Federal legislation to eliminate ethanol mandate

[RubberToe]

Link:

Senate Bill Introduced To End Ethanol Mandate For Gasoline

Senators introduce amendment to end ethanol mandate | TheHill

<begin channeling Stephen Colbert>

Well, look what the crazy Senator from California is up to now. Just as we were about to achieve Energy Independence for America through the glorious efforts of our corn farmers in Iowa, Senator Feinstein has come up with another in a long series of crazy ideas. She has somehow gotten the idea into her head that it no longer makes sense to turn our food into automobile fuel! Pure left coast craziness! Next thing you know, she will start saying that we shouldn't be extracting 200 million year old fossil fuel from the ground, and should start using 100% renewable energy to power our cars. Please Senator Feinstein, think it through for once. This is wrong in so many ways, I don't even know where to begin...

How on Earth will we be able to continue "Rolling Coal" in our modified F-150's without the use of fossil fuel? Huh, tell me that. I see that we use 40% of the U.S. corn crop as the basis for the Ethanol. What perchance would we be doing with that 40% of the corn crop if not turning it into automobile fuel? Are you trying to put all our hard working farmers in the Midwest out of work? It's not like there are millions of people around the world who are starving that might benefit in some way from all that corn. What we really should be doing is encouraging them to purchase more American made cars, so that there is a bigger market for our corn based Ethanol overseas. That way we could maybe even get up to 80-90% of the corn crop being turned into automobile fuel! Thats the free market approach that I encourage. Sell more American made cars, export more Ethanol, expand fracking to supplement the added Ethanol being produced, put the longshoremen to work, build more ethanol plants, thats what I'm talking about. This is good business for everyone involved, no matter what angle you look at it from.

So Senator Feinstein, please take your crazy ideas back to your constituents on the Left Coast. We here know what is best for America and indeed the world, keep the Ethanol mandate intact ! ! !

<end Colbert rant>

 

[AudubonB]

How on Earth will we be able to continue "Rolling Cobs" in our modified F-150's

Fixed it for ya.

 

[santana338]

I LOVE the Colbert angle. Since he has moved on I may have to follow you to get my political sarcasm fix!

 

[mspohr]

Iowa operatives say ethanol worship is now as corny as The West Wing
Iowa operatives say ethanol worship is now as corny as The West Wing

Looks like ethanol is losing even in Iowa.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Let the oil&gas folks kill off ethanol just like they're killing off coal. Then renewables and EVs will kill off oil&gas. Easy peasy.

 

[cpa]

To ruin an otherwise entertaining post by RubberToe:

The corn used for ethanol is field corn, and it is generally fed to livestock and poultry to fatten them up. Other specialized types of field corn go into hominy, grits, polenta, breakfast cereal, and tortillas. Fresh corn for human consumption is sweet corn, and it is picked in the milk stage before the kernels lose their moisture. Sweet corn is never allowed to mature on the plant. Then there is flint corn--the type that most closely resembles the ancient maize in Mesoamerica--that today is used for popping.

Dairy farmers use a variety of agricultural products to feed their milk cows. These products include corn, soybean hulls, cottonseed meal, almond hulls, and culled citrus, other tree fruit, and melons. Veterinary science has developed precise mixtures of these products with alfalfa hay and grass hay to obtain ideal percentages of protein, fat, and other nutrients to go into the fluid milk production. These percentages change slightly throughout the year to adjust the butterfat content of the milk for seasonal spikes in butterfat demand (holiday cooking with more butter, or summer demand for ice cream.)

I mentioned the diet of dairy cows because the Central Valley of California has a very large dairy industry. One of their primary additives to hay is almond hulls. In recent years, gluts of Midwestern corn has been shipped to us in California via rail for use as dairy feed. The costs including shipping from Iowa to Visalia to the dairyman is a lot cheaper than buying almond hulls from the various hullers about the valley. Hence, the prices of almond hulls has dropped from ~$150-$180/ton down to under $100/ton. With an estimated 2.25 billion pounds of almonds to be harvested in late summer and early fall, there is a lot of product to sell. Hullers make up the difference in depressed hull prices by charging the almond growers to hull their almonds. Conversely, if hull prices are high, the hullers pay a small royalty to the almond growers.

So, Senator Feinstein might also have the interests of our MAGA farmers and almond hulling businesses by trying to eliminate these subsidies for Midwest corn.

Besides with climate change, perhaps those Iowa farmers will soon be able to plant bananas.