Are you one of the people that says we cant use corn for fuel?

Question

Why dont you think we can use corn its replenishable and farmers feed over half the world. I dont there going to run out of corn if we start using it for fuel. And if you dont want to use corn what would you use radishes? Green beans? Oranges? Let me know I have to write a paper on it.

Answer 1

No. We can use corn as fuel

Answer 2

you are dumb. no we wouldnt run out of corn, but we would run out of the nutrients in the soil to grow the corn.... growing that much corn would take alot of space, robbing the soil of all nutrients. then we would run out of corn. so you are wrong. and any plant you want to grow would end up the same. so stop daydreaming and waste some gasoline well you can.

Answer 3

There are other plants/crops which are much better suited for use as fuels as they yield more oil per acre. Rapeseed oil is the one most commonly used to produce biodiesel at present.

Answer 4

I heard that it is not quite the perfect answer that we thought it would be.  If I remember rightly, the argument is that the increase in toxic fumes from all of the trucks that would have to be used to transport the corn would negate any benefit.

Answer 5

Every farmer who grows corn or other vegetables for gas tanks is a farmer who isn't helping contribute food to an already starving population.  There are famines in some places in Africa that won't get any better with farmers turning their food production into fuel production.  Also, less supply of corn for food means higher prices of any food that contains corn or uses corn in its production.  Meats that are fed corn will get more expensive, breads that contain corn will get more expensive, not to mention ethanol is a third less efficient than gasoline.  What ever you do, don't waste food on our gas tanks.  A better solution would be mixed bio-diesel for trucks and electricity generated from renewable resources for cars.

Answer 6

The energy input needed to make a gallon of ethanol is almost 1 gallon of oil, diesel, gas etc. so at best you wind up a break even proposition. In return for this break even proposition, you wind up with high food cost, higher meat prices, less exports, and fewer other crops.

We export a lot of corn if you use it for ethanol you export less.

As we use more corn the price of corn goes up and farmers plant fewer other crops to take advantage of the higher price.

If you really want a "crop" that is something we can grow and use to replace fuel, look up algae oil.

Answer 7

corn is renewable but the oil that is used to grow it is not. also there are still food shortages in the world so i think it would be stupid to use food to make fuel.

there may be some merit in ethanol from cellulose because it would reduce cost and oil use but that is not currently widely available.still bio fuels are at best a gap filler between oil and hydrogen.

Answer 8

If you used all the corn grown in the United States to make fuel, you would only reduce our fuel consumption by 25%, and millions of people would go hungry or starve to death.  Just the small amount of corn we are using now for fuel has raised the price of tortillas in Mexico to the point that some people are going hungry.

Answer 9

Nobody is saying that we CAN'T use corn (maize) for fuel, only that it is a stupid, counter-productive boondoggle designed to get the votes of farmers from the Midwest and Great Plains.

1) It requires more energy to produce the ethanol from corn than the ethanol saves.

2) Higher demand for corn leads to higher prices. This, in turn, leads to more land being put into corn production. I've seen cornfields extended right to the edge of a stream. This means that soil, fertilizer, and pesticides go into the stream rather than being filtered out by a buffer strip. Enjoy your drinking water. Other marginal lands are being placed into corn production. This means less forested area and increased global warming. It also means displacement of the forest animals and their eventual death.

3) Higher prices for corn mean higher prices for corn-based products, such as corn meal, corn oil, and American mass-market beers. This, in turn, raises the price of other grains and their products, so that you pay more for bread, flour, and (worst of all) good beer. You not only pay more at the pump but at the supermarket as well. It is enough to drive people to drink except that the prices of gasahol and beer are too high to permit that.

4) Switch-grass is an accepable feedstock for alcohol production but there are fewer votes to be gotten from proposing that.

Good luck with your paper.

Answer 10

I'm a small farmer, and live in the heartland of BIG agriculture.

