177 comments on Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
177 comments on Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
- Some predictions on the forthcoming Russian-Ukrainian gas 'crisis'
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”
—James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
I find this very hard to believe - my biology professor told me (I cant get him on phone this am) that some of modern crops , especially corn, are approaching maximum theoretical yields. Im sure we could increase the yield, but a doubling sounds farfetched - any corn geneticists in the room?
Not a corn geneticist, just a corn producer. A generation ago the corn yield contest winners were producing 200 bushel corn, good corn ground was raising 100 bu/acre, and the national average was probably 80 bushel per acre.
Today, the contest winners are raising 400 bushel corn, good corn ground is raising 200 bu/acre, and the national average is about 150 bushel per acre.
Also, I have heard that corn has been pushed as high as 800 in the lab..
Ethanol is not the silver bullet to peak oil, probably no more than a couple of B.B.'s, but the amount of disinformation and negative press on this site is astounding. I realize there is a ton of knowledge here, but very little with much connection to agriculture, or life "down on the farm".
In general, water issues are very, very real, but they have nothing to do with ethanol and everything to do with landowners having long-term water rights to a supply that is rapidly shrinking -- the transition back to dryland production will happen, and result in less corn.. ethanol or not..
The soil erosion, conservatoin issues are severly overblown. Sure, there is some farmers who are poor stewards of the land, but they increasingly are the ones exicing farming. Most successful farmers realize the land is their livelihood and take very good care of it.. (Witness the rise in no-till where appropriate... with no government mandate telling us we HAD to.)
Most reasonable senario -- the areas of the country with productive land resources will be energy AND food exporters as fossil fuels tighten -- although that may not be ethanol!
do you know the incremental yield on irrigated crops vs dry land farming, on average?
irrigation was a big part of the paper a colleague and I have pending publication called "Burning Water - The Energy Return on Water Invested" - using irrigated water numbers, the best biofuels required 10 times the water input as the most water intensive fossil fuel. But I couldnt find much data on large scale dryland farming, that also included fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
I don't know about an average. Clearly, there are quite a few places where the yield would be zero without irrigation, and can be quite good with irrigation.
I found this Colorado USDA publication. It says that in 2005 in Colorado, the average yield of irrigated corn was 184.0 bushels per acre, while the average yield of the dryland corn was 38.5 bushels per acre.
That is right – corn crop yields have been rising at 2 percent annually for decades. And Monsanto has the gene guys on it now. Meanwhile, farm inputs per output have been shrinking for decades. In other words, much like manufacturing, we are getting more and more out of farmers all the time.
The E3 guys say they are targeting 5-1 positive energy returns, by burning cattle dung and corn stalks to make ethanol. The leftover distillers grain is fed to the cows. If crop yields keep rising, it is reasonable to expect high single digit positive energy returns (say, 7 to 1) from ethanol, within 10 years, from the best ethanol plants. (I still say pig-potato plantsare next, as there are a lot more calories per acre of potatoes than corn, and pigs convert to meat faster than cows).
I wish for a better crop than corn, but we have 26 corn state Senators. Given the remarkable ability of US farmers to glut any market, ethanol seems okay. Remember, corn crop yields are up 40 percent in the last 20 years. Much acreage was left fallow. If yields rise another 40 percent in the next 20 years, and just 20 percent more acreage is put into production, we get 1.2 x 1.4= 68 percent hike in corn output, using roughly the same amount of land we did in 1980.
Not so bad, and farmers actually make money for a change.
Benjamin, that's a broad statement that you should back up with some hard data. I made a quick plot of US fertilizer consumption vs corn yield for the years 1961 to 2002 and, at a glance, the two are pretty well correlated. I didn't have the best of data. All I had was gross fertilizer consumption -- in other words, not specifically what was applied to corn. The data though, don't seem to support your contention that unit input per unit output is shrinking.
What my plot does show is that until the early eighties, US fertilizer usage was rising more rapidly than avg per ac corn yield, but since that time the two look to be more closely correlated.
Keep in mind, too, that when talking of putting idled agricultural lands back into production, any farmer is not going to take his best land out of production. If he/she takes land out of production, it will be the marginal land -- that which yields less output per unit input than the best land.
