The Debate Over Corn based Ethanol
When it comes down to the debate
about ethanol a lot of people have different opinions on what should be going
on. Some say we shouldn’t use it; others are giving all effort into wanting it
to be used. Within the debate people branch off into different subjects that
are about ethanol in general. One of the things is on the impact of ethanol.
People out there want to know what is ethanol and what does it do. Well in fact
it has enough impact on the people that they want to debate about it. Ethanol
has impact in many general areas. It impacts farmers and everyday people. The
main debates deal with corn, food, and fuel.
Ethanol has
been a topic of discussion for many farmers lately, especially when it comes
time to selling the crops. The 10.7 billion bushels of corn produced last year
has to go somewhere (USDA
2012). As a farmer’s daughter I hear the talk all the
time. At the moment farmers have to choose whether they want to sell to the
elevators or to the local ethanol plant. There is a constant price check
between the 2 places. Currently the price of corn is $6.78 (Agweb) and the
price for taking it to the ethanol plant is $6.95 (Iowa Ethanol Plant Report). That
difference is enough to change a farmers mind. For most farmers they want the
higher price, but they have to make sure that making a trip to the plant is
worth it. Most famers haul their corn in semi-tractor and trailers and diesel
fuel isn’t cheap; so is the roughly 20 cent difference worth the trip. Farmers are
trying their hardest to make money to keep producing and so if they decide that
an extra 20 cents is worth it, then the corn is going to end up at the ethanol
plant. Most farmers don’t care where the corn goes as long as they get paid
because it is how they survive.
Talking about people who survive the
livestock owners are survivors of this back and forth war. As the prices of
corn shifts, so does the price of feed. Livestock owners have to look at the
prices to decide on what they want feed their livestock, because they just are
like farmers they have to make a profit to continue on with next year. It is
just like a person going to work for a month, they put hard work into their job
and not getting paid makes it hard to continue their job. With the prices flexuating
the ethanol plants try to help out in selling the by-products from making
ethanol. The by-products are called distillers or DDG (dry distilled grain). These
are a corn based by-product. They are good to feed to animals like cattle. In a
study done by American Society of Animal Science (1994) that compares DDG to the corn
fed in regular in a feed ration. The study showed that the cattle gained faster
and more efficiently on DDG verses dried rolled corn. This is very good for the
cattle livestock producers considering there are a lot of ethanol plants out
there. A benefit to using the DDG is that it is cheaper to feed than the dried
rolled corn. Livestock producers have now been using DDG for a while. they have
found a way to survive this rise and fall of corn prices.
A fact people really don’t know when
they debate about ethanol is where all the corn really is going. Most just say
that it is going to the ethanol plants, so they blame ethanol. It is true that
corn does go towards making ethanol, but only 40% of every years crop goes
there. 40% is roughly 5 billion bushels corn (EcoWatch 2012). People can
debate that it is a lot, but doing simple math there is still 60% of crop left
out there to be put into everything else. Considering this past years drought
that number going toward ethanol was decreased because the percentage of corn
left over would not be enough for the back-up supplies (Al
Swanson 2012). This perfectly exceptable because just like humans we have
bad days and so do ethanol plants, they took a hit to production. As an
industry they have to be understanding that things like this happen. People still
don’t understand this. They think corn should strictly go into making food. They
believe that the 5 billion bushels that is going into ethanol should be used to
feed the hungry. That amount could roughly feed 412 million people for an
entire year (Max Frankel 2012). This point is very true that it should happen
that way, but at the very moment ethanol is the only viable biofuel for
gasoline engines in the U.S. Sometimes
people think one sided because the biofuel industry is working on other
biofuels so that we can feed those people. At the moment Brazil has the only
other viable biofuel, which is made out of sugar cane. The U.S. is working on
finding other options. So far they have done research on switch grass,
cellulosic biomass (plant fibers) and algae (Future Ethanol sources 2009). In all
perspective the ethanol industry has made advances form when it has started. In
fact they have found cellulosic biomass to be the most promising. In the video
below it shows 40 facts about ethanol. These are the facts people aren’t realizing
when they have debates.
