Posted by Paul on August 21, 2013 at 22:36:05 from (66.44.133.41):
In Reply to: ethanol question posted by greg k on August 21, 2013 at 16:04:34:
We grow a lot of corn around here.
There are also 3 sweet corn processors in the greater area, so a lot of sweet corn (and peas) are grown around here.
And one of the first ethanol plants was built here - I can see the steam from my farm on a calm day.
So......
Sweet corn is a very finicky crop, much much more insect pressure, it flops over in any little wind, and it yields much less bushels that field corn does.
All together, it costs much more to grow per acre, and it yields much less bushels per acre.
While you get more sugar per bu, you get far less sugar per acre. So in the end it would be less efficient, not more. Field corn yields more sugar (as starch) per acre more efficiently with less fertilizer and far less pesticide use than sweet corn would.
But ignoring all that, there is a bigger problem. Sweet corn does -not- store well. It is wet and gooey. It would be awful to have to dry that down enough to store. Cost a lot more to do than it takes for field corn.
As to the rest of the comments you got, well, there are folks in the big oil states that are trying very very very hard to get rid of ethanol so they can monopolize fuel profits again, and you are hearing the parrot talk of the big oil companies. Ethanol helps use lower octane gasoline, is cheaper than gasoline, and returns a Net positive energy return of 30% or so, not great, but it all helps. It mostly was developed to make cleaner air, gasoline burns pretty dirty without an oxygen additive in it, alternatives like mtbe create worse Eco problems than they solve. But you didnt ask about that stuff, so I won't bore you with it all, they are just preaching from the Big Oil handbook.
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