Grocery lobbyists spread lies about ethanol

godpt3

In early May, the Kansas Corn Growers Association put out a news release pointing to rumors of a multi-million dollar public relations campaign against ethanol funded by the food manufacturering industry. Recently, Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, outed the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s smear campaign. On May 15, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley went a step further, making a statement about the campaign on the Senate floor. The Senator also posted the GMA request for proposal as well as the public relations campaign proposal from Washington, DC firm Glover Park which was one of the P.R. firms hired for the job.

The Kansas Corn Growers Association along with the National Corn Growers Association thanked Senator Grassley and Roll Call for reporting on the disinformation campaign. Corn growers will continue to combat these well-funded public relations campaigns with facts.

“Commodity prices account for less than 20 percent of the cost you pay for food at the checkout. Even today’s higher commodity prices have very little effect on the price of food. The other 80 percent of the grocery costs which include transportation, packaging and processing are greatly affected by rising energy costs,” according to KCGA Executive Director Jere White. “We’re not saying it doesn’t cost more to produce groceries today, but main culprit is not the farmer, not higher grain prices and not ethanol.”

The public relations proposal prepared for GMA suggested several tactics.
“First, we must obliterate whatever intellectual justification might still exist for corn-based ethanol among policy elites. ... Second, we must demonstrate to policy makers at the state and federal level that there is a political price to allowing ethanol policy to drive up the cost of food,” the Glover Park firm’s proposal stated.

Senator Grassley read a statement on the Senate floor Thursday chastising GMA for its tactics.
“They’ve outlined their strategy of using environmental, hunger and food aid groups to demonstrate their contrived “crisis,” Grassley said. “I think it’s important for policy-makers and the American people to know who’s behind this effort.”

The GMA has already been successful in getting this misinformation into stories by the national and regional news media outlets.
“We are asking the public and our policy makers to look past the rhetoric and misinformation being manufactured by high powered Washington, D.C., public relations firms, and simply use some common sense and look at the facts,” White said. “Look at your own budget—the main driver in increased spending in your house is higher fuel and energy costs. The same holds true for grocery manufacturers and for farmers alike. It doesn’t make sense to go after the ethanol industry, which is adding 7 billion gallons of refined fuel to our nation’s energy supply. Without ethanol, our energy costs would be even higher.”
NCGA President Ron Litterer said corn growers were disappointed the food manufacturers took this action.

“It is simply unfathomable that food companies through the Grocery Manufacturers Association chose to smear their farmer-suppliers rather than cooperate with us to meet the growing challenge for America’s fuel needs,” Litterer said. “Unfortunately, from what we’ve heard this is not the only campaign in the works to place the blame on agriculture.”

MLC2006

if farmers grow corn for ethanol, it leaves less land to grow other vital crops and the price of groceries from those crops go up. most gas nowadays contains 10%-15% ethanol and gases prices haven't dropped one iota, they've only gone up up up. so what exactly are the lies being spread?

Cosmo

MLC2006 wrote:

if farmers grow corn for ethanol, it leaves less land to grow other vital crops and the price of groceries from those crops go up. most gas nowadays contains 10%-15% ethanol and gases prices haven't dropped one iota, they've only gone up up up. so what exactly are the lies being spread?

...
Personally... I would much rather pay higher costs in food and gasoline if it means we can ween ourselves from the addiction we have in the Middle East. Those fuckers have been fighting for thousands of years and it looks like they will never stop fighting. The further we are from them... the better.

godpt3

Cosmo wrote:

...
Personally... I would much rather pay higher costs in food and gasoline if it means we can ween ourselves from the addiction we have in the Middle East. Those fuckers have been fighting for thousands of years and it looks like they will never stop fighting. The further we are from them... the better.

You're going to pay regardless. It's only a matter of to whom. Would you rather pay a fat Arab sheik or a nice Iowa corn farmer

farfromglorified

godpt3 wrote:

You're going to pay regardless. It's only a matter of to whom. Would you rather pay a fat Arab sheik or a nice Iowa corn farmer

I'll take the fat Arab sheik, actually.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

godpt3 wrote:

You're going to pay regardless. It's only a matter of to whom. Would you rather pay a fat Arab sheik or a nice Iowa corn farmer

Funny you should say that I just watched the documentary "King Corn" last night.

Iowa corn...holy corn....really shit corn...but man...a serious shitload lot of shit corn. They're yielding on average 5 tons per acre. Nice decent folk forced to grow big or starve....and not particularly liking it. The quaint "family farm" has turned into a full scale industrial enterprise that must continually consume more and more land or perish.

Everyone in the US that eats junk food, and fast food, pop, candy etc..is literally made out of Iowa GMO corn down right to their carbon atoms.

Cosmo

godpt3 wrote:

You're going to pay regardless. It's only a matter of to whom. Would you rather pay a fat Arab sheik or a nice Iowa corn farmer

...
It all depends... are the Iowains conspiring to blow up the airplane I'm flying in or not?

baraka

Given the current demand, can we even grow enough corn in the US to make enough ethanol to replace gasoline in the US?

Pacomc79

baraka wrote:

Given the current demand, can we even grow enough corn in the US to make enough ethanol to replace gasoline in the US?

No, it's not possible even using algae and switchgrass and sugarcane along with corn etc etc to replace gasoline by ANY stretch of the imagination.

This is a little like filling half a gallon of milk with water to stretch it.

Ethanol is not close to as energy efficient as gasoline so you're going a few miles less per gallon even with E85.

Ethanol is just to lessen some of the demand. It's not remotely an alternative. As far as corn is concerned I'm more interested in what they are doing with corn plastics than Ethanol or even Biodiesel with soybeans.

I think Electricity or Natural Gas powered vehicles are more likely the near future solution much of which will have to do with harnessing the direct and indirect power of the sun over crop growth....