It is amazing when people can go on debating when sometimes
they really don’t know the facts. The other side to this is that yes some do
know there facts but they don’t imply it. Ethanol only affects food prices a
little bit. When everything is looked at from a broad perspective it has some
impact but it is just like people at the stock market trying to make money. For
an example people debate that ethanol affects the price of food. Well in fact
food prices did jump last year, they went up 6% (Alvaro
Garcia 2012). Yes that does seem like a lot and it was but ethanol did not
cause that jump, the factors of the drought and corn prices did this. Corn
prices affect food prices because it had a 23% jump. The prices topped $8 a
bushel. For a farmer that is amazing but if they didn’t have anything to sell
yet it wasn’t good. It comes to show that yes ethanol is involved but it
doesn’t have direct impact on food prices. Anything that happens will affect
food prices, especially anything that impacts the ingredients in our favorite
foods.
| Ethanol Cartoon |
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We all have favorite food but in order to get or make our
favorite food we have to have transportation to get to the store. Gas prices
have been a talk for many years. To watch the prices vary over the years has
been an interesting thing to watch and listen to people complain about it. Many
people hate spending so much money on fuel but it is needed to get us place to
place. One way to cut back on spending is by putting an ethanol based gas in
the vehicles. It is a great thing to have an alternative fuel option but there
are many debates about that. Some people have it in their minds that ethanol is
a terrible thing. They get poor gas mileage, the food prices are going up, and
life is just not working out for them. Money is getting tight and people are
looking for something to blame. The thing they go to is ethanol. It is new to
the system, it has disrupted there normal oil fuel life. Gasoline today is a
mixture of about 10% ethanol (EIA 2013). This
has become a mandate because it helps with the emissions. There are other
options out there like a blend of 15% and 85% (E15 and E85), these can only be
used in newer vehicles (EIA 2011). This
does mean that if a person wanted to save some money on gas, because the E15
and E85 are cheaper, they have to get a car that is at least 2001 or newer.
Usually newer the better, there are new flex-fuel cars that allow people to use
the E85 all the time. Ethanol is blended into more than 97% of U.S. gas. This causes
the U.S. to use less crude oil. We usually import a lot of crude oil but we
have cut out 462 million barrels because of ethanol. That is more than the amount of oil we import
from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. oil dependence dropped 41% last year (RFA). This is very good because we keep the money that
we usually spend on that within our own economy. These are facts that people don’t
realize.
When a conversation on the street happens to be about
ethanol there will always be a debate about it. Now if a person was going to research
about the topic so they could do a good job debating the topic they are going
to find lot information that has many different sides. If the debate happens to
be about the production of ethanol a lot of information is going to say that it
is not very good. This is very true a corn based ethanol does not have very
good outputs for the amount of inputs (Jessica Zhang, Sarah Palmer, and David
Pimentel 2011). A university in New York did an analysis on energy that goes
into production of ethanol from corn. From the article they talk about that yes
there can be good aspects, but a main aspect that they were reinforcing was
that it takes more fossil fuel to produce corn based ethanol than it produces
(Jessica Zhang, Sarah Palmer, and David Pimentel 2011). One thing to remember
is that the fact may be true then but now it isn’t. They based this off of the idea
of the whole production of corn to the final stage of ethanol. So if corn
wasn’t going to the ethanol plant it still using fossil fuel to be produced. It
is just like if someone was hungry it takes fuel to go get food and it takes
fuel to make the food. It all evens out. There are positive aspects about
ethanol. When comparing ethanol to its past. The industry has made changes to
make the production of ethanol more efficient. Today one gallon of ethanol
delivers more energy than it did in the past (Iowa Corn). All the aspects to
make ethanol has decreased. They use less energy, less water, less corn per
gallon made, and much more. For 1 unit of oil used it produces 2.3 units of
ethanol (RFA). Ethanol industries are trying their hardest to make progress and
it shows.
There are many debates to pick and choose from and there are
many sides to pick from as well. For must debates a person is either going to
be for it or against having ethanol. All in all the debates are going to range
around the impact it has on the person. That can be about corn, fuel, or food.
They are going to put their opinions in and usually they stick to it. The one
thing is that people don’t know there facts and so sometimes they just go out
on a limb and then they inform other people with the wrong information. This is
a problem; people should know their facts before they debate about something,
especially considering it could lead to better innovations.
Works Cited
Ham, Klopfenstein, Larson, Shain, and Huffman. "Wet Corn Distillers Byproducts Compared withDried Corn Distillers Grain with Solubles as a Source of Protein and Energy for Ruminants."
Journal of Animal Science 72 (1994): 3246-257. American Society of Animal Science.
American Society of Animal Science, 6 May 2013. Web. 6 May 2013
Zhang, Jessica, Sarah Plamer, and David Pimental. “Energy
Production from Corn.”
14.2 (2012): 221-231. Springer.
Web. 9 Apr. 2013. <http://link.springer.com.
proxy.lib.iastate.edu/article/10.1007/10098-009-02343>.
