Re: ethanol and animal feeds stuff

Tamara in TN wrote:
Research Project: Biofuels and Livestock
9/6/2006

Research under way in the University of Illinois Department of Animal
Sciences has developed methods for allowing the same field of corn to
be used for the production of livestock feed and ethanol.


"The fundamentals of what we need to do are well known," explained
Larry Berger, professor of animal nutrition who heads the effort, "now
we are seeking to make greater improvements in the process over the
next couple of years and move toward a final answer that can be used by
corn growers and livestock producers."


The process is important because of the growing demand for corn by the
ethanol industry, a development that could reduce the amount of corn
available for the livestock industry, which relies heavily upon the
crop.


"The rapid development of the ethanol industry means that the supply of
corn available for livestock production may decrease in the future,"
Berger said. "How rapidly could this happen? Today, enough ethanol
plants are being built that within four to five years that industry
could be using five billion bushels of corn each year out of an average
domestic supply of 11 billion bushels.


"In 2006, the livestock industry is expected to consume 50 percent of
the corn crop so unless we have increased production of corn or a
decrease in corn exports, there will be competition between the ethanol
industry and the livestock industry for the corn."


Berger's work, partially funded by ADM, looks at maximizing the food
and fuel production per acre of corn.


"A field of corn doesn't have to be exclusively all for ethanol or all
for livestock," he said. "We can do that by taking the corn plant's
stalk and treating it to increase its digestibility. Then, we combine
that treated corn stalk with distillers grain--the by-product of
ethanol production--to create a quality diet for livestock."


The new feed product is being used in trials with beef and dairy
cattle.


Another part of the study is examining various processing options,
including using corn residues mixed with distillers grains in a
pelleting application and chopping corn stalks and handling them like
silage in an "ag-bag," a long, sausage-like container commonly used on
livestock farms.


"Some of the things we're trying are fairly high tech; others involve
technology that is easily accessible to producers," said Berger. "The
essence of the project is using corn stalks to produce meat and milk
and the grain to produce ethanol and still have enough protein left
among the stalks and distillers grain to provide a balanced diet for
the livestock."

Here's an interesting article from last July's Smithsonian Magazine:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/july/presence.php

that outlines the importance of synthetic nitrogen in fertilizer for
increasing corn yields.

Summarized, it talks about Fritz Haber (who won the 1918 Nobel prize
for "improving the standards of agriculture and the well-being of
mankind"), a German chemist, who discovered how to "fix" nitrogen.
Vaclav Smith (an author cited in the article above) estimates that two
of every five humans on earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz
Haber's invention.

During World War I, Haber threw himself into the German war effort, and
his chemistry kept alive Germany's hopes for victory, by allowing it to
make bombs from synthetic nitrate. Later, Haber put his genius for
chemistry to work developing poison gases-ammonia, then chlorine. He
subsequently developed Zyklon B, the gas used in Hitler's concentration
camps. His wife, a chemist sickened by her husband's contribution to
the war effort, used his army pistol to kill herself; Haber died,
broken and in flight from Nazi Germany, in a Basel hotel room in 1934.

Meanwhile, when humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis
of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the
sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel. That's because the Haber-Bosch
process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gases under immense
heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure
are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is
supplied by oil, coal or, most commonly today, natural gas.

One of my favorite sections of the article states, "From the standpoint
of industrial efficiency, it's too bad we can't simply drink petroleum
directly, because there's a lot less energy in a bushel of corn
(measured in calories) than there is in the half-gallon of oil required
to produce it. Ecologically, this is a fabulously expensive way to
produce food-but "ecologically" is no longer the operative standard.
In the factory, time is money, and yield is everything."

Yes, if you take the time to read the whole article, you'll see that
most of what I wrote above is directlly quoted (some high-school skills
never die!) or paraphrased straight from it. But there is MUCH more
there and it is a very interesting story.

My long-winded point is, and I am ALL for ecologically sound
decision-making, believe me - I would love to have a car that gets 100
mpg; that since we are using fossil-fuel generated fertilizer to grow
crops to squeeze out a few drops of theoretically ecologically friendly
fuel for motor vehicles, we are still going to maintain a dependence on
an industry that has a controlling interest in foreign nations intent
on murdering us and our children, and is backed by greedy businessmen
here in America who do not give a S**T about us. Pardon, my paranoia
is showing. BTW, Tamara, did you get my e-mail??

Adrienne

.

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