Here's a site comparing corn to other fuels: http://burncorn.com/CountrysideCostAnalysis.php
And realize that organic/sustainable agriculture is gaining ground rapidly, at least in the US and Europe, and they *can* grow crops with equal or higher yeilds than chemically dependant farmers. So the environmental "issue" is really a straw horse. Besides which, there are a great many other non-traditional crops which yeild far better than corn. Take cattails, for instance. http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Typha.html Yields of 1000-4700 gallons per acre (depending on climate and how many crops per year) are possible. Most farmers here in WI have portions of fields which are unusable in wet years -- don't fight nature, go with the flow, stop draining those areas and plant them to cattail instead. Simple stuff -- just a lack of knowledge, really. Bill Stewart wrote: > At 02:54 PM 10/26/2001 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote: > > Biodiesel is being sold in the US as we speak for anywhere from $.99 > >to $2.50 a gallon, depending upon whether it's made from waste or virgin > >vegetable oil. Given the economies of scale working here, once they build > >up a larger presence, those prices will drop. And, if I'm not mistaken, > >much of Europe is already mandating that all diesel be sold with at least > >20% biodiesel. > > You might also look at Brazil which fuels a large portion of it's > >vehicles with ethanol already. > > VW's new fuel will be even cheaper. > > Making biodiesel from virgin oil scales well, since you can use > non-food-grade oils, but there's still a substantial ecological effect > of converting land from non-farming or food-farming to energy-farming. > Waste vegetable oil has a much different scaling ability - > until you get most fast-food french-fry leftovers used for fuel oil, > it scales up really well, but after that it hits the wall. > > Ethanol has similar problems - you need to grow a lot of sugary or starchy > crops, > which not only displace food crops (having similar land needs), > but at least in third-world countries tend to be grown by > slash-and-burn agriculture, which rapidly destroys land, usually rainforest. > > On the other hand, for an area that doesn't have oil, > the tradeoff between wasting farmland for energy crops and > using it for export crops to buy energy from outside could go either way. > Of course, when the "area" has government boundaries defining it, > especially in the third world, there tends to be a huge amount of > social policy and/or corruption distorting the market prices. > But sometimes you can exploit other governments' corrupt social policies, > e.g. grow cocaine or opium and buy oil or food or toys with the profits. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS CyberShamanix Work 920-203-9633 Home 920-233-5820 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html
