Corn and Ethanol.

MMMmmmm, Food riots eh! Sounds like something out of a Si-Fi novel.

But then again, so does turning food stocks into ethanol when people are starving.
 
This seems to be on the front page more. GO ETHANOL! Turning food into more expensive and less efficient fuel. BRILLIANT! Got rain forest? Not for long.:nuts:

ECONOMY

World Bank Chief Calls for Immediate Action on Deepening Global Food Crisis

By Harry Dunphy
Associated Press
Monday, April 14, 2008; Page A08

The president of the World Bank yesterday urged immediate action to deal with sharply rising food prices, which have caused hunger and violence in several countries.
Robert B. Zoellick said the international community has to "put our money where our mouth is" now to help hungry people. Zoellick spoke as the bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, ended two days of meetings in Washington.
He called on governments to rapidly carry out commitments to provide the U.N. World Food Program with $500 million in emergency aid by May 1. Prices have only risen further since the program issued that appeal, so it is urgent that governments step up, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041301972.html
 
As many farmers have made that switch, soybean planting is expected to be up 18 percent this year, at almost 75 million acres. The largest increases in soybean planting are expected in Iowa and Nebraska.

Though the ethanol industry is heavily subsidized and has contributed to the rise in prices, a decrease in corn production could hurt that business, too. Higher prices for the crop could be passed on to those filling their cars up with the renewable fuel.

The number of ethanol plants has increased from 50 in 1999 to 134 now with more being built, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. An average, 100 million gallon-per-year ethanol plant consumes about 33 million bushels of corn.

The Department of Agriculture report is based on sample surveys of 86,000 farm operators in the first two weeks of March.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080331/planting_report.html
 
From today's Ethanol Report:

Last week we reported the financial results for VeraSun Energy Corp. for the three months and year ending December 31, 2007. [FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Total revenues, which include revenue from the sale of ethanol, distillers grains and VE85(TM), increased by $165.9 million, or 113%, to $312.4 million for the three months ended December 31, 2007 from $146.5 million for the three months ended December 31, 2006. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]The increase in total revenues was primarily the result of a 131% increase in ethanol volume sold, partially offset by a decrease in average ethanol prices of $0.30 per gallon, or 14%, compared to the three months ended December 31, 2006. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Ethanol production increased by 82.5 million gallons, or 138%, as a result of the added capacity from bringing the Charles City, Iowa, facility on-line in April, the Linden, Indiana facility on-line [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]in August and the Albion, Nebraska facility on-line in October.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Net sales from ethanol increased $125.6 million, or 99%, to $251.5 million for the three months ended December 31, 2007 from $125.9 million for the three months ended December 31, 2006. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]The impact of increased volume, primarily from the additional Charles City and Linden capacity, was $165.4 million, partially offset by a $39.8 million reduction due to lower prices. The average price of ethanol sold was $1.87 per gallon for the three months ended December 31, 2007 compared to $2.17 per gallon for the three months ended December 31, 2006.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Gross profit decreased $10.0 million to $30.8 million for the three months ended December 31, 2007 from $40.8 million for the three months ended December 31, 2006. The decrease in gross profit was primarily due to higher corn costs and lower ethanol prices. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Also, at press time last week, US Bioenergy reported a net loss of $7.2 million, or $0.09 per share, for the quarter ended December 31, 2007, due primarily to a $14.0 million charge for market losses related to the Company's commodity hedging activities. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]In addition, the company incurred a one-time expense of $2.8 million, related to the company's pending merger with VeraSun Energy Corporation. Revenues for the quarter were $151.9 million and EBITDA was ($2.8) million[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]US BioEnergy Corporation reported net income of $17.4 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, for the full year ended December 31, 2007. Total revenues for the year were $588.6 million, while the Company generated $61.4 million of EBITDA.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]During the fourth quarter of 2007, the company sold 73.8 million gallons of ethanol at an average selling price of $1.77 per gallon, compared with 73.2 million gallons of ethanol at an average selling price of $1.76 per gallon for the third quarter of 2007.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]After taking hedging related gains and losses into account, the company's corn costs averaged $3.47 per bushel, or $1.23 per gallon of ethanol sold, for the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to $3.15 per bushel, or $1.10 per gallon of ethanol sold, for the third quarter of 2007. Before taking hedging gains into account, corn costs averaged $3.59 per bushel, or $1.27 per gallon of ethanol sold, compared with $3.58 per bushel, or $1.25 per gallon of ethanol sold in the third quarter of 2007.[/FONT]
**********************************************


Note to self:
As oil prices peak and production begins to run dry, the value of Ethanol will do nothing except increase.

period.
 
