Posted 6 months, 12 days ago in 
Loading ...
In reading the letter from Mike Parker, I found it very interesting that he seemed very informed about a great many things but has allowed himself to be taken in by the rhetoric that our food costs are directly related to corn being used to make E85, a fuel alternative.
If you follow a logical line of thought you will find that food costs are not related to the use of corn to produce E85, but are a direct result of the rise in the cost of oil and labor. Most farmers I know still use oil products to run their machinery to till the soil, plant and harvest the food we eat because it is not feasible or affordable yet to convert everything to E65 and E65 is not yet widely available everywhere.
Oil products are used to fuel the vehicles that transport our food to the plants for processing and to the stores in which we purchase them, for the same reasons. Most plants which process our food and our stores are powered by some type of oil product, at least in part.
Higher labor costs, due to the increase in minimum wage, must be paid by everyone along the line from the farmer to the store owners. This particular problem is a vicious circle, wages go up to cover the increased cost of living and the cost of living goes up to cover the cost of increased wages, which brings us back to square one.
E85 is a viable product, which means that the oil companies are going to fight its production tooth and nail, including trying to make us believe that it will drive up the cost of food and create a famine. I may not be the smartest kid on the block, but I don’t believe that after all the years that millions of acres of farmland have laid fallow because of surpluses and low prices, that the farmer cannot rise up and help make us a strong nation, dependent on ourselves and not other countries.
I, for one, applaud the city for looking into the possibility of going green with flex fuel. And no I am not a farmer.
BETTY TAYLOR
Grand Junction
One Response to “E85 is a viable product”
Posted March 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Sorry Betty, but E85, and most ethanol are currently losers. The energy content in corn-based ethanol is less than the energy needed to produce it. Ethanol, per gallon, has a lower energy content than gasoline so miles-per-gallon suffers, all driving conditons being equal. We have, thus far, been sold a bill of goods by the ethanol and corporate farm interests and we are the losers. How did the minimum wage enter the picture? Do I smell a partisan element in your “analysis”?
By the way, the acreage taken out of other things and put into corn, along with the proportion of corn going into ethanol production rather than the food supply has been conclusively determined to be a factor in rising food prices. Basic demand and supply.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.