The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 425
You then write, "To meet the growing demand for ethanol, farmers have chosen
to produce corn over pork, beef, poultry, and other agricultural products. That's
costing families and businesses. In 2012 alone, the average family spent an
extra $2,000 on groceries thanks to the RFS. And, the RFS has cost chain restaurants an additional $3.2 billion annually -- about $18,000 per restaurant."
Wow, David, it sounds like you also know nothing about the farming, ranching,
and restaurant industries. I guess you weren't aware that before the new ethanol market for corn many of these farmers struggled to survive, and that by
growing corn they now have a profitable product that has a growing demand. I
guess you don't understand that if crop farmers shifted to raising beef cattle and
other agricultural products that there might be a glut on the market for those
products, which would drive down prices and cause the farmers and ranchers
to suffer. This in turn would put in jeopardy all farm crops and livestock meats.
Having a vigorous external market that can absorb corn crops without destroying the meat and vegetable markets is a good thing, not a bad thing. You probably took some classes in school that covered supply and demand, but no one
actually taught you what it means or how it works in the real world.
And when you write the part about the RFS costing chain restaurants $3.2 billion annually, you of course didn't consider that most of the higher costs they
have been subjected to relates to the cost of petroleum oil used in transportation, marketing, and packaging.
You write that ethanol "also hurts drivers...ethanol is less efficient than regular
gasoline." This is untrue. Ethanol is more efficient than gasoline. Determining
"efficiency" is not just a matter of how many miles a gallon of fuel will provide,
you must factor in the cost per gallon in order to arrive at a cost per mile. Generally speaking, over the last decade the lower cost per gallon of E85 made up
for, or equalized, any reduction in MPG. If by using E85 a consumer got 8%10% fewer miles per gallon, the 10%-20% lower cost per gallon gave the use
of E85 a net gain.
Likewise, the higher cost per gallon of ethanol-free gasoline (E0) more than
eats up any increase in mileage compared to using E10. You didn't know this,
did you? When you received the talking points memo from the oil industry they
didn't cover any of this, did they?
And now let me put the final nail in the efficiency/economy coffin for you: the
reason that a gasoline engine will get fewer miles per gallon when it uses ethanol (or ethanol-gasoline blends) is because the engine is optimized to run on