Right on. What industrial farmers call "soil." is really just dirt. it is a dead medium in which crops are essentially grown hydroponically w/ fertilizer. Genetics only increases the ability of the crop to utilize more nutrients but not increase the "efficiency" of the crop. There is no way to get something for nothing in this game. THis whole type of farming has no future long-term.
Good point. Even if the soil doesn't erode via physical removal (ie. soil erosion), it still erodes by consumption of organic material by the plant or microbes, etc. Fertilizer does not add organic material to the soil.
I see this clearly on my own land between the areas previously used to grow wheat and pasture. The cultivated area is dead and reduced to clay, you could use it to build adobe style buildings; whereas the uncultivated areas are loose, dark and crumbly in comparison. Modern farming methods have destroyed the topsoil, fait accompli, for anyone looking it is black and white, no yes, buts or perhaps.
Modern farming destroys the soil. Producing biofuels destroys the soil without producing food, which is doubly destructive. It is possibly the most stupid thing humans have ever done, in a long list of really stupid things.
I have absolutely no qualms about the production and use of biodiesel done in a sustainable way. This also absolutely negates any possible argument for their mass production or use to lessen the impact of Peak Oil. It simply isn't scalable and isn't a solution to oil unavailability in regards to the current economic system.
As far as I'm concerned, we don't need new technology, new energy sources or social systems. We just need common sense, we need to use what we have sensibly and we need to get rid of the nonsense that is unnecessary. If this cannot be achieved by society as a whole, then the individual must go it alone without society.
Triumvirate of collapse - Economy, Ecosystem, Energy
Consider the effect on the soil of growing perennial grasses instead, with all the non-CHO elements returned to the soil after processing the cut grass.
Dear Peak Oil Tarzan;
I am intimidated by your moniker, but here is a link: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/AgProductivity/
It shows farm output per input rising about three times since 1948.
I do not know how the USDA calculates everything. But, it makes sense. Farming is a form of manufacturing, and output per worker and unit of energy has been rising for decades as well in manufacturing.
In all, this is good news. We can expect farm output per input to rise for many decades hence, if the past six decades are a clue. This is especially good for ethanol and biofuels, which I contend is still an infant industry.
We have been growing jatropha for oil just a few years. Algae still just a hope, not a reality. Corn ethanol output only got serious in last two years – and only now are the new generation ethanol plants being brought on line which promise 5-1 positive energy returns.
It is reasonable to hope that, even with the so-so crop of corn, we can acheive very high single-digit ernergy returns in 10-20 years (7 to 1 , or 8 to 1).
As crop yields are rising 2 percent a year, and if PHEVs come on, this may move us huge steps to a post-fossil economy, long before we run out of oil. I think we can acheive Peak Demand for fossil oil a good 10-20 years before Peak Oil.
Last year, world crude demand grew by only 0.9 percent, after growing 3.1 percent in 2004, and then 1.8 percent in 2005. Check with EIA, these are hard stats.
One more year like the previous three, and we are at Peak Demand.
It may be game over for the fossil boys, any day soon.
The problem is, crude prices may collapse, wiping out the alternative fuel industry for another 20 years.
Benjamin, thanks for the link -- there's a lot to chew on and I'd rather not reply without studying the data presented here.
One thing I would like to know: "Productivity" does not -- to me anyway -- imply anything about output per unit of fossil fuel inputs. It is not argued by anyone that a single farmer, today, is able to produce many times what he/she could have a generation ago. But it is also not argued that much of this increase in "productivity" owes to substitution of mechanization and agri-chemicals. Ask any farmer what would happen if he/she had to give up the machinery and agri-chemicals and return to "the old ways" and they will tell you that half of the population would starve.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that minimum tillage, improved crop varieties, and more judicious use of fertilizers and agri-chemicals had helped farmers increase the margin between inputs and outputs, but I'm not sure there aren't other factors at play, as well. For instance, I would presume that removing a lot of marginal lands from production over the last twenty years or so (via programs like the USDA's CRP) have also made the numbers look better as the less productive land was idled.
Thanks for the link.
P.S. -- sorry you find the name POT "intimidating." It was a joke.
Tarzan:
Actually, when I reviewed the chart, I see farm productivity is up "only" 2.47 times 1948 levels, not three, but going the right direction.
