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To: gg cox who wrote (4384)	2/17/2006 8:53:59 PM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 218641

It's seems foolish to grow corn for fuel, because of all the energy consumed on annual tilling, fertilization, and weed control. Makes more sense to use a perennial crop (or mix of crops) that needs little or no nitrogen fertilizer.

To: gg cox who wrote (4384)	2/18/2006 1:44:31 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218641

S. Paulo state is 250K Km2. Size of former West Germany. There is where the mass of the sugar cane is planted spread perhaps around 50Km. Put refineries right in the middle of the sugar cane fields thus minimizing transport of cane and residous that are thrown back into the fields as fertiliziers. Same for poultry: The "farms" where the chickens are raised, are 15Km around the abbatoir/meat packing. The feestock factory is near the circle within which the chickens are raised. The corn plantations are around 50Km away. So it is an integrated just in time operation. All with cost in mind. Those guys live off that stuff. They know how to produce cheap. They were not made fat by subsisdies. They're slim and mean. They have been facing all kind of trouble put in front of them by the inneficient Brtazilian government. (Taxes to move across state boundaries, bad roads, hyper inflation. Cumbersome laws and regulations, you name it.) They learned the hard way. Now you put those guys in a level playing field they eat anyone for breakfast.

To: gg cox who wrote (4384)	2/18/2006 7:19:46 PM
From: Crabbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218641

"Crabbe, what happens to the nations topsoil when everything is stripped off for food and the ethanol plant? A partial answer is found here.." nrel.gov or here meadvilletribune.com "He contends that corn producers can get about $100 per acre for stover that has zero value once it decays into the atmosphere as CO2. But what happens to soil tilth after years of stover removal? Loren said that a 30-year trial at the University of Minnesota’s West Central Experiment Station in Morris with corn cut for silage each year versus stalks plowed into the soil showed no difference in organic content." If there is no difference in tilth after 30 years of silage production, why would there be a difference in soil tilth after 30 years of biomass production?? I often have the misfortune of driving by a dairy farm West of here, it grows corn for silage, transfers manure to a septic pond, and then pumps the septic water onto the corn field, no real solids are returned, but the soil is similar after 15 years of this as to when it was started from pasture fields. (unfortunate because the septic pond has an aroma, as does the irrigation). r