I understand exactly how the corn, Government, Stock Market, Government subsidies works.

Corn is a HORRIBLE idea for making into fuel.

If the farmer is extremely lucky, he's able to generate 1.3 gallons of fuel made from the corn, for every 1 gallon of fuel he used to grow it.  That is if he's lucky.......!!!  Quiet often corn produces LESS FUEL THAN WAS NEEDED TO GROW IT!!

Quiet simply this does not make financial sence in any way shape or form....unless you plug the Government (U.S.A.), the Stock Market, and corn subsidies (from the Government) into the equation.

The U.S. Government has a extremely vested interest in seeing that corn does well on the Stock Market.  The ENTIRE U.S. diet is based on corn.  Corn is in nearly every single thing we eat.  Soda, milk, bread, butter, meats, yogurt, eggs, pizza, french fries, hotdogs, hamburgers, breaded seafood....the list is simply staggering.  In fact it's easier to state that unless it is a raw (uncooked and unprocessed in any way shape or form) fruit or vegtable the American food product most likely contains corn.

Corn however has not been grown at a profit for many, many years by farmers.  Hence the Government heavily subsidises the corn harvest.  Why?  Because if the Government did not provide the subsidies, the entire corn based American food diet would colapse, prices of foods would skyrocket, the Stock Market would nose dive, and we would be launched into a full scale Depression (never mind  Recession).

I'm sure people think I'm wildly exaggerating, but I'm not.  I have a bottle of diet Pepsi sitting in front of me.  The soda has 9 ingrediant listed on the bottle.  5 of those ingrediants are corn based.  They don't list "corn" for ingrediants (as most people assume they do).  They list what the corn has been broken down into.  Citric Acid is one of the corn based ingrediants.....and I bet everyone reading this thought "citric acid" came from citrus fruit, huh?

I'm straying from the main topic however...corn into fuel (ethanol).

Basically, to make ethanol, you want a plant with sugars in it.  Corn does have sugar.  However corn requires such an incredibly high INPUT of petrolium to grow it, the return is often in the negative.  

Besides if we have to import the oil, to make the nitrate fertilizers so the corn will even grow, how have we possibly become independant of oil?  We haven't....it's just that most people do not actually understand the cycle of corn growth, and just what is done to grow it, and just how much petrolium that entire process requires.

Viable alternatives to corn?

Switchgrass...low in sugar, but requires almost no input to grow it (including water) and can be grown in marginal lands that will not support traditional food crops.

Straw...low in sugar, and is a waste product grain farmers use to burn off their fields to get rid of.

Sugar cane....high in sugar, can only be grown in tropical places, so limited use in the U.S.

Sugar beets!!!!!!!!!!!  Can be grown over large areas of the U.S. with little input and produces fantastic amounts of fuel return for the input!!!!!!!

Potatoes....cheap to produce, but can only be grown in limited areas due to the potato plants need for cool nighttime temps.

Household garbage, especially the wet stuff, lawn clippings, and kitchen waste.  Building a plant just down the road from me.  People taking their trash to the transfer station (plant located right next to transfer station) can have their garbage recycled into fuel!

I'm willing to venture that there could also be small ethanol plants set up here and there in conjunction with agriculture/food processing.  I'd be willing to bet that the left overs from squeezing oranges to make orange juice could be turned into ethanol.  Along with the left overs from just about anything that is used to make juice (apples, grapes, carrots, tomatoes, ect).  The trick is to have the ethanol plants located close to the food processing plants, so the trasportation costs of the pulp is as little as possible.

Corn is NOT a replenishable crop.  Corns requirements of fertilizers (all petrolium based) is titanic.  If we didn't have oil, we couldn't grow corn on such a massive scale.  The entire American diet would undergo a MASSIVE change if there was no oil to grow corn.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 11

Make sure you look into ethanol from sugar.  Ethanol can come from corn, but it's not nearly as efficient.  Politicians in the US are favoring corn over sugar because corn will grow in the US but sugar comes from Brazil.  This is a sad case of how "buy American" is NOT good for the economy or the environment.

