cuba change that just because it's one of their agricultural products?

Cuba is not even in the top ten cane producers, and more to the point, the USA alone produces over 15 times as much cane as Cuba. Brazil, which has bilateral free trade agreements with the USA, produces well over 400 times as much cane as Cuba.

What leads you to believe that lifting some sanctions against Cuba would do anything to change US sugar policy?

I'd always thought that the Cuban stalemate lasted so long as enough of the refugees from the revolution were alive and active in Florida politics, I hadn't realised there was a subsidy dimension to it as well.

Corn subsidies will end when electric vehicles begin to put a dent in gasoline consumption in the US.

I think corn subsidies have a lot to do with food, and corn-ethanol producers are piggybacking on that subsidy rather than driving it.

Between 1950 and 2000, corn production per acre in the US increased nearly 300%. Population increased 86%.

Subsidies do play a role, however American farm productivity is among the highest of any country and has skyrocketed in the last 50 to 60 years. This is due to technology, organization structure, and a geography favorable to nearly every type of farming. Few countries have all of those things, along with the world's largest consumer and capital markets.

Three million US farmers produce so much food they can feed not only all 320 million Americans, but also export a vast amount of food.

It's not caused by the direct subsidies. Things like ethanol requirements in gas and the HFCS favoritism drive up the cost of the food. Ethanol by increasing demand for corn. The reason America uses corn syrup is because the government has a high tariff on cane sugar imports.

So America pays twice the global rate for sugar.

Not to mention that it's essentially impossible to find non-ethanol fuel nearby to put in my motorcycle. It's not exactly the best thing for carbureted engines. I understand that I'm in the minority and I wouldn't expect an otherwise sensible policy to change on behalf of people who commute on motorcycles and scooters but I wouldn't complain if it became easier to avoid.

Not good for plastic gas tanks either.

Since ethanol has been a part of fuel for many decades, the vast majority of auto parts today are fine with ethanol. There are exceptions, like the Ducati gas tanks, but by and large ethanol is not a problem in any fuel-injected vehicle.

Triumph has had the same problem with their plastic tanks and have somehow managed to avoid a recall like Ducati did. It doesn't help that European vehicles aren't designed to account for an alien fuel.

As the owner of 3 ducatis, a snow blower, and a generator... when ethanol gas sits around for a while it does awful awful things:( Fuel stabilizers help a little, but the only way to REALLY make things work is to either run the engines at LEAST once a week all year, or to fully drain everything, and then deal with another sort of hassle when you need the generator running immediately..

While my car runs the ethenolized gas okay, it kills me knowing that I'm losing HP/efficiency just due to corn subsidies:(

Using ethanol as an oxidizer instead of MTBE looks like pretty much a no brainer. I guess the blend is being maxed out instead of just using the appropriate amount needed for emissions control, but the use of ethanol doesn't just come down to subsidies.

I'm not a car expert but I remember hearing somewhere that it depends on how the engine is manufactured. Here in Brazil the car engines are engineered to withstand high alcohol contents and there are even cars with "flex-fuel" technology that can handle any mixture from 100% gasoline to 100% ethanol.

For some odd reason the manufacturer of my lawn mower warns me not to use more than 10% Ethanol content fuel, or else my warranty is void. I'll assume it was to save about a dollar or two on gaskets and o-rings.

My lawnmower sat unused for about 4 years in a shed. Last year I tried to use it and gas leaked all around it. The ethanol left in the tank had eaten out all the little plastic pieces and seals in the ignition system.

Flex Fuel Vehicles are a thing in the United States too; but only up to 85% ethanol. One of my vehicles will run on E85, but since it would cost more and is not as available as regular gasoline, there is no real reason to use it.

Do people actually use it? Is there ever a reason to use it? It costs 5% less but is 25% less efficient.

Custom tuned turbos (eg. Evo and STi's) can get tremendous output on E85; that's the only use I've seen of it.

It's cheap race gas at about 105 octane. I had my previous car tuned for it. The only problem is that it is very inconsistent at the pump. You don't always get e85. Some times it's e80 other times it's e75. The blend is also dependent on the weather. In cold weather states you only get about 3 months of true e85, in the winter the pump has a blend of e60. For a regular commuter car it's not a big deal and is necessary to ensure it starts properly in cold weather but when talking about cars that need a specific stoich ratio it's critical. Best way around it is to buy a barrel of it lol.

