The Agriculture Dept subsidy to farmers for not growing crops has been going on for decades. Why not let them grow the crops and export them to countries who will pay for the food? Why subsidize corn for ethanol? Let the ethanol people stand on their own two feet and either make it or not. This is not as bad as Solyndra, but almost since ethanol makes cars more inefficient and leads to more repairs and we have plenty of oil for gasoline.
I think the ethanol tax subsidy is on its last legs; besides the process leaves a substantial byproduct that is used as livestock feed. My mechanic disagrees about ethanol damaging engines, but that debate will go on a long time. I would however rather have a “home-grown” fuel than keep paying for oil at the mercy of countries who wish us harm. I disagree with your statement that we have plenty of oil for gasoline.
Mom, I guess you are not up on the news. Perhaps you didn’t hear that the US is sitting on the largest proven reserves of oil and gas in the world and it exceeds the Middle East. The problem is that it has not been able to be developed due to very bad energy policy by the government for decades. Read up on the Bakken field in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. That is just one field and has billions of barrels of proven reserves awaiting extraction. By the way, I insure a number of auto repair garages and all of the owners agree that ethanol is very hard on injectors in automobiles and it also is much less efficient. Mileage on cars is 10% less than regular unleaded.
Setting caps at $100,000 is low. This article makes it sound like farmers are getting rich off of subsidies. I can assure you that they are not. When my husband farmed he may have had grossed $500,000 but the cost of growing his crops, maintaining his equipment, and harvesting would be $475,000 or more for the year.
We were lucky to have $15,000 to live off of–that is why he doesn’t farm anymore. What farmers get out of a farm bill program is only 7-10%. The majority goes toward food stamps. If you don’t think farmers need subsidies–try farming yourself one year. Soon noone is going to take the risk and our groceries and cotton are going to be priced so high we will not be able to afford them. Small family farmers are a dying breed. Once big commercial farms take over all of the farming–they can do what they want.
My biggest complaint is subsidizing insurance for large corporations. I insure a large greenhouse operation growing flowers. Some of their product is grown outdoors, so they buy subsidized crop insurange. This is a company with $60,000,000 in sales. There is something wrong with this. Let’s help the family farms, but not the big corporations.
I see no point in producing ethanol. The return on ethanol is 104% (It takes 100 calories of energy to produce 104 calories of ethanol). That means we are burning fossil fuels to produce the same amount of “clean” energy. With the efficiency at least 10% less on ethanol, it seems that all we are doing is taking money from one hand and putting it in the other and receiving absolutely nothing. If ethanol production was a worthy cause, the ethanol plants should be able to provide their own energy (by burning ethanol) to support the distillation process and still have a large enough return to support the farmers growing the crops, the distributors supplying the ethanol, and the consumers using the product. Until that can happen, it seems to me that ethanol subsidies are good for only one group – “Big Oil”.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are responsible for foisting the idea on the people that bio fuel was a good idea since we were supposedly didn’t have enough oil and gas and were importing 40% from the Middle East. What a stupendous lie! We should have been energy self sufficient 25 years ago with the supplies we have. One of the biggest lies has been repeated by the President who keeps saying we have 3% of the supply and consume 25% of the energy. This has led to all the failed green agenda and billions being “invested” in it. By the way, corn prices have gone through the roof the past few years due to a large portion of the crop being given to ethanol production. I don’t know about you Clean, but I have had enough of the lies. Put Sarah in charge of Energy and we create jobs and become energy self sufficient.
Agent makes a good point about the shale oil reserves in the Northern Great Plains. It is my understanding extracting the oil from the shale is far more expensive than the old days of drilling directly into the earth looking for large pools of oil.
I am not aware of any break through technology which will drive down the cost of extraction and, therefore, a lower price at the gas pump.
While State and Federal regulations may be a factor, I believe the real stumbling block is making extracting this oil cost-effective. But, it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.
Hey Old, I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. When oil was running $40 to $50 per barrel by natural drilling, the shale extraction was too expensive to get. Now that we have had several years of $100+ per barrel, it is economically feasible to get it out. There has been several advances in technology and fracking is one of them. There are several fields out there including ANWR that are available to drill. All of them make more sense than ethanol production from corn. The Oil & Gas Industry will advance and have new methods of extraction if we can just get government out of their way. EPA, Interior and the Energy Dept are all run by left wing environmentalists who seem to think we can create gas from algae or cow patties or invest in more solar panels or wind farms which will never be more than 5% of our needs. These people need to go and be replaced by real energy people.
