No Due Process, NO Development Plan, No Problem

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Made in the USA

What's wrong with it Bubba??

Spam is only good if you are starving, the spam that is unsolicited advertising is never good, thus my post. But since Admin deleted the spam post, I deleted my post referring to the spam.

[Made in the USA]

OK, thought I was missing something--------------I see now--thanks

[K C Muffin]

Yep, for a while I thought I'd gone to sleep and woke up in the new millenium. Then I saw your post, mitUSA and I felt better again!

[Value Pack]

POTOMAC WATCH Wall Street Journal

By KIMBERLEY STRASSEL


Ethanol's Bitter Taste
May 18, 2007; Page A16

It was a scant two years ago that Georgia's Saxby Chambliss voted with 73 other giddy senators for an energy bill that required the nation to use 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Georgia's farmers loved corn-based ethanol; Georgia's agri-businesses loved corn-based ethanol; and all that meant that then-Agriculture Committee Chairman Chambliss loved corn-based ethanol, too.

Earlier this year, Mr. Chambliss introduced a bill calling for even greater ethanol use, though with one striking difference: The bill caps the amount of that fuel that can come from corn. Turns out Georgia's chicken farmers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's pork producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's dairy industry hates corn-based ethanol; Georgia's food producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's hunters hate corn-based ethanol. And all that means Mr. Chambliss has had to find a new biofuels religion.

The shine is off corn ethanol, and oh, what a comedown it has been. It was only in January that President Bush was calling for a yet a bijillion more gallons of the wonder-stuff in his State of the Union address, and Iowa's Chuck Grassley was practically doing the Macarena in his seat. And why shouldn't Mr. Grassley and fellow ethanol handmaidens have boogied? They'd forced their first mandate through Congress, corn farmers were rolling in dough, billions in taxpayer dollars were spurring dozens of new ethanol plants -- and here was the commander-in-chief calling for yet more yellow dollars. All in the name of national security, too!

Corn ethanol seemed unstoppable, but a remarkable thing happened on the road from Des Moines. Just as the smart people warned, the government's decision to play energy market God and forcibly divert huge amounts of corn stocks into ethanol has played havoc with key sectors of the economy. Corn prices have nearly doubled, which means livestock owners can't afford to feed their animals, and food and drink manufacturers are struggling to buy corn and corn syrup. Environmentalists are sour over new stresses on farmland; international aid groups are moaning that the U.S. is cutting back its charitable food giving, and many of these folks are taking out their anger on Congress.

Call it a case study in how a powerful lobby can overplay its hand. While many members are still publicly touting corn ethanol, privately they are quietly backing away from another round of corn-mania. The most extraordinary sign was the Senate Energy Committee's recent ethanol bill, hailed by Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici as "bipartisan" legislation for more "homegrown fuels." What the committee didn't mention in its press release was that it had built the legislation around Mr. Chambliss's cap on corn ethanol (at 15 billion gallons), and that the rest of the 32 billion-gallon-a-year mandate would have to come from other (still imaginary) sources, say switchgrass. The bill passed 20-3.

It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates -- who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest -- are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade -- a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan.

The National Turkey Federation estimates its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually and is surely letting loose on members from turkey states such as Minnesota and Missouri. The National Chicken Council, which represents companies that produce, process and market chickens, has been hitting the southern political caucus, putting pressure on senators from big poultry states such as Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama. Chicken giant Tyson's, the second largest employer in Arkansas (after Wal-Mart), even felt the need to warn about the effect of rising corn prices on its business in its first quarter earnings statement. Food and drink manufacturers, which rely heavily on corn and corn syrup for their products, are also making the Washington rounds. The Grocery Manufacturers Association this week called for Congress to undertake a study before it imposed a bigger ethanol mandate. Soft-drink companies such as Coca-Cola (of Mr. Chambliss's Georgia) are also up in arms.

From the other side, green groups are grousing about the environmental consequences of intensive corn farming. International aid organizations are complaining that ethanol is raising the overall cost of food and diverting grain from poor countries. Ducks Unlimited, part of Washington's "hooks and bullets" conservation lobby, sported a recent article in its magazine complaining that farmers are taking idle land out of conservation programs -- land currently home to ducks -- and using it for corn farming again.

All this pressure is beginning to hit home. Ethanol isn't going away anytime soon; you can't unring a bill. But senators are said to be readying amendments to offer to the new ethanol bill that would use triggers or waivers to further water down the corn element. Turns out there are huge economic consequences to Congress micromanaging energy policy, and all to aid its campaign donors in agribusiness. A lesson the U.S. is now learning the hard way.

[lurker]

Two points V-P:

Cattle production isn't subsidized.

Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade -- a first.

......is simply journalistic license. In other words, it's B-S.

Corn syrup precipitates juvenile diabetes. Children would be healthier if they smoked a joint a day as compared to drinking 20 ounces of corn syrup per day.

Other than that, it was a good read.

[notyoubob]

[quote=lurker;41642]Two points V-P:



Corn syrup precipitates juvenile diabetes. Children would be healthier if they smoked a joint a day as compared to drinking 20 ounces of corn syrup per day.

