Serious Implications

Texas Governor Rick Perry intervened on behalf of the Texas beef lobby to reduce the amount of fuel ethanol sold in Texas. The beef lobby believes ethanol is driving up the price of corn and raising the cost of cattle feed, and, therefore, what they have to charge for their beef. According to MarketWatch:

Gov. Perry had cited ethanol’s affect on feed and food prices, despite a study by Texas A&M researchers that the requested waiver (of ethanol blending mandates) would have little impact. Recently, the Texas A&M study was validated by economists at Purdue University, who tied most of the recent spike in corn prices to higher oil prices, which had in turn caused the demand for ethanol and corn to jump.

Years ago, I remember my dad describing how to select a good cut of beef at a meat counter. The fat around the edge should be white and the meat should have a slight marbling throughout. I look for that now and can’t find it. Invariably, the fat is dull yellow and translucent like old thick toenails – only softer. The meat has globs of fat and blood clots attached to the fascia. It’s disappointing.

Grocery shoppers must be leaving that meat on the shelf, rather than forking over more cash per pound.

Cattle in my dad’s day used to run around and eat grass. That’s how it was until we had heavily subsidized industrial corn that became so cheap, the beef producers started feeding corn in confined animal feed operations (CAFO’s). They could fatten a steer on corn and growth hormones in a hurry. Bigger, faster, cheaper production -screw the quality. The holy grail of dumb business. They’re paying for some of those dumb decisions now.

At the recent price of $7 per 60 lb bushel (it’s under $6 as of today), corn is about 12 cents per pound. Because it takes about 8 pounds of corn to make a pound of poor-quality beef, there’s about a dollar’s worth of grain in a pound of beef, or about a quarter’s worth of corn in a quarter pound hamburger.

The beef producers evidently think this is too much to pay corn growers. They want to cut in half the amount of ethanol sold in Texas so that the ethanol market contracts. Then they’ll have cheaper corn like before.

Who knows, if the price of corn keeps going up, the cows might have to go back to eating grass.

Drive small, drive less, walk more, eat less meat.

In 1980 we had a biologist running for president. Barry Commoner, standard-bearer for the Citizens Party, gave a speech at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and I drove across town on a rainy night to hear him. I’d read his book, Science and Society, and knew he was critical of nuclear power and the complicated, centralized governmental-industrial apparatus that supported it.

During the speech, Barry brought up biofuels, or “gasahol.” He briefly described growing corn and distilling a mash to make ethanol to use as motor fuel. The residue, he said, was rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and minerals that made an excellent fertilizer. At this, there was a collective “ooh” that wafted across the audience. We understood the balance. “Yeah, it’s a nice arrangement,” Barry said in his Brooklyn accent. Yeah. Yeah! He was having a good night, there among the believers. Barry supposedly referred to himself as a “congenital optimist.”

Source: National Corn Growers Association

Today we’ve got ethanol – big time. Nearly a quarter of the Yellow Dent “King Corn” crop goes to fuel production. Where I live in the corn belt, if you come visit our little town and stop in the morning at the cafe, you’d better wear sunglasses because the farmers are grinning ear to ear and possibly using teeth whiteners. About three years ago, corn was selling around $1.50 per bushell, now it’s around $7, or about eight pounds for a dollar.

Today, the ethanol industry falls short of Commoner’s dream, however, with respect to the distiller’s residue. It’s not plowed back into the soil as fertilizer. It, along with nearly the half of the corn yield is sold to confined animal feed operations (CAFO’s), to make meat and dairy products. CAFO’s stink, and the reliability of rural manure management is poor. Spreading manure on fields is weather dependent and runoff is common. The CAFO’s and environmental regulators get sued for polluting the rivers and lack of enforcement of regulations. CAFO’s on the Plains are remaking the topography, building mountains of dung covered with thousands of cows like ants on an ant hill, fed and watered constantly and pumped with antibiotics. The fact is, under prevailing conditions, meat production is a dirty business.

The third highest use of corn is export, much of it to China and Japan, not to feed hungry people, but to feed cows and pigs and support growing demand for meat in those countries. A lot of corn goes to producing High Fructose Corn Sweeteners, which appear to be a factor in growing rates of metabolic disorders such as diabetes, and obesity as mentioned here, and here.

Only a tiny fraction of Yellow Dent corn goes directly into cereal and basic human food. It’s a raw material for a wide array of sometimes dubious products, like sweeteners, and the producers of those products are sore at having to pay higher prices for their raw materials.

One group defending ethanol against those who want to end mandates for biofuels is FoodPriceTruth.org. They argue that the number one driver of higher food prices is higher oil prices. Considering the food on our dinner plates has traveled an average of 1500 miles, they’ve got a point.

Some ideas to ponder: Barry Commoner’s Four Laws of Ecology

1. Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system.”

4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.