--- Ok, so I got sidetracked today. A friend needed some help, and so
I, well, helped. Or at least I think I did. Perhaps just trying will be
good enough in the long run? I dunno. We̢۪ll have to see how it turns
out. Anyway, I̢۪m here, for a short while and then I need to go and
kidnap someone in Sudan. Not literally, but I̢۪m assuming that my
readers have a fine, twisted sense of humor that will allow them to get that joke.

You do have a fine, twisted sense of humor, don̢۪t you? If you don̢۪t this whole page must just baffle the hell out of you.

--- A tantalizing tidbit from The Economist.
It̢۪s tiny, and I couldn̢۪t find a link on their website, so remember
the deal: it̢۪s copyrighted by them, 2003, and you̢۪re not going to
rat on me for pilfering their stuff and reprinting it here. An independent report by a former Finnish president, Martti
Ahtisaari, into the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August
19th, when 22 people were killed, put the blame overwhelmingly on the
UN’s own security system, deriding it as “dysfunctional.”

I must have missed this one. So I went to the UN̢۪s website. Read it for yourself.
You̢۪ll need Acrobat, but as everyone seems to have that on their
systems nowadays, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “A major deficiency identified by the panel is the lack of
accountability for the decisions and positions taken by UN managers
with regard to the security of the UN staff. It̢۪s interesting, to
say the least. As an aside, I wonder how much money the UN could save
on a yearly basis if they didn̢۪t require authors of their reports to
suck up to the Secretary-General in such an egregious fashion. They
produce how many reports a year? How many pages are devoted to sucking
up in each and every report? God, think of all the trees we could save
if the Sec-Gen just cut back on the ego. --- More Economist for you.
You have to love it when they start off the article with a quote from a Saudi Arabian Sheikh.

“The Stone Age did not end of lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
The Saudi Arabian Sheikh in question is Sheikh Zaki Yamani, “who
served as his country’s oil minister three decades ago.” The
writers go on to say that because of viability of hydrogen fuel cells,
and other ways of “storing and distributing energy,” this Oil Age
has the potential for ending sometime soon. As you read it, you get
hopeful, then they start in with the arguments for ethanol and the
expression on your face begins to resemble that of someone who̢۪s just
had to suck on a lemon. “Another alternative likely to become available in a few years
is “bioethanol”. Many cars (quite a few of them in America) already
run on a mixture of petrol and ethanol.”

Well, cars may run on ethanol laced gas, but they don̢۪t do it very well.

“The problem here is cost. At the moment, ethanol has to be
heavily subsidized. But that might alter when biotechnology delivers
new enzymes that can make ethanol efficiently from any type of plant
material. Then, the only limit will be how much plant material is
available.

