The agriculture lobby plays a very large part in making sure that mandate stays put.  A lobby that a good deal of farmers support.

You are absolutely correct about the "energy efficient" industries and I am just as a against those types of programs as well.  Any .gov intervention, be it a handout, mandate, or subsidy with tax payers dollars is legislated theft.

No.  Farmers, and more importantly agribusiness, support politicians based on their position on farm policy.  Try running for President and see how far you get in Iowa on an anti-ethanol platform.  Building contractors don't get a pass on the rebates either, since they tend to lobby hard for such programs.

I'm glad that farmers are nice people, but the stereotypical multigenerational welfare queen doesn't sneak into my garage and break my fucking lawnmower.

 

But what about my cheap race gas!



I like feeding my snail cheap corn liquor, he responds really well to it!

Except it's not about food, it's about money.

Ethanol production DECREASES food security, not increases it.  It doesn't do crap to decrease our reliance on foreign oil.  And it's value in fighting pollution is almost negligible as older cars that benefit from oxygenated fuels come off the road.

I will agree that food production is a strategic resource that needs to be protected and should fall appropriately under the commerce clause.  Ethanol does not effectively protect that resource long term.

We had a great program in place to protect that resource called CRP.  CRP was wonderful, it helped keep farmers in business, protected the soil, and as a side benefit helped produce natural habitat .  Farmers tilling every single scrap of ground to put in crop production will give us another dust bowl.  Contour farming isn't enough to stave off soil erosion, especially during drought.  You need fence rows and water breaks for that.  This already happened once after WW1...farmers seriously can't be that short cited.

 

And that's just the beginning of the list.

So you are OK with the .gov paying farmers to NOT work and just throw CRP on half their ground, but ethanol mandates are the devil? At least they create an industry and provide actual jobs to many folks in many different arenas.

And your assertion is wrong.....farmers have been planting every scrap of ground around here for decades and the ground is no worse off.  May be different in other parts of the country, but I don't live there so I can't really speak about that.  The only way you would or will find CRP is if A. the farmer is a hunter and doing it for his own benefit.  B.  He leases his land out for big money to the city boys from up north and makes more than what he would working his ground.  or C. it is shit ground that won't yield much and CRP is more profitable.  

Judging by your avatar, your opinion of CRP ground may be a bit biased and I have a feeling you have lost some prime hunting ground to those "damn greedy farmers"  (I know, pheasants and quail are pretty much non existent around here these days....nothing like how it used to be.  I miss it)

Does this mean that we can now divide by zero?

Disagree.  The strategic value is in having land that can be put under the plow.  There is no such thing as an ethanol market without the economies of scale that billions of gallons of mandated ethanol the EPA requires.  

Ethanol at best supplies a very short term solution to the strategic interest.  It won't do anyone any good within 10 years all the good top soil has blown away...again you seem to be ignoring history with what happened with the dust bowl.

CRP secures a strategic interest.  It doesn't create a false market, it pays farmers for land that could be needed on day and helps keep the land that is already under plow from eroding away.

Come out to eastern NE sometime, SD, KS, etc... and tell me there isn't a top soil issue, watch it blow across the roads...how quickly you forget about the dust bowl.  Also IL is in the green belt...soil erosion is not nearly the same concern as in western states where drought resistant grasses are essential to prevent erosion.

I do lament over the loss of habitat, to say otherwise would be incorrect but to be fair I would rather hunt grouse.  However it is not my primary reason for disliking ethanol and promoting CRP.  There is no strategic need for ethanol and it actuall damages the strategic need for a healthy food supply.  CRP keeps that ability in place and helps sustain a health food supply.

If you have a better solution to keep soil erosion down in drought prone areas I am all ears?

Anything that Fiendstein or the Demoroaches support, or propose, must be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

Something is up here as usual.