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If farmers start planting more ground in corn the use of fertilizers will increase. Marginal farm land will require more fertilizer than good farm land that already has good organic top soil. Since we are not making any new farm land on this earth we have to use what's available. Most all the good farm land is already being used by the farmers. And that which was not used the farmers were paid by the Fed not to plant. This was to help lower the supply and protect the marginal lands from further erosion of the top soil. With increased corn demand this marginal farm land will be put back into production and that will increase the use of more fertilizers. These fertilizers will be washed off the farm land and into the ditches, streams and eventually enter the rivers and ocean. And more pesticides will be required to get the crops to market. Mono culture of only one type of grain makes it easy for the insects to breed and feed on that crop. Insect populations will explode without the use of more pesticides. You increase the food for insects and their populations will grow unless you control them by some means. And that means more Pesticides on the farm land and more pesticides in the water that we fish.
Corn has a lot of sugar or starch in the grains. This is what the livestock need to feed on. I took a course in Animal Nutrition at Purdue when I was studying Pre Veterinary Medicine so I know a few things about nutritional requirements of the livestock. Also I belong to one of the Largest Agricultural Fraternities in the USA. My grandfather raised cattle and hogs and farmed a bit. My frat brothers all raised hogs, cattle, sheep and all sorts of crops. I could easily call a few of these guys up and ask them how fast the livestock will grow without the starch in the corn.
The starch is turned into sugars that are then turned into the Alcohol by the yeast and enzymes.
I took 14 hours of chemistry which Included Pharmaceutical Chemistry, (Qualitative Analysis) Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry so please don't try to tell me that you can feed the byproducts of the alcohol production process to the livestock and get good growth rates. It's not going to happen. Sure the cattle can eat and process the roughage due to the bacteria in their rumens (four chambered stomach) but they won't have the growth rates that they would get from eating the unprocessed corn.
Cattle are feed corn to fatten them up for market. Cattle feed on grass won't have the marbling or fat in the meat. They also won't gain the weight for market as fast as cattle feed pure corn.
We need to turn to Solar and Wind and Hydroelectric power and not put our food into the gas tanks.
You have to burn oil or natural gas to cook the grain to make the Alcohol and burning natural gas produced NOX emissions. In fact it creates a lot of NOx in the process. NOx is one of the pollutants that helps to form Ozone in the ambient air. The more NOx you emit the more Ozone we have to breath. And Ozone is just one of many deadly air pollutants formed in the hot summer months. It's actually just one of many air pollutants that need to be federally regulated. Ozone is just an indicator pollutant and when the ozone levels are high that means that the other pollutants are in higher concentrations as well. We all suffer from the effects or more air pollution in this area. And these plants will increase the demand for electric generation from the Coal fired Power Plants in this Valley. That will increase the amount of coal burned and increase the amount of air pollution.
Last edited by Moose1am; 06-13-2007 at 10:13 PM.
Senior Member
Nobody is keeping up with Inflation. But I don't want to add to more inflation by increasing the cost of corn to the world.
We need to start using the sun's energy to turn water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. We can then burn the hydrogen and water and turn it back into energy and the only byproduct is WATER. We can use the Sunlight to drive this energy cycle over and over again. And it's time to start this process now.
We need to do away with the use of fossil fuels PDQ.
Senior Member
Originally Posted by bwframe
Yeah, you're right. I don't know much. Crops are rotated?
Had a grandfather that farmed most of his 92 years, have an uncle now that has taken over the family farm and has been doing it for most of his 60 years, spent nearly every summer on the farm for my 30 years and picked up a degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Science along the way. Yeah, they make you take those neat Ag classes and soil science classes to get that.
I see, although you admit to not knowing much, you are able to look things up on the internet and be smarter than everyone else. I'll stay out of your discussion. But thanks for explaining a corn plant to me, could you now explain the stomata and it's importance to the plant?
Senior Member
Wow !
I didnt mean to get anyone upset over this issue - I just didnt think putting the plant right next to Snakey Point was a good idea . Anyway the point is probably going to be moot soon if we dont get more rain , corn needs moisture to grow .
Senior Member
If you read the article I refered to the ethanol plant being built is all up to the local county committee . Here in the southern part of state the Posey co. has more ethanol plant than the rest of the state combined . If they want to build one why dont they put it on the Ohio ? Maybe tax breaks and cheap land have something to do with it . I work with many local farmers and Im all for them making more for thier crop but we need a balance .
Senior Member
Well said. We need balance in everything. We need to look at ALL aspects of this project both the good and the bad. All aspects need to be fully reviewed by the public.
I went to school at Purdue and got my degree in Environmental Science and Conservation of Natural Resource and I went to school with a lot of Big Time FARMERS. They are my friends. I still want to keep food prices down.
Just last night I saw a TV news program about the high costs of food. Some food prices have really skyrocketed. One lady shopping for food really had to be careful what she bought for her family as she could not afford to buy all the groceries that she needed. Her little kids were going to do without that week because mom ran out of money to buy food. This is happening in America.
We have subsidized Agricultural Operations for years now. There is no way that we will let the food production in this country lapse. It's way too important to this country. One French General, Napoleon, said that an army marches on it's stomach. So food production is part of NATIONAL SECURITY.
We also don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. That's never a wise thing to do in life or when investing in the stocks. Diversity is the key.
We have all kinds of ways to produce new energy. These are the times when we have to make the wisest choices to HELP AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE not just a few people. The choices we make today will have pronounced effects on us for years to come.
I would much rather see them putting up windmills to use the wind to produce electricity than to see another coal fired boiler being produced.
I would much rather see a new **** built over the Ohio River that would convert the rivers ever constant current into hydroelectric power. Plus the lake that would be formed would benefit the fishing too. Double Plus there. Negatives would be that some towns would have to be moved to higher ground. See KY lake and the moving of some of towns that were flooded. Eddiville KY was moved when they damned the Cumberland River to form Barkley Lake. But look at the amount of hydroelectric power that was produced by that ****!
I don't fish Snakey point but I want too someday. I just found out where it was last fall. And I intend to fish it someday this next spring when the Patoka River floods and the crappie swim out of the river up into Snakey point to spawn.
This last month I had two NOSE BLEEDS. Both were associated with high air pollution levels. IE the nose bleeds when the Ozone Levels get high.
Back in 1977 the Ozone standard was 0.08ppm or 80 ppb over a period of one hour. If you had a reading of 0.086 for more than one hour you were violating the NAAQS for Ozone. Today the USEPA allows this same concentration to occur for 8 hours legally. That's EIGHT times the level of Ozone allowed these days. Plus back in the late 1970's the recalibrated all the ozone monitors in the USA run by USEPA to read about 50% lower than they did previously. So god only knows how much Ozone we are really breathing these days as compared to 30 years ago.
My point is that we must be very careful about building new plants that emit lots of hydrocarbons or NOX emissions. Our air pollution at times is already too high now. We have to watch how many more emissions we add to our air.
We need to start to control the pollution coming from EXISTING Plants before we add new plants. If the buss is full of kids and you want to add ten more kids to the buss you first have to let eleven kids get out before you add the next ten kids to the buss. This is EPA's Emission Offset Policy which helps keeps the air clean. The reason you let 11 kids out is because you are already over the limit of kids on the buss and the goal is to get below the limit not to exceed it more. Therefore the net is a reduction of one kid so that you have less kids on that overcrowded buss.
Air pollution is the same way. If you already have too much air pollution you must reduce it before you add any new sources of air pollution. If not you will never have clean air.
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