{"id":12291,"date":"2011-05-27T09:56:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T15:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=12291"},"modified":"2011-05-27T09:56:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T15:56:28","slug":"biofuels-for-transportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/biofuels-for-transportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Biofuels For Transportation: Been There, Done That"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Horses.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12294\" src=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Horses.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Horses.jpg 500w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Horses-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is a great deal of <a title=\"Excellent USA Today article on many dimensions of this debate\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/washington\/2011-05-08-biofuels-future_n.htm\" target=\"_blank\">controversy<\/a> about the wisdom of diverting a significant percentage of the US corn crop into the production of ethanol to fuel cars. \u00a0Something like 25-30% of the crop will probably be used this way in 2011 which sounds alarming in the face of <a title=\"A post about this latest price spike\" href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/world-food-prices-spike\/\" target=\"_blank\">global food supply issues<\/a> that have driven <a title=\"A recent Reuters article on this issue\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2011\/05\/26\/businesspro-us-markets-grains-idUSTRE74P0QL20110526\" target=\"_blank\">commodity prices to record levels<\/a>. \u00a0Its not really quite that extreme because the fermentation to make ethanol only uses 60-65% of the corn and the remainder is used as a high protein animal feed called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ddgs.umn.edu\/overview.htm\" target=\"_blank\">DDGS<\/a>. \u00a0That means that at most 18% of the crop is going to this subsidized use.<\/p>\n<p>As is often the case, it is useful to put this into historical perspective. \u00a0Consider the purple line on the graph below which shows that until the middle of the last century, US farmers devoted more than 40 million acres to growing a biofuel crop &#8211; oats for horses. \u00a0Yes, we powered much of our personal and public transportation, as well as the transport of goods, with the energy released by the bacteria in the digestive system of horses. \u00a0It certainly wasn&#8217;t a perfect system between flies and methane emissions from the horses stomachs and from the manure they deposited all over the roads. \u00a0Thus when the &#8220;horseless carriage&#8221; became available along with cheap fossil fuels, only romantics missed the good old days.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Planting-History.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12295\" src=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Planting-History.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Planting-History.jpg 500w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Planting-History-300x219.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, since the 1950s we have returned more than 40 million acres back to food\/feed crops &#8211; more than twice the effective area going to ethanol today. \u00a0But that is only part of the story. \u00a0In the same sixty years we have quadrupled the total production of corn making the amount going to ethanol seem small by historical standards (see graph below).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Production-History.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/US-Crop-Production-History.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"365\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, although the issues of <a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/ethanol-food-hunger\/\">food vs fuel<\/a>, indirect land use, transition to next generation biofuels and the proper role of subsidies and tariffs are all important to consider, <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">how<\/span><\/strong> we grow the corn is more important from a water pollution, energy, and greenhouse gas perspective (See &#8220;<a title=\"A vision for how we can best farm\" href=\"http:\/\/appliedmythology.blogspot.com\/2011\/03\/what-i-hope-will-be-future-of.html\" target=\"_blank\">What I Hope Will Be The Future Of Sustainable Farming<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a title=\"How land leasing patterns get in the way\" href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/sustainable-farming-land-ownership\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Surprising Reason We Don&#8217;t Farm As Sustainably As We Could<\/a>&#8220;).<\/p>\n<p>Graphs based on 5 year running averages of historical data from <a title=\"Where to get data like this\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nass.usda.gov\/Data_and_Statistics\/Quick_Stats_1.0\/index.asp\" target=\"_blank\">USDA-NASS Quickstats1<\/a>. \u00a0Horses image from <a title=\"Leunix's photostream\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/leunix\/\" target=\"_blank\">leunix<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=f39051f1-133a-4975-8918-f3c9fcf84cf5\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a great deal of controversy about the wisdom of diverting a significant percentage of the US corn crop into the production of ethanol to fuel cars. \u00a0Something like&nbsp;[ &hellip; ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":12294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,13],"tags":[66,133,626,4057,4956,91,627,3741,4957,4958,107,4959,8512,68,1104,4960],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Biofuels For Transportation: Been There, Done That &#8226; Sustainablog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/biofuels-for-transportation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biofuels For Transportation: Been There, Done That &#8226; Sustainablog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is a great deal of controversy about the wisdom of diverting a significant percentage of the US corn crop into the production of ethanol to fuel cars. \u00a0Something like&nbsp;[ &hellip; 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