Originally Posted By: Panzerman
You don't understand. Do you know how much more fuel you burn to develop the crops, That you don't feed livestock, to get worse fuel mileage and burn more gas. Ethanol is joke. People in Florida hate it, because we have a lot of small engines and outboards. Yeah, us old guys will die and you "genius's" will be riding around on bicycles, because you don't want to offend turtles.
Do you have any experience in farming or are you just repeating something you heard? Farming uses LESS fuel than ever before per acre (ever hear of low till and no till farming?), yields per acre are thru the roof (A farmer in Illinois set a new record last fall... 454 bushels per acre, documented), and only a part of the corn is used to make ethanol, the rest is corn oil (you know, something your french fries are cooked in), and high protein feed supplements (very much in big demand by livestock and poultry producers here and outside the U.S.), and a huge laundry list of other products.... from the very same kernels of corn that are used to make ethanol. And how do I know all of this... I farm and I haul products from corn production facilities. I currently have 45,000 lb of 60% protein Biolys feed supplement made from Dried Distillers Grain after ethanol production at the Cargil bio refinery in Blair, NE, going to a major livestock feed supplier in Michigan. There is no loss of food, both human and animal varieties, from making ethanol from corn. The nonsense it spouted by folks who think that once a kernel of corn is used to make ethanol, the rest is thrown away. If you knew agriculture at all, you would know that NOTHING is wasted.
True, it gets less mpg, but when I use E85, I only get about 15% less mpg while using only 15% gas. The net is a savings in both cost per mile and total gas consumption. This OLD GUY is more than happy to fill up with E85. My pickup does great and my cost per mile for using it is substantially lower than with any gas only product. Oh yeah, and my small gas engines regularly use E10. I have a John Deere rider mower with over 500 hours that has seen nothing but E10 in the tank. Same for my pressure washer and portable generators.