I keep reading that "progressive" farming works, but few seem to do it. I don't know why. Culture can be a strong influence. Some say Europeans were wiped out on Greenland 700 years ago (when it got colder) as they refused to take on an Eskimo lifestyle. They preferred to die than to eat whalemeat etc.
I do know there is a terrific network of ag schools, ag journals, websites even coffee shops, and farmers are smart. I think they will adapt. After years of snorting, they are beginning to believe in turning animal dung into fuel, for example.
I share your concern about how much fuel farmers use. Can they do with less? Can they go to ethanol-based tractors etc? Or can they make their own energy? I don't know.
I prefer to be optimistic. Farmers have great networks of information.
And Monsanto has the gene guys on it now.
Meaning?
And, given how much you want to project you know something on the topic. feel free to talk about the water issue.
Eric-
Monsanto put out press releases a few years back, heralding new corn strains selected for ethanol. My layman's understanding was that the better corn was the result of simple selective breeding. Going forward, I gather they intend to introduce corn which is somehow the result of genetic research.
Water? I know nothing about water, except that I drink it. But, if we can build a an oil pipeline all the way across Alaska, why can't we build a pipeline from Lake Superior (a practically infinite source) to the Midwest or wherever water is needed? My layman's understanding is that the water in Lake Superior is good.
"Lake Superior (a practically infinite source)"
Last I looked Lake Superior had definite boundaries, depth, and watershed making it a finite resource just like everything else humans have depleted. Lets drain it to keep the fountains at the casinos going, the golf courses green, and ethanol to run our wasteful lifestyle.
After we drain Lake Superior dry, we will go after Lake Michigan next. Chicago has it way too easy anyway. Still three more lakes to go after that.
Seriously, I doubt we could even dent water levels at Lake Superior. That is why I used used the word "practically."
I am surprised more people are not considering using Great Lakes water for Midwest farmers. Seems like a solution to me. Must be a reason it won't work.
Aby water and pipe guys out there? Would it be prohibitively expensive to pipe Lake S. water to Midwest?
What if we made Paris Hilton pay for it?
I am surprised more people are not considering using Great Lakes water for Midwest farmers.
Because there are MANY state laws AND international law saying "no".
Towns 30 miles away on the other side of the watershed can't get the water, why should 'midwest farmers'?
Well, my layman's understanding is that the Great Lakes are terribly polluted. Mostly as a result of humans' use of the water drainage system to double as the sewage drainage system. Water from Lake Ontario, for example, is grey, and requires you to shower after exiting, for risk of skin irritation.
Furthermore, if you drained the Great Lakes you'd lose valuble shipping lanes, not to mention environmental damage.
Also, you'd still have to treat the water for human consumption, no getting around that, no matter how clean your lake water is.
The record 2004 corn harvest was about 11.8 billion bushels. If we can boost that by 68% and get 3.0 gallons/bushel out of it, that's an increment of 24 billion gallons of ethanol. This is about 1/6 the volume and a mere 1/9 the energy of US gasoline consumption, even if you assume that there are no offsetting energy inputs whatsoever.
Ethanol from corn is a scam on the taxpayer, no more.
The only serious solution is to move away from chemical (and especially liquid) fuels for transportation. The most feasible replacement is electricity, which can power perhaps 80% of light-duty vehicle mileage and 100% of rail energy requirements and already has infrastructure installed and paid for.