If they did that, they'd drink 80 ounces of corn syrup!

[Value Pack]

Connections: You have to wonder what the long term effect will be on our feedlots, meat plants, etc.

With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks
On the Menus: Trail Mix, Cheese Curls, Tater Tots;
Farmer Jones's Ethanol Fix

By LAUREN ETTER
May 21, 2007;

GARLAND, N.C. -- When Alfred Smith's hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

"Pigs can be picky eaters," Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, "they like the sweet stuff."

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren't eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith's main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms' biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, since it can be cheaper.

Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. "It's kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs," says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns.

In Pennsylvania, farmers are turning to candy bars and snack foods because of the many food manufacturers nearby. Hershey Co. sells farmers waste cocoa and the trimmings from wafers that go into its Kit Kat bars. At Nissin Foods, maker of Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, farmers drive to a Lancaster, Pa., factory and load up on scraps of the squiggly dried noodles, which pile up in bins beneath the assembly line. Hiroshi Kika, a senior manager at the company, says the farm business is "very minor" but helps the company's effort to "do anything to recycle."

Other businesses called "jobbers" serve as middlemen, buying food that manufacturers would otherwise throw away, like burned or broken cookies, or cereal that contains too much sugar, and selling it to livestock operations. At Midwest Ingredients Inc. in Princeville, Ill., manager Ruthi Coats says more farmers are coming to her because, rather than feed corn they grow to livestock, they want to sell it on the market for those big prices.

Ideally, livestock producers like to feed their pigs and cattle a mixture consisting of about 70% corn, plus soybean meal, fat and vitamins. Corn provides protein, essential nutrients and amino acids that give animals energy and fatten them up. Historically, the livestock industry has consumed 60% of the nation's corn crop.

Thanks to the ethanol rush, the price of a bushel of corn for months has hovered around $4 -- nearly double the price of a few years ago. That has prompted livestock groups like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Chicken Council to call for an end to federal ethanol subsidies, including a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit offered to companies that blend gasoline with ethanol. For now, livestock must pay up or make do with alternatives.

A sampling of trail mix that Mr. Smith feeds to his hogs.
On his farm in Garland, population 833, the 56-year-old Mr. Smith clenches a can of Mello Yello soda as he steers his blue 1992 Chevy pickup down an old railroad bed to his pens. There, about 1,000 oinking pigs plunge their snouts into troughs filled with corn, soybean meal and trail mix.

Mr. Smith says he's paying about $63 to feed a single pig for five or six months before it goes to market -- up 13% from last year. His costs would be even higher if he didn't augment his feed with trail mix, which he says helps him save on average about $8 a ton on feed. This year, Mr. Smith has bought enough trail mix to feed about 5,000 hogs, and that will save him about $40,000.

He began feeding his hogs trail mix about a year ago, after Mr. Funderburke told him a local manufacturer was looking to dump surplus mix that was either too salty, sprinkled with cardboard or otherwise unfit for human consumption. Mr. Smith recently got a truckload of chocolate chips and his pigs seem to like them. "I've heard no complaints," he says.

Sweet products, because they are high in energy, can be good for pigs and cattle, Mr. Funderburke says. Trail mix often contains chocolate and dried fruit, which supply sugar, and nuts, which provide fat and protein. But too much fat and salt from foods like potato chips can depress animals' appetite and cause them to eat less. That isn't good for producers who want to pack as many pounds as possible on their animals.

In many places outside the Corn Belt where farmers must bring corn in by rail or truck, trail mix and other fringe products have long been used to keep feed costs down. But as corn prices have risen, the practice has spread across the country.

In ethanol-producing states, some farmers have been able to mitigate high corn costs by feeding their animals dried distillers' grains, a corn mash left over from ethanol production. But in states without ethanol plants, distillers' grains aren't always readily available. Also, many farmers say the product lacks sufficient nutrients. Others say their animals don't like the taste.

Dwight Hess, a cattle feedlot operator in Marietta, Pa., is located in the heart of snack country, near Hershey and Herr Foods Inc., a maker of potato chips, pretzels and snack mixes. His cattle ration consists of about 17% "candy meal," a blend of chocolate bars and large chunks of chocolate; 3% of what he calls "party mix," a blend of popcorn, pretzels, potato chips and cheese curls; 8% corn gluten; and the remainder corn and barley he grows. He says the byproducts save him about 10% on feed costs. Still, it costs him about 65 cents to put a pound on a steer, up from 42 cents last year.

Near the Snake River in Idaho, Cevin Jones of Intermountain Beef is struggling to feed his 12,000 cattle in light of higher feed costs. Traditionally, he has used up to 30% corn or other grains in his feed mix. This year he's using 100% byproducts, including french fries, Tater Tots and potato peels.

"It's kind of funny," Mr. Jones says, "every once in a while, you can spot a couple of cattle fighting over a whole potato."

I don't see any ethanol plants being built yet here in Ford County. Did we dodge a bullet?


Ethanol Boom Is Running Out of Gas
By LAUREN ETTER and ILAN BRAT
October 1, 2007; Page A2

Ethanol's frenzied growth over the past year is coming to a halt -- at least for now.

