The farmers are under attack. But to blame the farmers is not totally fair. The fact is, the capital markets hyped renewable energy as the new pot of gold for cash-strapped farmers to a point that will make the dot-com and energy hype of the 90's look childish. The hype took food out of people's mouths, by diverting crops from the food chain to the ethanol windfall. Farmers are entitled to earn and make a living, but if renewable energy hadn't been so over-hyped there would have been controlled growth instead of a gold rush. So now that nobody can afford corn or soy beans, farmers, too, are being hurt by the investments that they made in producing feedstock for the bio-fuel pipeline. They didn't see the backlash coming.
Clearly, the blame game will further distort the facts. As an example, it is not just corn (ethanol) going into cars with no meaningful C.A.F.E. standard. It is not just the fact that corn is grown with fossil fuels, and the main fertilizer used is anhydrous ammonia, which is made from natural gas. Fossil fuel prices are very high due to increasing worldwide demand. There are droughts, floods and many other factors that can and have contributed to increasing food prices. Pointing fingers is not the point. What we are missing is that growing food for fuel is a bad idea. We have a better solution -- the utilization of waste as a source for our energy needs.
Our company fights every day to gain parity under the incentives provided for both fossil fuels and traditional bio-fuels made from food crops. You would think that with all the attention being paid to the "green revolution" that our leaders in Congress and industry would actually provide additional incentives and resources to companies that can convert waste into oil. The system needs to change if we want to continue as a species. We must become sustainable, and it will not be done by accepting what big oil and big "ag" have to say. Waste to oil is one solution for avoiding the atrocities that are happening today due to diverting food into fuel, and Big Oil extracting more than a pound of flesh from every human being on this planet.
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2 comments:
Why would the united states knowinly feed animals back to animals if they know it is a direct link to BSE?
That is a good question. The answer is simple. The FDA and the USDA not only are responsible for regulation but they also promote sales in the same agencies. That conflict is won by sales.
Not only do we know that the practice is bad for transmition of diseases but, we see huge increases in the bioaccumulation of dioxins in fats, causing other health issues.
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