I Weep

The dear and glorious .gov has decided in its wisdom to buy up $150 Million worth of meat, to help sustain the price of meat, which is due to fall because of the early slaughter of hogs and cattle on account of the increased price of corn at the feedlots, because 40% of domestic corn production is being turned into whisky for our cars.

This is a serious legbone case.  You know the song? Sing along with me!

All the pieces are there in order:
      We must burn whisky in our cars (because of like, weather or something)
      The corn used in the whisky is not available for use as food (for people) or feed (for bacon producing    creatures, also steak producing creatures)
       The hogs and steers that give us crispy bacon and juicy steaks are slaughtered early driving down the price of dinner
        This cannot be allowed because (really, fuck if I know)
        Therefore, the FedGov must buy huge amounts of meat (to keep the price of meat high). That works out to about a quarterpounder per American. Seriously, the Fed.Gov has just spent $2 per person in the USA to keep meat up. I mean to keep up the price of meat.  Y'all have your minds in the gutter, I tell you. I have no idea what will happen to the Federally purchased yumminess.  I don't belong to a union, so the odds of it showing at my local BBQ are less than zero.  It's probably all hog's necks, that will be
part of the school lunch program. Or fowl fed on sour grapes.

I suspect the presence of an Underpants Gnome here somewhere.

And another thing.  What's this "Cellulistic Ethanol" that is required by the EPA?  The stuff  IS NOT PRODUCED.  Why, you ask?  It's because cellulose is easily rendered into methanol .  But methanol and ethanol are not really compatible.  Ethanol is made from sugars (in the normal course of events).  Animals eat sugars.  We call the "carbs' if we're trying to lose weight. More complex carbs are known as "fats" (oligosacchiries) or "oils".  Get the idea?

Now methanol is made from stuff that humans don't eat.  Some animals do to some extent, which explains the multiple stomachs on many ruminants.  

By far the most common animal to live on cellulose is the all-too-common termite.  We don't have to feel bad about depriving them of some of their nosh, do we?

So let's see.  Ethanol is made from food (or, in best case scenario whisky).   Methanol is made from cellulose.

I now have a choice:  to drive my car on a fuel produced from my potential whisky, bacon, and corn tortillas (because tortillas de harina are a thing of the devil), stealing food from the mouths of babes all over the world because the tasty kernels are being used to drive your asshole neighbor's SUV.


Or I can use Methanol, derived from the chaff, the detritus, the waste and the brick that you now call cornerstone Now, that's only about half of the mass of stuff (technical term, that, thanks Robert Harris, PhD) that is generated by the farm.

Check it out: 

 You are harvesting corn, because that is what the market wants and a price is offered for it. However, the grain only amounts to 50% of the weight of the dry material in your field. Are you leaving something in the field that may have value? So far the nearest ethanol plant is not yet accepting biomass feedstock, so what is the value of that pile of dry corn stalks in the field and how can you benefit from it?

The local ethanol plant won't take it because fuck if I know.  Well actually I do.  The subsidies are for corn ethanol.  The subsidy takes the food from your plate and puts it ih your gas tank after a merry night on thte town in DC. Fuck you Paul Harvey and all your Archer Daniels Midland  "Grocery Store of America". (And I never......... carred for your inappropriate........ placement of pauses in your so......called news CASTS.  Lousy broadcaster.)

The plain and simple of it is that at one point the eco-crusaders and the Factory Farmers saw an opportunity to circle-jerk themselves into eternity.  Of the two, I really have to pity the eco-kiddies.  They were fighting way the hell out of their own weight.  They probably even thought that they were going to help the family farmer.  Cue Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice".

The experienced sharks of the mega-farmers soon made chum of the scattered Gaia nerds, and saw where the money was.  Big subsidies for big producers, plus interest free loans to build new distilleries for those in touch.  Teh stoopid, it burns.  But not as much as the short sighted Legislature and Executive that brought it into being.

Whiskey for my men. beer for my horses. My car will take whatever's cheap.