I'm not besmriching the usefulness of corn by any means... but the amount of petrolium the 1st world lives on is STAGGERING.... I'd like to be able to eat corn too.

I think there is room for ethanol and corn plastics etc as a part of the entire solution but it's no where near a singular solution.

baraka

Also, I thought I might add that the term 'biofuel' is often used interchangeably with 'ethanol'. Ethanol is not the ONLY biofuel, there are others (I've read some interesting things about algae) which do not compete with food. I hope that research in biofuels is not thwarted, because of the problems with ethanol.

godpt3

baraka wrote:

Also, I thought I might add that the term 'biofuel' is often used interchangeably with 'ethanol'. Ethanol is not the ONLY biofuel, there are others (I've read some interesting things about algae) which do not compete with food. I hope that research in biofuels is not thwarted, because of the problems with ethanol.

The thing about ethanol is that you can make it of just about anything. Corn doesn't have to be the only source. There's alot of potential in celulosic ethanol.

baraka

Pacomc79 wrote:

No, it's not possible even using algae and switchgrass and sugarcane along with corn etc etc to replace gasoline by ANY stretch of the imagination.

This is a little like filling half a gallon of milk with water to stretch it.

Ethanol is not close to as energy efficient as gasoline so you're going a few miles less per gallon even with E85.

Ethanol is just to lessen some of the demand. It's not remotely an alternative. As far as corn is concerned I'm more interested in what they are doing with corn plastics than Ethanol or even Biodiesel with soybeans.

I think Electricity or Natural Gas powered vehicles are more likely the near future solution much of which will have to do with harnessing the direct and indirect power of the sun over crop growth....

Thanks Pacomac79. Yeah, I read somewhere that ethanol has about 60% as much energy per gallon as gasoline.

Corn plastics, huh? Interesting.

Pacomc79

baraka wrote:

Thanks Pacomac79. Yeah, I read somewhere that ethanol has about 60% as much energy per gallon as gasoline.

Corn plastics, huh? Interesting.

not to derail the thread, here is one link on it though.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=396

Pacomc79

baraka wrote:

Also, I thought I might add that the term 'biofuel' is often used interchangeably with 'ethanol'. Ethanol is not the ONLY biofuel, there are others (I've read some interesting things about algae) which do not compete with food. I hope that research in biofuels is not thwarted, because of the problems with ethanol.

Me too biofuels are good stuff it's just not possible to grow all the fuel needed for this economy at this size. Most farm equipment is diesel. They need fuel too and it's expensive. Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel requirements in the past year have shot up the price of diesel and that makes everything cost more, if we can get some farms to grow soybeans for biodiesel that can work for off road use that would lessen the need for some petrolium. The food industry has bought food that needed mass transit from overseas for years... that's an issue. It's much cheaper to buy local, now that the fuel prices are creeping up the bottom lines are getting closer toegther and I think we may start seeing some more smaller local farms in the suburban areas become more envogue than they have been. Either way it's cheaper to ship corn or tomatos 100 miles than it is to ship it 3000. Given the local climate why not buy local? The prices now will probably be cheaper. This grocery industry deal is probably the primary pushback of looking for a scapegoat rather than finding the solution.

Brazil makes tons of ethanol out of Sugar Cane I believe.

baraka

Pacomc79 wrote:

not to derail the thread, here is one link on it though.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=396

Cool, thanks!

he still stands

I think what people need to remember is that nobody is saying that ethanol is a long term viable solution or replacement for oil (that I know of anyway). Replacing oil as an energy carrier takes a "shotgun pellet" approach rather than a "silver bullet" approach. There is never going to be an energy carrier like oil again, in that we won't have one major cheap source of energy. Renewable fuels are useful in this approach, but ethanol isn't the renewable of choice, it is simply what we have available to produce right now given the infrastructure is already built for producing it.

And again its not the price of commodities that is pushing up the price of food. For instance, the farmer sees $.02 to $.03 of revenue (wheat) from a loaf of bread. The rest is going to the miller, distributor, and grocery store. So I agree immensely with Pacomc79 that the way to get cheaper food is to stop bringing it in from foreign countries and buy locally. So it is essential to maintain farm subsidies and tariffs to protect our growers who exist in a pure competition and need trade protection.

El_Kabong

baraka wrote:

Thanks Pacomac79. Yeah, I read somewhere that ethanol has about 60% as much energy per gallon as gasoline.

Corn plastics, huh? Interesting.

that's pretty sad, doesn't the combustible engine only actually convert 20-30% of the energy it takes to run it?

El_Kabong

cnn's glenn beck (who also pretty much says fuck the polar bear, we want oil) pushes this line, too. for what seemed like the whole week he would say a few times that ethanol is helping drive food costs up. even tho one night he had a guest on that said pretty much 'no, glenn. we're talking about wheat shortages and ethanol is made w/ corn, not wheat' but it didn't matter, the very next night glenn beck was saying the same thing

Kann

farfromglorified wrote:

I'll take the fat Arab sheik, actually.

Why is that?

I don't think growing corn to feed cars is the way to go. We do have to work out a new energy source but using food for this, in today's context, is ludicrous.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

I'd prefer not to put my cash into supporting a country that still chops peoples heads off in public.

Not such a good investment if you know what I mean.

Unfortunately the quality of the food made from this corn is super ultra shit from a nutritional perspective....it's also all genetically modified, and sprayed with harsh poisons. It's also fed to livestock exclusively (highly abnormal) instead of grasses (normal). Did you know those cattle would be dead anyways months after slaughter do the the havoc this wreaks on their digestive systems?

Practically everything you can think of to eat is is made almost entirely from this corn. People are walking talking mutated poisoned shit corn at the atomic level.

Woohoo!