Even with your fabulous "Monsanto gene guys", the net energy densities don't even compare. A field of bushels of corn and a barrel of oil as about as far apart as geological time can have it. Ethanol is another "guppy" of a subsidized swindle, easily belittled by far more strategically adventurist role as the worlds' remaining superpower willingly able to start wars, which, of course, revolve around oil and the propaganda to keep everything-okay-all-the-time except mushrooms clouds are out to get you if you don't go along with our policy! Tricky world, the media is. Ethanol makes gasoline slightly pricier while hardly at all pinching on the fat ass of oil demand. Don't get me wrong about the price of gasoline, I don't own a car and live in a unsustainable urban environment which at least has good, comprehensive public transit. I've accepted that the price of gas is going to go up, just pick your political, military or geological duck, reasons and beliefs abound. Or stick your head in the ground like a cornucopian, so be it. Ethanol is just another non-starter, Federal Ponzi scheme while subsidizing farmers and higher gas prices--but they're gonna go up anyway so thank your wasteful federal spending! Meanwhile, lie to the public and make them feel good, a la the corporatist praising mentality that Benjamin Cole flaps on about all day and all night...The absurdity quickly presents itself as conservatives bemoaning government intervention and subsidy, aka pork--but ah, oh my how quickly they'll run to it when the best crop to grow by farmers in the US is corn (sugar cane only grows in tropical climates--lets tear down the fucking Amazon, yay forward-bound progress!), particularly when the government is paying you to produce a commodity we use for everything from feeding it to cows to make cheeseburgers to chicken for--yummy!--chicken tenders... Again, don't get me wrong, I think *all* politicians sound like such dumbfucks, it is truly astounding. The amount of contradiction and nonsensical rationalization that spews forth from politicians, lobbyists, corporations, et al ad infinitum is just too fucking much to actually address. It's like trying to understand a creationist if you're an intelligent, well educated, scientifically literate individual. That's why they win by default. Rapid fire nonsense can never be adequately responded too, and there is much of it--and many people get taken in... Until next time, thaa thaya, tha, thaaaaat's all folks!
You don't have a car? And you are in a non-urban environment? Really? Cool. But do you have a horse, or mule? I am not asking these questions to be snotty. I really want to know. You are on the Internet, so I assume you have electricity. From solar panels, or are you on the grid?
For 10 years I lived w/o a TV. Now I live in an Airstream trailer, but my wife wanted a TV. I walk to work, but I have a car. 1986 Isuzu Trooper. I get carp sometimes out of the LA River, and grow vegetables.
Check out what China is doing in Indonesia with jatropha. A $5 billion, 2.47 million ace jatropha plantation. When up and running, it is hoped it will produce just under 60 mby (year). That is about 2 days US consumption, From one plantation. Which will never be depleted.
Personally, I think we have to go to PHEVs and biofuels. We can make enough biofuels, if we use PHEVs. We are just learning now how to make biofuels. But I am sure my fellow man will get better and better at it.
I deeply respect and admire scientists and engineers who can solve riddles for the betterment of the rest of us.
I hope we can make a more prosperous and cleaner world. I don't hope it –– I know we can. I can see it. The technologies being created in the last 20 years are marvelous.
I agree that many Westerners live a wasteful lifestyle. But when you need serious medical care, or to talk on the Internet, or the telephone, or see a terrific art performance on TV, or have a varied diet all year long, or go to a wonderful library full of books, or fly an jet to Thailand, think about wha happened to allow you to take advantage of these modern inventions.
It is pretty easy to snipe from the sidelines. It is a lot harder to actually solve problems.
Hothgor, your cover story gets even more ridiculous.
In addition to your 1972 Airstream trailer and vegtable patch next door to your factory in downtown LA
You eat carp out of the LA River!?!
give me a break
Genetically Modified plants may have ugly side effects.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032307EA.shtml
jbunt
Farmers never, ever make money and they never will. Just ask them (or check their tax returns). But, when you group any category of Americans - doctors, lawyers, CPA's, dentists, etc (let's leave out NY investment bankers and hedge fund managers) they are by far the wealthiest group. Please do not throw me into the briar patch and please, never make me farm.
Precisely... The only way farmers make money is if they are heavily subsidized--and mostly even then it isn't the small/mid-level farmers that are *really* reaping the benefits, although a rising tide does lift even the little boats a little... It's for the large part the argibusiness giants which benefit from the subsidy--as they are the ones that can really bank all the politicians.
The FDA and monsanta have had a revolving door during the Bush Admin, but I'm sure it is/was little different under DLC democrats.
Nate, you might find this Lester Brown publication useful.
From the linked article
"USDA plant scientist Thomas R. Sinclair observes that advances in our understanding of plant physiology let scientists quantify crop yield potentials quite precisely. He notes that “except for a few options which allow small increases in the yield ceiling, the physiological limit to crop yields may well have been reached under experimental conditions.” For farmers who are using the highest-yielding varieties that plant breeders can provide, along with the agronomic inputs and practices needed to realize their genetic potential, there may be few options left to raise land productivity."
Jon Freise
Analyze Not Fantasize -D. Meadows