How to burn your food

[GliderGuider]

From: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production.html


Fraction of US Corn Crop Converted to Ethanol


US Ethanol Production (Thousands of barrels per day)

38% of American corn becomes fuel? As someone who is extremely concerned about the looming impact of Peak Oil on the world food supply, all I can say is, "Oh, shit!"

[MineralMan]

1. I wonder how much of that corn would not have been planted

were it not for the ethanol market? That seems to be a pertinent question, somehow.

If more acres have been devoted to corn production to match the demand for corn to be converted to ethanol, I have to wonder how much these charts actually mean.

[wtmusic]

2. Good point. nt

[MineralMan]

3. Well, I simply don't know the answer to my own question.

It's a piece of information that is not presented, and corn to ethanol is not really one of the issues I follow very closely.

Lots of corn being grown in Minnesota for conversion to ethanol, but I'm not noticing any shortage of corn-based products anywhere, so I have to wonder if farmers are not growing corn they wouldn't otherwise have grown to feed the ethanol conversion market. I suspect so. I guess I'm going to have to go research this.

[JoeyT]

6. As far as I can tell it's even more complicated than that.

We don't know how much corn wouldn't have been planted, and we don't know how much of that corn replaced stuff that would have been planted were it not for ethanol production. The latter is damn near an unanswerable question.

[GliderGuider]

10. Here's an approximate idea

These graphs use data from the FAO:



Since 2000 the amount of corn produced has increased by 32% while the amount of non-corn grain has declined by 4%. The proportion of the total US grain crop that consists of corn has increased from 74% to 80%.



Since 2000 the area under cultivation for corn has gone up by 10%, while the area devoted to non-corn grain production has gone down by 12%. Overall planted area has remained essentially unchanged. There has been a shift in favour of corn.



The yield per hectare for corn has gone up by 20%, while the yield for other grains has gone up only 8%.

While there has been a shift in planted area in favour of corn, the increase in corn production has matched the ethanol demand with no increase in overall use of fertilizer since 2000. Non-corn grain production has taken a small hit, though.

[GliderGuider]

13. And to finish it off, a look at the evolution of the US grain production for food

While the amount of corn used for ethanol has gone up over 450%, the total production of grain destined for the food system has only declined by 1.5%

[MineralMan]

4. OK. I went to see how corn production tracked over a similar

period. Here's the site where I found an .xls spreadsheet with the chart below:

www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/data/docs/corn_production_ethanol.xls




Looks like corn production has gone up alongside the increase in both its use for ethanol production and the actual production of ethanol, based on the charts in this OP. My date ends in 2007, but the curve is clear. It appears that farmers are growing more corn to meet the demand for corn to be used in ethanol production. Apparently the food production of corn is still in place. Excess is being grown for this industrial use.

It's good to have all the data, isn't it?

Incidentally, I don't have any irons in this fire. It's not really one of my issues. But these charts bothered me for some reason, so I did my research.

[GliderGuider]

5. That's good to know, thanks. Plus it gives me a chance to use this delightful cartoon my GF sent me

:evilgrin: :thumbsup:

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. However, the percentage used has gone up a lot since 2007

From the graphs in the OP, the yearly percentage has gone from about 18% in 2007 to 38% in 2010; and the average ethanol production from about 430 over 2007 to 860 over 2010 (difficult to know what time of year one should take for the start and end of that continually moving figure to match the yealy crop, though). But, roughly, the percentage and absolute amounts have both doubled, so the total corn production must have roughly stayed the same. So, in the past 3 years, the amount of corn used for other purposes really has gone down.

[GliderGuider]

14. Corn yield increases have taken care of the potential problem.

For now.

[NickB79]

9. But what other crops has that increased corn production supplanted?

What was grown on the land previously, that is now being cultivated for ethanol corn? There isn't much new cropland out there to be had, so that means that farmers are choosing corn over other crops that they used to grow in previous years because the price of corn is so high.

[GliderGuider]

11. I took a look at that up above.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=276748&mesg_id=276782

The picture isn't as dire as I feared.

[MineralMan]

15. There's still a lot of farmland that is not under cultivation.

Lots of reasons for that, but land that doesn't produce a profit is often not in use, so commodity prices definitely play a role there. Right now, corn is making money, so many farmers are putting land back in production. A few subsidies that pay farmers not to grow crops that are in surplus mode also play a role.

It's not as simple as you seem to think. It's not always a zero-sum game.

[GliderGuider]

16. US cropland under cultivation hasn't changed in the last decade.

Land area used for corn has come at the expense of other crops. See the graph in my post above. Cropland does in fact look like a zero-sum game. The win has been in yields.

[OnlinePoker]

17. Just to add some more data on a global basis

Total corn acreage harvested 1988 - 126.1 million hectares, Yield - 3.1 Tonnes/H, Total production - 400.4 million metric tonnes
Total corn acreage harvested 2010 - 160.4 m hectares, Yield - 5.1 Tonnes/H, Total production - 814.3 mmt

http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/grain.pdf (page 51)

From the same report, it looks like wheat and rice have shown similar increase in acreage, yield increase, and total production.

[GliderGuider]

18. Global data for total grain production

According to the FAO

From 2000 to 2010:

Area harvested has increased by 5%
Grain yield has increased by 15%
Grain production has increased by 21%
Ethanol production has increased by 116%
Grain available for food (net of grain used for ethanol) has increased by 16%
World population has increased by 12%.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Oh, I thought this was about burntfoodmuseum.com/ ... nt

[trof]

12. Love it! Thanks.

[txlibdem]

19. Why isn't there a big push to get our farming operations off of fossil fuels?

It seems like a natural: grow your own fuel right on the farm. If grampa's still can make moonshine then farmers can make ethanol and run their vehicles on E85. Heck, they may even be able to run them on E100 --they don't do much farming when the weather is below freezing and E100 would have a viscosity problem at low, low temperatures so it wouldn't pose a problem. What am I not seeing here?