Re: "Biofuels cause food crisis:" Another load of rightwing bull***

JC wrote:
Well, having grown up on and spending all of my 74+ years in farming I would simply suggest that you look into what CRP contracts are and how crop allottments are controlled and I believe that you will find that food prices are indeed rising as a result of biofuels and I'll go so far as to say you ain't seen nothing yet. When we get the process figured out as to how to make fuel out of switchgrass, which is coming very soon, most farmers will be giving up their food crop operations and going with switchgrass. Why is that, you might ask? Because switchgrass is a weed and you don't have to have tractors, combines, cultivators, fertilizer or anything but a nice big hammock under some pretty shade trees so you can lay there and watch it grow. So, what do you prefer? Getting your fuel from foreign sources, or getting your food from foreign sources. If I was you, I'd get myself a good book on how to garden, raise a calf and become self sustaining.
The problem with Switchgrass is that the corms are perennial. You have a devil of a time getting rid of it if you want to grow something else.

Sorghum is more manageable. Worms dont hit on it near as bad as corn, and dosing a field with BT is cheap and simple. Dont need expensive hybrid or GM seed. Does better on worse ground, and in drought.

A U of GA website says you can get 100-110 gallons of ethanol/acre and get that off 3.5 gallons of tractor fuel. You harvest in August when there's plenty of sun to run a solar still to extract the ethanol, after which you still have mash and seed for chicken and stock feed.

And you can put the manure back on the field. All the alcohol takes is the carbon & oxygen, which it gets from the air, not soil. The minerals exported as meat can be cheaply replaced. No need for expensive fertilizer every year.

If ethanol from sorghum is so great why aint they doing it? The BATF. With corn, you also get isopropyl, the poison in moonshine. But with sorghum, you get *rum*. You can drive on it, or drink it, and the feds cant tell what you will do with it. They see a problem with liquor taxes.

Altho, you could also, with bunny suit technology, use microbes on the ethanol to produce butanol. Which has the same BTU rating as gasoline. Havta be careful, if the microbes get in your gut, you'll be sick or maybe even dead.

I grow a little sorghum most years; waiting for it to come up now. If the food crisis leads to economic panic, I expect to work a deal on the land to grow several acres. *IF* the proverbial schitt hits the fan, I know nobody burns down a distillery or hassles the brew meisters.

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