Answer 12

Cowgirl3

ethanol is a GREAT reource for alternative fuel.

Ethanol doesn’t go bad like petroleum it’s just Alcohol. It’s what preserves your wine and gets better as the years go by.

Ethanol is a much cleaner fuel than petrol (gasoline):



It is a renewable fuel made from plants

It is not a fossil-fuel: manufacturing it and burning it does not increase the greenhouse effect

It provides high octane at low cost as an alternative to harmful fuel additives

Ethanol blends can be used in all petrol engines without modifications

Ethanol is biodegradable without harmful effects on the environment

It significantly reduces harmful exhaust emissions

Ethanol's high oxygen content reduces carbon monoxide levels more than any other oxygenate: by 25-30%, according to the US EPA

Ethanol blends dramatically reduce emissions of hydrocarbons, a major contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer

High-level ethanol blends reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 20%

Ethanol can reduce net carbon dioxide emissions by up to 100% on a full life-cycle basis

High-level ethanol blends can reduce emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) by 30% or more (VOCs are major sources of ground-level ozone formation)

As an octane enhancer, ethanol can cut emissions of cancer-causing benzene and butadiene by more than 50%



Sulphur dioxide and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions are significantly decreased with ethanol.

Lastly and my favorite.. It can be made at home.

It will cost about $1.10 to $1.20/gal to make the alcohol from various feed-stocks like corn, barley, potatoes, or Jerusalem artichokes. You will also have by-products which you can sell or use as animal feed, reducing the total cost down to about $.95/gal.

I currently run Bio Fuel (straight vegetable) in a 1999 Dodge 3500 truck. But all Cummins engines were modified from the factory to run on BioD since around 1992 without any modification.

Biofuel is recognized by both the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy as an alternative fuel, and qualifies for mandated programs under the Clean Air Act Amendments and the Environmental Protection Act of 1992 (EPAct).

USDA Clears Air with Biofuel: Buses and other diesel-burning vehicles run cleaner if they mix biofuel with regular diesel fuel, said the US Department of Agriculture at a biofuel fuel seminar at a USDA research center.

Conversely most major automotive manufacturers (Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors, etc) recommend the use of bio fuels, and nearly every car manufacturer in the world approves ethanol blends in their warranty coverage.

In fact your probably even driving an ethanol car and didn't even know it.

The trick is finding fuel.

I've been producing biofuel for about 3 years now, it's not extremely difficult. Basically you need general household ingredients, a processor (or still for ethanol) and some used oil. Blend it, let separate, screen and use. I complied a guide a while back to help walk you threw the process step by step, just email me or check out..

www agua-luna com

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions if you’d like assistance in making your first self sufficient steps, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the process. I’ve written several how-to DIY guides available at  www agua-luna com on the subject. I also offer online and on-site workshops, seminars and internships to help others help the environment.

Dan Martin

Retired Boeing Engineer now living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World... Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY... All With Just One Click of A Mouse...For more info Visit:  

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Answer 13

We can use corn for fuel, but...

the amount of corn, or anyother crop is dependent on the amount of energy from the sun.

This is limited,if relativly constant, amount

- fossil.fuel (just stored sunlight) has enabled us to live on our savings for the las 200years, increasing food supplies & human population (6-9bn) due to reduced need to plant fuel crops and, cheap pumped irrigation, poly-tunnels, applications of oil-based agrochemicals.etc.

Now as our savings run out  (and production can't keep up with demand price of oil will soar) and pollution, soil errosion, pesticide resistance, depleted water supplies etc (oh, and climate change too)

we will have to rely on the current energy from the sun again.

This current energy will provide for a population of about 3bn humans with a food&fuel demand a bit less than western European levels.

See Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?op...

So we can use corn as fuel, we just have to choose who goes without.