Uh...corn is not part of a chicken's natural diet. They eat low growing grasses and grains. I think Pilgrims is just used to cheap subsidized corn. Ditto for soybeans. Chickens are, admittedly, quite tolerent of corn (unlike cows but that's another issue).
 
UPDATE: Pilgrim's Pride Cutting 1,100 Jobs, Blames Ethanol

March 12, 2008: 09:42 AM EST

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Pilgrim's Pride Corp. (PPC) said it will cut 1,100 jobs from closing a complex and six of its 13 distribution centers as the world's largest chicken processor struggles with the continued surge in feed costs.
The company, which blamed corn-based ethanol production for the feed-cost increase, said the retrenchment is "part of a plan to curtail losses amid record-high costs for corn, soybean meal and other feed ingredients and an oversupply of chicken" in the U.S.
The moves are slated to be completed by June. It added that other production facilities are being reviewed for possible product changes, closure and/or consolidation.
Closing is the processing complex in Siler City, N.C., which employs about 830 people, as well as distribution centers in five other states. The closures are projected to result in charges of about 33 cents a share.
"Our company and industry are struggling to cope with unprecedented increases in feed-ingredient costs this year due largely to the U.S. government's ill- advised policy of providing generous federal subsidies to corn-based ethanol blenders," said new Pilgrim's Pride President and Chief Executive Clint Rivers.
"The cost burden is already enormous, and it's growing even larger," he added. "Based on current commodity futures markets, our company's total costs for corn and soybean meal to feed our flocks in fiscal 2008 would be more than $1.3 billion higher than what they were two years ago. We simply must find ways to pass along these higher costs."
Rivers went on to say that food inflation and the need for companies to boost prices "will further stimulate inflation, weaken consumer confidence and negatively affect demand for products in certain market channels." As a result, he said chicken producers will have to cut output and charge higher prices " sufficient to sustain the industry as a whole."
Surging prices for corn have resulted in food makers raising prices and worries about future supplies if crop output is stunted by weather or some other factor.
Pilgrim's Pride in late January posted a wider fiscal first-quarter loss amid surging grain costs and said at the time that costs would continue to skyrocket. Feed costs on a pro-forma basis, rose 24%.
Shares, which closed at $22.82 on Tuesday, were flat recently in premarket trading.
-By Kevin Kingsbury; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2136; kevin.kingsbury@ dowjones.com
 
Corn, I love corn, great stuff!!:D I bought a four ear pack in Kroger the other day = $3.99 plus tax $4.27 = $1.07 an ear. Seems to cost more than a gallon of gas! That my friends is CORNFLATION!:suspicious:
I wonder what could be causing that? Oh, it's winter!:cool:
 
Sigh, big Ag, who brought us partially hydroginated whatsit, corn syrup, and corn eating cows, all of which are not that healthy, still want to make big profits on huge tracts of corn.
 
Amen, brother.

All of the big plans for new plants have been stopped here and I knew of 4 plants that they were going to build in this area. High energy prices plus food inflation made it a losing enterprise. Imagine that making food into fuel made the food price go higher. BRILLIANT! Priced themselves right out of business.