"there are even cars with 'flex-fuel'" is an understatement. They were 90% of small car sales and 23% of total circulating vehicles as of 2008, probably more now.

Reference in Portuguese: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2008/07/428265-veiculos...

There are uses for (some) ethanol in gasoline. It boosts octane and decreases CO production (smog) by increasing fuel oxygenation, for starters.

Oxygenated fuel is fuel with extra oxygen that is released during combustion. Nitromethane is an especially dramatic example:

The oxygen content of nitromethane enables it to burn with much less atmospheric oxygen... The amount of air required to burn 1 kg (2.2 lb) of gasoline is 14.7 kg (32 lb), but only 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) of air is required for 1 kg of nitromethane

How much petroleum is used to produce ethanol, from seed to harvest to processing?

The answer seems to vary depending on which side of the ethanol/no-ethanol fence you ask. It's hard to find real numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance

That's the term I've been looking for. Thanks.

> It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy.

OTOH, ten years ago, the prices for farm products were so low that farmers in countries with no farm subsidies could not make ends meet. The biofuel industry has at least had the benefit of making the lot of farmers in such countries - who by the way were among the poorest people in these countries - a bit less dismal.

That sounds like an argument for rolling back the farm subsidies, not adding more laws to balance them out.

Are there more poor people in the world who are farmers who benefit from this, or are there more poor people who purchase food who will suffer or starve?

Hunger has never been a problem of production in particular but of distribution. For decades, there's been plenty of food for everyone on this planet; it just hasn't been distributed, by politics or by markets, evenly and probably won't be in any time soon.

It doesn't necessarily mean growing vegetation to produce ethanol fuel is a good thing but not doing so wouldn't make things effectively better either. On the other hand, at least the process is renewable unlike fossil fuels. On the other hand, it would make sense to grow this biofuel only in places where the environment is optimal for the most aggressively ethanol-producing plants.

The bigger problem is the demand for fuel. You could build cities where you don't need millions of people to consume fuel in order to merely get by their ordinary days moving between work, shopping groceries, and home. Unfortunately, those cities don't seem to be built until fuel prices get high enough that it's cheaper to abandon suburbia and rebuild the city based on walking and public transit.

> Hunger has never been a problem of production in particular but of distribution.

The price of food is not about hunger. There are people who literally have no food because the place they live has no infrastructure to transport food; that's what causes hunger.

But there are still billions of people in poverty who live in urban areas. Those people don't go hungry, because food is available for sale and food is what a hungry man buys with his first dollar. But that doesn't mean the price of food doesn't affect them -- it makes all the difference in the world to them. Because if not only the first dollar but the second and third dollars have to go to buying food then they will, but that means they can't go to obtaining shelter or medicine or education.

In Brazil, the amount of mandatory ethanol in gas was raised to 27%, to stimulate ethanol producers.

If the rumors are true, that mix could also eat through an otherwise reasonably efficient four-cylinder in record time, which would be a shame.

Not to mention motorcycles...yeesh.

Brazil uses sugar cane, so the process is more efficient than in the US

What about the environmental impact comparting to the US method?

It is drastic. My sister worked in one of the farms...

The crop is not good? It went spoiled?

Well light this matches and watch it burn.. yes literally

The cities nearby suffer a lot with respiratory problems specially kids.

But you will not see that on News the companies pay a lot to "promote" their eco images

They actually burn it to avoid harm to the workers and use its ash to fertilize their land. However, mechanization has reduced the need to burn fields and pollution has gradually been decreased.

It has similar issues, such as using fertilizers and water usage. At the same time, one of the main issues is deforestation in the Amazon and field burning before harvest.

Still, it probably still makes sense to use it. For example, its energy balance(ethanol/energy for its production) is ~8-10 whereas in the US is ~1-2.

> It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason.

Then why on earth is the Australian government making us put this shit in our cars unless we want to buy 100% premium fuel.

Mate, many of our servos sell straight 91 RON fuel. Check your local Caltex, United or 7-Eleven.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2224794

I blame it on the people voting for the Australian governments.

Only the sugar cane growing states and the politicians bought by the cane sugar industry. You can buy fuel with ethanol in the other states at shitty "discount" outlets but many people avoid it. The major outlets generally don't sell it. It has lower energy density so you aren't getting better value, and while every modern car here is designed to run it in theory hardly any manufacturers recommend it.

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