The price of ethanol has fallen by 30% over the past few months as a glut of the corn-based fuel looms, while the price of ethanol's primary component, corn, had risen. That is squeezing ethanol companies' profits and pushing some ethanol plants to the brink of bankruptcy.

• Boom and Bust: The ethanol industry is running into problems as prices fall while corn prices rise.
• Market Dynamics: The industry still faces considerable obstacles, ranging from its dependence on Washington to a lack of infrastructure.
• Ethanol Shakeout? Larger, more established ethanol producers are expected to roll up smaller producers.Financing for new ethanol plants is drying up in many areas, and plans to build are being delayed or canceled across the Midwest, as investors increasingly decide that only the most-efficient ethanol plants are worth their money.

Some ethanol companies are "under deathwatch" now, says Chris Groobey, a partner in the project-finance practice of law firm Baker & McKenzie, which has worked with lenders and private-equity funds involved with ethanol.

That could be fine for big efficient players like Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., one of the nation's biggest ethanol producers by output. ADM and other big ethanol companies probably can ride out the storm, even though they might have to scale back on their production. Smaller players may not fare as well, and may be snapped up by bigger survivors.

The downturn exposes the industry's reliance on political support in Washington, which has offered tax credits to refiners to blend ethanol with gasoline, as well as tariffs on imported ethanol and other measures. Some lawmakers and the Bush administration are pushing corn-based ethanol as a complement and substitute for gasoline amid tight and unpredictable global oil markets.

Ethanol companies are seeking increases in pending energy legislation in the amount of ethanol refiners are required to use. At the same time, food, cattle, poultry and other interests are quietly nudging lawmakers to pull back on subsidies that encourage ethanol production and have indirectly led to increases in food costs due to the increase in the price of corn and other grains.

"It's probably going to get worse before it gets better," said Brian Bolster, a vice president in the investment-banking division at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which has invested in at least one ethanol plant. He nevertheless remains bullish over the long term for the industry, amid expectations of increasing government support, infrastructure improvements and other factors.

Pure-play ethanol companies like VeraSun Energy Corp. are trying to adjust to the new market dynamics. Shares of VeraSun, of Brookings, S.D., which traded at nearly $27 a share in November, are now near their 52-week low of $10.41 reached last week, trading at $11 each in New York Stock Exchange 4 p.m. composite trading. VeraSun has said it is increasing production and making other efforts to achieve greater heft and become more economical.


Fueled by government mandates and calls from President Bush that ethanol could help wean Americans off foreign sources of fuel, output of the corn-based fuel hit highs in the past year. U.S. ethanol production rose to 4.8 billion gallons last year, up from 1.7 billion gallons in 2001, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a Washington trade group. The number of ethanol plants increased to 119, up from 56 in 2001. And there are 86 more plants under construction.

But ethanol has gotten snagged by its own success. The price of ethanol has dropped to about $1.50 a gallon, down from about $2.50 at the end of last year, according to the Oil Price Information Service. That is largely because too much ethanol is being produced. Part of the problem appears to be that oil companies aren't able to blend ethanol into gasoline as quickly as ethanol is produced.

By next year, U.S. ethanol capacity is expected to reach about 12 billion gallons, according to Eitan Bernstein, an energy analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc., based in Arlington, Va. Currently, demand is just less than seven billion gallons.

Ethanol might be faring better if the transportation infrastructure was more amenable to the fuel. But the pipelines in place aren't ideal for transporting ethanol because the fuel tends to be corrosive to them. Also the tanks used to store ethanol are in short supply.

Meanwhile, ethanol producers say the price to build new plants is rising. A new ethanol plant costs about $2.20 per gallon of annual capacity, said Mr. Bernstein, up from $1.50 a year ago.

"What we saw in the last few years was a number of other lenders or potential investors who maybe got a little bit more enthused than we thought was warranted," says Jack Cassidy, a vice president at CoBank, a Greenwood, Colo., rural lender.

Panda Ethanol Inc., a Dallas energy company that said last year it would build an ethanol plant in Hereford, Texas, that would use cow manure to power the plant, is slashing expenses in an effort to ride through the "great deal of uncertainty in the marketplace," the company said in August.

Dallas-based Earth Biofuels Inc. said in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its losses and its "limited financial resources" raise doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

Write to Lauren Etter at lauren.etter@wsj.com1 and Ilan Brat at ilan.brat@wsj.com2

URL for this article:
Ethanol Boom Is Running Out of Gas - WSJ.com

[jeezeweeze]

Ethanol might be faring better if the transportation infrastructure was more amenable to the fuel. But the pipelines in place aren't ideal for transporting ethanol because the fuel tends to be corrosive to them. Also the tanks used to store ethanol are in short supply.

Just one of the laughable issues with ethanol

Water, water, water, should be the first issue.


This from your previous post. Man what a total mess

Connections: You have to wonder what the long term effect will be on our feedlots, meat plants, etc.

With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks
On the Menus: Trail Mix, Cheese Curls, Tater Tots;
Farmer Jones's Ethanol Fix

[lurker]

Brazil's been wanting/waiting to provide all the alkehaul we can burn for somewhere near 46 cpg (delivered).