Wakeup Breathing

Ethanol’s unintended consequences…..
admin posted in Uncategorized on March 23rd, 2008

The environmentalists are touting the use of ethanol as one way to save the planet from the evils of gasoline. Ethanol which is basically grain alcohol or “corn squeezins” as some know it, is being used as addition to gasolene or in place of gas. And for the most part it works. There are changes you need to make to engine burning ethanol because ethanol destroys the normal gaskets and hoses that are not affected by gasolene. Many race cars burn alcohol instead of gasolene for their race fuel.

But using ethanol to replace gasolene nation wide, while a good pipe dream is impossible with our current material used to create it. That material is corn….while we grow substancial amounts of corn most of it is used for our food and food for many of our food animals. Animals like cattle, dairy cows, chickens and turkeys. Also much of our corn is an export to other countries.

But now with our governments support we are diverting much of our corn production away from food to be used in the production of ethanol…..What happens to a commodity that experiences a shortage? Why yes boys and girls it gets more expensive…..

So now that so much corn is being used to make ethanol less is available for food, specifically food for farm animals.
And what is available is getting much more expensive to buy meaning it is more expensive to raise those farm animals. Animals that produce food we eat or are produced for food. Of course we could all go vegan and not eat meat…but sorry I don’t like tofu burgers.

What this means then is that food that is made from corn or fed on corn is going to cost more. In 2007 the price of eggs has gone up 29 percent. Mainly because the cost of corn based feed has surged because more of the U.S. crop has been diverted to ethanol production.

But prices of beef and milk have also risen dramatically. This years Thanksgiving turkey will most likely set you back a bit more also. But we should expect other products to increase in price also. Things like cheese, bread and cereals will have to go up to as corn is used more for ethanol.

So in the near future expect to see food prices continue to rise as more and more corn is used to feed our cars instead of ourselves….another fine example of our government and environmentalist “knee jerk” reaction to a bigger enery problem and not understanding the “unintended consequences” of their actions.