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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (372065)	7/8/2010 7:09:08 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793750

How efficient is corn as an industrial raw material? Would some other plant be more effective?

To: Ish who wrote (372065)	7/8/2010 10:49:02 AM
From: ManyMoose	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793750

The farmers are really miners. No, they're not. Corn farming has a regeneration objective. That is, once the corn is harvested the farmer plants a crop of soy beans to restore nitrogen to the soil, and when the soy beans are harvested they plant another crop of corn, and keep repeating as long as there is a market. Miners take the gold and leave a mess, or in modern times, make an attempt at restoration or go for a federal superfund money. I always used to bristle when IDIOTs likened drift netting to "clearcutting", and talked about timber mining. In MY world, at least, the proper term is "Regeneration harvest with the clearcut method." Which of course is followed by site preparation and planting, waiting for suitable growth, one or more thinnings, and a final regeneration harvest again with the clearcut method. This process takes FIFTY TO TWO HUNDRED YEARS, depending on objectives and economics. Right now in the area where I worked the ONLY timber harvest going on is these thinnings in plantations that I and others started when we were using common sense. Without the clearcuts (referred to as timber mining by these morons) that we did, they would have no timber suitable now for thinning and they'd be out of their jobs and the marginal thinning operations that they subsidize with taxpayer money would be out of business. We of course would still be getting wood. From China and Russia, bringing it all their gypsy moths and other plagues with it. These morons have no clue. Drift netting and mining have NO REGENERATION OBJECTIVE. Drift netting, at least, allows nature to do it for them -- BUT THERE'S NO LEGITIMATE CORRELATION WITH CLEARCUTTING OR TIMBER MINING. Corn that is converted to fuel does not make the farmer into a miner or an oil man. Those resources are FINITE. Corn is renewable. Whether it's economical to use corn for fuel is an entirely different question. In my mind, it makes no sense to do that until it is cost effective and comparable or superior to drilling for oil. Sorry for the diatribe. I'm really torqued off about this, because in one decade a bunch of ignoramuses undid a whole career's worth of work that was supposed to take one to two hundred years to play out and had a positive net worth.