There're a couple of threads about this in the Alternative Fuels forum. In one of the active threads I took the numbers someone posted with his comparisons between gas and ethanol mileage and with an approximate 50 cent advantage to ethanol, the drop in mileage ate up all the 'savings' and he was spending more for ethanol in operating costs. (about $4.00 per 1000 miles, not much, but ethanol still loses.)

Of course to realize that, someone would have to actually be paying attention to their finances. Few people do.

 

Sure is a lot of land laying idle and a lot of farmers gettin subsidies to not grow crops. Corn ain't the only crop for "gas" of "diesel".

Could also {?} reduce the national debt?

 

I wonder what happens to beef production/prices when a lot of the corn that otherwise would go to the feedlots goes instead to ethanol production. Oh boy, I can smell those soy burgers grillin' right now! Mmmm...mmmm!

 

I don't know why we don't make ethanol from sugar cane. It is much easier, cheaper and better. The sugar cane industry is all but closed down here in Hawaii and at one time was on of the largest crops of sugar cane in the world. It can be (and is still) also grown in some of the southern states.

Did y'all know that an acre of sugar cane yields 662 gallons of ethanol, while an acre of corn yields 354 gallons.

At least here in Hawaii where E10 is mandatory we should be growing our own sugar cane and making the ethanol locally instead of importing it.

ON EDIT: I think I found the answer to my question. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar...610080363.html

 

i guess you never had read up too much on ethanol?

corn, switch gras, sugar, whatever, point is it needs land.

off the usda website using their numbers, to make even just 36 billion gallond of ethanol (which is about 88 days worth of fuel) you would need an area the size of oregon and maine put together.

to make enough ethanol for a years worth of fuel, you would need a land area 3 times the size of california.

there 434 million acres of crop land in america, 90.5 million is allotted for corn (we have to grow other things you know) it would take about 80 million acres to produce 36 million gallons of ethanol.

to make all 137 billion gallons of gas, we would need 330 million acres of land.

so....where are we going to get our food?

plus transportation, ethanol does not move in pipelines, all by train or truck, to transport only 36 billion gallons of ethanol, it would take 3.7 million trucks or 1.4 million tanker cars. there are only 2.8 million total trucks on the road now and 474 thousand class 1 train cars on the railroads.

plus the problem of fertilizer, it uses natural gas which is expensive in the US but cheap in places like the mideast, venzualia and russia. we import over 50 percent of our nitrogen based fertilizer right now.

so, we would still rely on foriegn producers for fuel, just in a different way, plus now instead of oil, we would rely on them for food, great trade off.

 

Farms Getting Government Payments, By State, according to the 2002 USDA Census of Agriculture

U.S. Total farms; 2,128,982
Total receiving subsidies; 707,596, or 33% of all farms. {unsure of total acres, still looking for that number}
http://farm.ewg.org/farm/farms_by_state.php
One third of all farms in the US are being paid to not grow crops. That is a LOT of land unused. I do a lot off reading on other subjects also.

 

subsidies does not mean not growing.

and try not using a biased source when making a reference, that source would never be allowed in the field of academics.

 

From http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.HTM

Total US cropland : 435370000
Total Harvested : 295940000

Gives you roughly 140 million acres of cropland lying fallow. Which is about 1/3 the amount of land you'd need to provide fuel for this nation. Not really a viable solution once the math gets worked out. Unless you don't mind staying home without power for 200 days of the year.