The Agriculture Dept subsidy to farmers for not growing crops has been going on for decades. Why not let them grow the crops and export them to countries who will pay for the food? Why subsidize corn for ethanol? Let the ethanol people stand on their own two feet and either make it or not. This is not as bad as Solyndra, but almost since ethanol makes cars more inefficient and leads to more repairs and we have plenty of oil for gasoline.
I think the ethanol tax subsidy is on its last legs; besides the process leaves a substantial byproduct that is used as livestock feed. My mechanic disagrees about ethanol damaging engines, but that debate will go on a long time. I would however rather have a “home-grown” fuel than keep paying for oil at the mercy of countries who wish us harm. I disagree with your statement that we have plenty of oil for gasoline.
“Homegrown?” We import ethanol, too.
Mom, I guess you are not up on the news. Perhaps you didn’t hear that the US is sitting on the largest proven reserves of oil and gas in the world and it exceeds the Middle East. The problem is that it has not been able to be developed due to very bad energy policy by the government for decades. Read up on the Bakken field in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. That is just one field and has billions of barrels of proven reserves awaiting extraction. By the way, I insure a number of auto repair garages and all of the owners agree that ethanol is very hard on injectors in automobiles and it also is much less efficient. Mileage on cars is 10% less than regular unleaded.
Setting caps at $100,000 is low. This article makes it sound like farmers are getting rich off of subsidies. I can assure you that they are not. When my husband farmed he may have had grossed $500,000 but the cost of growing his crops, maintaining his equipment, and harvesting would be $475,000 or more for the year.
We were lucky to have $15,000 to live off of–that is why he doesn’t farm anymore. What farmers get out of a farm bill program is only 7-10%. The majority goes toward food stamps. If you don’t think farmers need subsidies–try farming yourself one year. Soon noone is going to take the risk and our groceries and cotton are going to be priced so high we will not be able to afford them. Small family farmers are a dying breed. Once big commercial farms take over all of the farming–they can do what they want.
My biggest complaint is subsidizing insurance for large corporations. I insure a large greenhouse operation growing flowers. Some of their product is grown outdoors, so they buy subsidized crop insurange. This is a company with $60,000,000 in sales. There is something wrong with this. Let’s help the family farms, but not the big corporations.
I see no point in producing ethanol. The return on ethanol is 104% (It takes 100 calories of energy to produce 104 calories of ethanol). That means we are burning fossil fuels to produce the same amount of “clean” energy. With the efficiency at least 10% less on ethanol, it seems that all we are doing is taking money from one hand and putting it in the other and receiving absolutely nothing. If ethanol production was a worthy cause, the ethanol plants should be able to provide their own energy (by burning ethanol) to support the distillation process and still have a large enough return to support the farmers growing the crops, the distributors supplying the ethanol, and the consumers using the product. Until that can happen, it seems to me that ethanol subsidies are good for only one group – “Big Oil”.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are responsible for foisting the idea on the people that bio fuel was a good idea since we were supposedly didn’t have enough oil and gas and were importing 40% from the Middle East. What a stupendous lie! We should have been energy self sufficient 25 years ago with the supplies we have. One of the biggest lies has been repeated by the President who keeps saying we have 3% of the supply and consume 25% of the energy. This has led to all the failed green agenda and billions being “invested” in it. By the way, corn prices have gone through the roof the past few years due to a large portion of the crop being given to ethanol production. I don’t know about you Clean, but I have had enough of the lies. Put Sarah in charge of Energy and we create jobs and become energy self sufficient.
Agent makes a good point about the shale oil reserves in the Northern Great Plains. It is my understanding extracting the oil from the shale is far more expensive than the old days of drilling directly into the earth looking for large pools of oil.
I am not aware of any break through technology which will drive down the cost of extraction and, therefore, a lower price at the gas pump.
While State and Federal regulations may be a factor, I believe the real stumbling block is making extracting this oil cost-effective. But, it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.
Hey Old, I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. When oil was running $40 to $50 per barrel by natural drilling, the shale extraction was too expensive to get. Now that we have had several years of $100+ per barrel, it is economically feasible to get it out. There has been several advances in technology and fracking is one of them. There are several fields out there including ANWR that are available to drill. All of them make more sense than ethanol production from corn. The Oil & Gas Industry will advance and have new methods of extraction if we can just get government out of their way. EPA, Interior and the Energy Dept are all run by left wing environmentalists who seem to think we can create gas from algae or cow patties or invest in more solar panels or wind farms which will never be more than 5% of our needs. These people need to go and be replaced by real energy people.