Ethanol and $8.00 corn

This week looking at the price of gas in Houston TX, I noticed the station did not have 10% ethanol in their fuel. We in the Midwest are used to seeing the little sticker on the pump. With the escalating price of corn will we see less Ethanol being used in the future.

If you read the newsmags, Ethanol has a large target on its back. It will be very interesting to see the first Etahnol plant come on line in Soperton GA that uses BioMass to make the ethanol and not the "Yellow Gold" Corn.

The downside to this is the hit the farm community will take if the Ethanol market does show some weekness.

Hope the farmers that will have a crop to bring in this year can make a great living on the high priced corn. The inputs for producing this crop have escalated as well. If you look at some of the inputs like Anhydrous the prices have doubled and tripled. Herbicide, Pesticide and Seed have risen greatly as well.

Some say farming is legalized gambling. I wish them well in the new economy.

Dr. Economides from the University of Houston recently spoke in Charleston about Ethanol and BioDiesel. This is an excerpt from Charleston.net report.

"Economides described ethanol, a much-touted alternative "green" fuel, as "the biggest scam in the energy business of the last 100 years."
It takes so much raw product — in this case, corn — to produce a gallon of ethanol that it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the product provides, he said.
If the U.S. converted all its corn supply to ethanol, it would provide for only 20 percent of the country's oil consumption, he said.
Further, if all soybeans in the U.S. were converted to biodiesel, 96 percent of diesel fuel in the U.S. still would come from traditional sources, he said.
By 2030, 87 percent of energy still will come from oil, gas and coal, Economides said. There are no alternatives to traditional fuels in the foreseeable future, he said. "