I have done a rough mileage test on my car and you lose MPG on 10% ethanol blend and now I can't get regular fuel cuz Missouri made it mandatory to blend all gasoline with 10% ethanol. Farm state ya know.:rolleyes:
 
To me, ethanol is a huge farce.
I live in an agricultural area. Actually, a recent newspaper headline stated that the city I live in may soon become the nation's "ethanol capital", with a major player in the ethanol industry planning on moving their corporate offices here.
The 10% ethanol blend is available at every pump here. Nearly everyone uses it, primarily because it costs about .10/gal less than regular fuel.
But hardly anyone realizes that it actually costs more.
I've done a number fuel mileage tests with my car. Overall, my car got about 10% fewer mpg's on the ethanol blend (which only costs about 3% less) than with regular fuel.
We all know what ethanol has done to the price of corn and everything associated with it. It's also responsible for rising costs in other grains (fewer farmers plant them) and meat (feed, and changing pasture land to crop land), as well. In my area, it's also spiked the value of agricultural land to triple digits since its inception.
My uncle sold his farmland just before the ethanol boom. He paid $200/acre for it in the 1980s and sold it for $400/acre about 10 years ago. The purchaser recently sold it for $2200/acre.
Can you say inflation?
To those of you who feel giddy when you fill up your flex-fuel vehicle at 50 cents less/gallon, have you checked your mpg? Those who I have talked to who have calculated their mileage went back to regular fuel.
And regarding conservation, more land falls to the plow now than ever before. Land that was previously reserved for wildlife habitat has now become much more valuable for planting. Farmers are tilling every available acre they can - and rightfully so.
Don't get me wrong, ethanol is a step in the right direction. But using "food for fuel" is not the answer.
 
The ethanol bust

The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike.

By Jon Birger, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Cargill announces it's scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an unfinished ethanol plant in Canton, Ill.. And that was just Tuesday.

Indeed, plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months, as Wall Street pulls back from the sector, says Paul Ho, a Credit Suisse investment banker specializing in alternative energy.

Financing for new ethanol plants, Ho says, "has been shut down."

How can the ethanol industry be slumping only two months after Congress passed an energy bill most experts consider a biofuels boon? The answer is runaway corn prices.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/27/magazines/fortune/ethanol.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008022811
 
E-85 is now $2.48 a gallon locally, while regular gasoline is $3.19 this week.

Makes it very economically feasable to run nothing but E-85 in my "former G Car" Dodge Stratus.


I wish more people would drive renewable fuel- whether it's powered by corn, or switch grass. We could really make a dent in our foreign oil imports if 85% of all our auto fuel were coming from ethanol.
 
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn

Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does

Midwestern farms prove switchgrass could be the right crop for producing ethanol to replace gasoline

By David Biello

GRASS GAS: Turning fields of switchgrass like this one in northeastern Nebraska into ethanol produces 540 percent more energy than the amount consumed growing the native perennial.
COURTESY OF USDA-ARS

Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.

Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares).

Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good."

But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. "It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close." This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is partially funding the construction of six such cellulosic biorefineries, estimated to cost a total of $1.2 billion. The first to be built will be the Range Fuels Biorefinery in Soperton, Ga., which will process wood waste from the timber industry into biofuels and chemicals. The DOE is providing an initial $50 million to start construction.

"Cost competitive, energy responsible cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass or from forestry waste like sawdust and wood chips requires a more complex refining process but it's worth the investment," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said at the Range Fuels facility groundbreaking in November. "Cellulosic ethanol contains more net energy and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than ethanol made from corn."

In fact, Vogel and his team report this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that switchgrass will store enough carbon in its relatively permanent root system to offset 94 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted both to cultivate it and from the derived ethanol burned by vehicles. Of course, this estimate also relies on using the leftover parts of the grass itself as fuel for the biorefinery. "The lignin in the plant cell walls can be burned," Vogel says.

The use of native prairie grasses is meant to avoid some of the other risks associated with biofuels such as reduced diversity of local animal life and displacing food crops with fuel crops. "This is an energy crop that can be grown on marginal land," Vogel argues, such as the more than 35 million acres (14.2 million hectares) of marginal land that farmers are currently paid not to plant under the terms of USDA's Conservation Reserve Program.

But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. "To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization," he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. "Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber."
 
That's it!!! We go plenty of piggy poopy here in Missouri and boy do it stink good! lol Old timer use to say it smells like money.

Have a good day James.
 
SHow-me:

I just like to argue too.

Kind of like wallowing around pig wrestling. It's a lot of fun, but the pig usually wins.

Speaking of pigs- THAT may be the solution to our energy problems.

Convert pig manure into fuel for autos.

That's IT!

THE solution to the energy problem!

Pig Manure all around!
 
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