Crude Oil pollutes. Evidence with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There is no comparison of environmental impact of crude oil versus corn spilling in the Gulf because corn is fish food. Bumper harvests of seafood would occur resulting from a corn spill of such magnitude as the BP oil spill. Now I don’t have evidence of this, it is just a farmer’s opinion aka Common Sense.

Now YOU say because of what THEY say is that Brazillian sugarcane is just more efficient than corn. Well if you are so enamored with sugarcane, then lets grow sugar cane in Oregon. If you are the David that works with Oregon DEQ, then you should have the citizens of Oregon in your best interest and not the citizens of Brazil.

A bushel of corn cracked in an ethanol distillery produces not only 2.8 gallons of ethanol but the distillers grain provide enough feed to help a dairy cow produce 3.2 gallons of milk or feed a beef cow to produce 2.6 pounds of meat. The seed portion of the corn plant or “corn” is only half of the energy collected by the plant. The plant tissue – corn cobs, stalks, and roots add biomass energy to the soil giving Oregon potato crops a higher yield the following year. Now I don’t have documentary evidence of this; yet from personal observation, I am amazed at the deduction that cows gain energy when eating corn stubble during the Winter. I’m amazed that dried up cattle manure can be burned in a wood stove. And I am amazed that some people believe that the rest of the corn plant can be made into cellulosic ethanol.

So Brazil has their amazing sugar cane plant that they burn excess leaves in the field and chop it down to squeeze the juice out of it and then take the rest of the plant and burn it to generate steam for ethanol production of the squeezed out juice. Wow. THEY have great matimatical equations of why sugar cane is just more efficient than corn. Yet WE can’t seem to calculate ALL of the energy in the Corn Plant as THEY do with the Sugar Cane Plant.

So in my opinion as a farmer, I believe the folks in Academia have a problem. THEY don’t want to do the hard work and really dig into the math and make a deductive account of what the Entire Corn Plant does for Our Nation, Oregon, and for Our National Security.

A brown field collects no CO2. A green field does. How much land in Oregon is brown during the frost free days of a growing season? Renewable Irrigation is a catalyst of making brown fields into green CO2 sucking machines to make the Oregon economy hum with JOBS, JOBS, JOBS…..

So how do I say it best when all I can say is that an Oregon corn farmer can average 250 bushels of corn per acre that yields 700 gallons of ethanol per acre or 6,547 liters per Hectare along with supporting Oregon dairy cows with milk production of 800 gallons per acre?

The bottomline is that YOU have to DO with what YOU have GOT…..and we don’t have 87% of the World’s known cheap crude oil reserves that is in just three countries – Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. So if you want to Bad Mouth our own resources, then let’s just continue using THEIR resources from the Persian Gulf because we just can’t drill everywhere and on the moon to get to a relevant feedstock of energy to support our growing economy. We must use our own resources, so lets not get in the way and support Oregonians and US citizens to use OUR own resources.

Mike Massey
Kennewick, WA
509-378-6772

According to the USDA, corn ethanol has an energy efficiency of approximately -34%. The US Corn Growers association disputes that, claiming it has an efficiency of +35% but there is potentially conflict of interest there. I’m far more inclined to believe the USDA’s figure for the relative efficiency than an industry shill group. And no, it’s simply wrong to suggest the answer must always lie somewhere in the middle. Almost every relatively fair study I’ve come across on the subject suggest negative efficiency from corn based ethanol.

Brazil sugar based ethanol production per acre is approximately 7,500 L compared to US maize production of 3,000 L per acre. If the yields per acre you claim are true, they represent a approximately 55% premium over Iowa corn (approximately 180 bushel per/acre [Iowa Corn Promotion]). If we presume the earlier figure of 3,000 L / acre, then increase that by 55% we have a yield of 4,666 L / acre. That is clearly far inferior to Brazil’s quoted figure and is not even close to competitive without tariffs or other political interference.

While there’s room for debate, one can calculate absolute hypothetical yields of sugar and maize based biofuels relatively simply and there’s simply no comparing the two. There is significant room to improve those figures through the use of more advanced distillation techniques, genetically modified maize, and better distribution techniques, the absolute thresholds are too robust to seriously consider maize based ethanol as superior to sugar based.

The mandates to use ethanol are political largesse, not practical greenery. Using ethanol is at best carbon neutral. Fully determining the relative merits involves hugely complicated maths (figuring the planting, transportation, production, ect energy costs) that allows special interest groups to manipulate data to hide the simple fact that the subsidizing of maize based ethanol and tariffs on sugar based are hurting efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

If you grow a 1,000 acres of poplars (or corn) in arid soils on 6″ rain-fed desert, how can anyone justify saying that greening up the brown desert will take away from the Amazon rainforest?

Biofuels grown and processed in Oregon/Washington are therefore the lowest carbon fuels that anyone could dream of producing. Especially considering the yield per acre. At 240-280 bushels of corn per acre, the ethanol yield is as competitive or exceeds that of Brazilian sugarcane production. I would like to see if someone in academia can prove me wrong – that Oregon and Washington are not the most efficient places to grow biofuels with the lowest carbon footprint. Oregon and Washington have tens of millions of acres of arid land to grow poplars and corn as well as feedstocks for biodiesel. So what are we waiting for? Let’s make the Pacific Northwest TRUELY GREEN!

Mike Massey
Kennewick, WA
509-378-6772