Initially ethanol production made a lot of sense to both reduce our dependance on foreign oil AND subsidise corn producers by creating another market for under-priced corn. Both proposes have been met sucessfully.
Currently, corn is no longer under-valued and is a now high priced input for producing ethanol. The ethanol plant by Buffalo Lake, MN was recently awarded to it's lenders (in forclosure?).
I my opinion, ethanol production will eventually need to shift from consuming high priced corn to using lower cost inputs: corn stover, straw, crops that can be grown and harvested on erosion-subsidised ground, downed trees, leaves, yard waste, moldy hay, road-side grasses, used cardboard, etc. The production process might have to change with the seasons to match the inputs available. Managing a plant using a wide variety of low quality inputs will be much more difficult than using one consistent high-quality input like corn.
So far little progress has been made to use other inputs. That may doom ethanol production in the future.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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