They referenced an article on page 73 in
support of this thesis. So, I flipped to page 73, and it seems as if
some researchers are looking into ways of bypassing the time factor
that turns green stuff that grows into coal you shovel. On a
theoretical level, this is pretty cool stuff, I will admit. And I̢۪m
generally behind anything that helps us to reduce our dependence on
Middle Eastern oil. We̢۪re playing a big game of Russian Roulette by
keeping these regimes in power: one day, the chambered bullet is going
to come round and smack us smartly in the temple. It will be worse that
Iran in 1979. It’s going to happen. It’s not an ‘if ‘situation,
it̢۪s a when. Pulling ourselves out of the game is the best move we
have available to us.
I̢۪m all for hydrogen fuel cells. I̢۪m all for electric/gas hybrids.
But ethanol? Particularly bioethanol? Come on and get a clue, would
you? When you live in corn country you get a pretty good idea of what
ethanol will do to a fancy engine. Last year, I had the opportunity to
tool around in a very nice Audi A6 for a few months. The husband and I
drove it to Omaha for the holidays, and in a rush to fill up the tank,
I accidentally put in ethanol laced gasoline. The “check engine”
light went on, and when I chatted with the dealer about it, trying to
suss out the problem, I said I̢۪d been down south and that I had put
ethanol into the car. “Well, ma’am. Mistakes happen.” I’m not
kidding: that̢۪s what the guy said. I laughed, took the thing in, and
it turned out there̢۪d been a recall on part of the exhaust section
that had been affected by the ethanol. The recall meant I didn̢۪t have
to pay for the repairs and I was happy. Bullet dodged. Crisis averted.
And with an Audi, it could have been a very
expensive problem to fix. Ignorance, on this one however, was indeed
bliss. But ethanol is not only creates expensive car problems, it̢۪s
expensive in general. Massive farm subsidies are attached to this
program. Massive subsidies, that, yes, you guessed it, become an issue
in every Presidential election for the simple reason the caucuses are
held in February in Iowa. This is yet another example of your tax
dollars at work: subsidies for a corn based fuel product that has yet
to prove its viability, even though they̢۪ve been making the stuff
since the late seventies. The farmers love this program because they
make boatloads of cash; the presidential candidates harp on about how
this is the fuel of the future. After all, it̢۪s American ingenuity at
work; it̢۪s the solution that will keep our family farms going and bring our dependence upon Middle Eastern oil to a brake squealing halt. Yes, that̢۪s right, folks, it̢۪s about money.
And whether you choose to believe it or not, there̢۪s an awful lot of
green in Iowa, and I̢۪m not talking just about corn or soybeans.
I̢۪m talking about agribusiness: Monsanto, Cargill, Novartis,
Archer-Daniels-Midland, just to name a few. These are the big boys who
have a great deal invested in seeing ethanol succeed because it̢۪s
good for all of them. If the plans for bioethanol were to succeed, the
seed company business would go beserk; the pesticide business would
boom as well. Then the commodities and futures markets would hit
unheard of highs. It would be great for the economy of agribusiness if
it did succeed. They̢۪d truly be living high on the hog. (Although, as
an interesting, and humorous aside, what would happen to the
protesters? You know the ones I mean, right? The ones who don̢۪t want
genetically modified foods on their table and
who also scream loudly about there never being any blood let for oil?
Would they mind genetically altered seed that grows the gas for their
VW vans? The possibilities are entertaining. I have to think it would
confuse them to no end.) Now, the argument for ethanol comes down to
two fronts, both of which, in my humble opinion are disingenuous. The
first, I̢۪ve already covered: it̢۪s not a good product. It works
poorly and the profit/loss ratio is so far off the balance sheets that
they haven̢۪t made enough paper to keep track of the losses. The
second, however, is that no matter how many family farms become
successful as a result of ethanol succeeding, they are not going to be
the major beneficiaries of the success: the agribusinesses are. So, it
bothers me greatly when Tom Harkin gets up on his soapbox, righteously
slams his fist on the podium and says that family farmers will finally
become the successes we all knew they could be if only the ethanol subsidies continue.
Harkin will let the applause die down and---his demand stated quite
clearly---will go on to say that isn̢۪t it great that this new
technology was developed right here in the heartland, by our own
favorite sons and daughters, and here̢۪s your next president who̢۪s
going to make it even better for you!
Let̢۪s face facts, kids. The family farmer is almost an extinct
species here in America. That̢۪s just the way the ball bounces. Crop
prices dropped dramatically in the 1980̢۪s; farmers who had leveraged
themselves to the hilt, counting on high prices for their crops, went
bust when the money never materialized. It was Darwinism, plain and
simple. The ones that are still in business today either managed to
scrape by, somehow, or they̢۪re the wildly successful variant like
some college friends̢۪ fathers: the type who have two-thousand plus
acres and receive a goodly amount of subsidies already, even though
they have no need for the money; or they have plenty of livestock that
keeps them in business. The former will not be in the farming business
much longer; the latter is holding out for a good price on their land
and will sell to the first agribusiness that offers it to them. The
market has changed, and it̢۪s all well and good to argue that it̢۪s
trade barriers that are keeping the family farmer down. If only they̢۪d lift the tariffs worldwide, we could get a decent price for our crops.
Ok, that is true, but what about the farmers in the developing world?
They̢۪re coming up steady on the horizon and I̢۪ll guarantee their
prices will be cheaper than those of American grown crops. I hate to
say it̢۪s a no-win situation, because no one wants it to be that way,
but the realities of the situation are as such: there̢۪s no getting
around them when it comes to the brutal world market. Particularly,
when agribusiness is pushing from the opposite direction. The family
farmer is stuck in the middle and is getting squeezed and there̢۪s no
arguing over it. So, it bothers me when politicians offer up ethanol as
the solution to all the problems of the family farmer. The family
farmer is not going to benefit from ethanol subsidies: corporations
are. It̢۪s a simple fact: corporations have positioned themselves well
enough that if ethanol does actually succeed, they will reap the
benefits. Is Archer-Daniels-Midland ringing a bell here, you Sunday
morning news shows watchers? A lowly family farmer who still has to
mortgage his or her future to buy a tractor, let alone to purchase the
fancy seed they will plant with that tractor, who counts on getting a
decent price for their crop, who, in part, keeps going on the hope that
they will in a post-ethanol subsidy era, be able to compete with the
agribusiness? It’s naïve in the extreme to think that this is a
possibility. But don̢۪t tell that to any presidential candidates that
come through Iowa, campaigning for votes. The family farmer is still a
voting block, particularly in Iowa, so any presidential nominees must
hop on the ethanol bandwagon if they want to past the first test in the
primary season. In 2000, John McCain had the balls to say during a
debate that he wouldn̢۪t support the ethanol subsidy any longer, and
we all know how well he did. No one, it seems, has made that mistake
this year.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:57 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
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