Corn!

(click the first link in the article, read it, then come back here)

So, they talk about how bad an idea it is to use corn for fuel. I heartily disagree. Why?

1. The world has a finite amount of fossil fuel. If you do some reading on “Peak Oil”, you can see that we don’t necessarily have such a great grasp on what is left in the tank called “Earth”. What we do know, however, is that there are more of us today than there were yesterday.

2. Corn, while used to feed humans, usually takes the form of HFCS and a bunch of other not-so-good things for us. The prices of many of the crappy foods we eat will go up. I’m not so sure that is the worst thing ever. I’m looking at you, America, with the “obesity epidemic” being what it is.

3. Corn, while used to feed animals, is foolish. Ruminant animals, such as cattle, goats, etc. aren’t designed to live on corn. Big-Ag uses corn for feed because the animals gain weight. A lot of it. And very quickly. Also, they can bring the food to the animals? Result; less space needed for a given number of animals. Awesome, right?! No… wait… that’s a CAFO.

4. Brazil has *zero* need for foreign oil. Why? Ethanol. They do, however, use sugar cane instead of corn. We use what we have, and that is corn. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but I like it better than the idea of blowing large holes in other countries and taking the oil we find. Also, up until the time of Prohibition (and what a crock of crap that was), cars ran on either gasoline _or_ alcohol. Farmers used to make their own fuel themselves. However, you can’t make a shit-ton of money in the oil industry that way.  So, I’d like to take a moment to give a nice redacted to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

I didn’t write this post to be inflammatory or cause consternation. I wrote it to be thought provoking. It is too easy to read something and agree with it, even though it may not totally fit with your ideals.  I would rather see corn go into my fuel tank than watch it be used to make more junk food or as a “cheater ration” for livestock. I am sure there are plenty of people (some who may be smarter than me) that could find flaws in some of what I’ve said. I invite them to try. And I do not say this with any sense of superiority; I truly ask to be shown where I’m wrong. Just be polite about it.

Related Images: