Rising cost of food rant

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

PTRMAN - There are early crops and late crops. I live in Oregon [The Northwest] The leafy green salad cold weather varieties produce starting right now ... then fade in the hot months and when replanted will produce until late November.

I put a lot of work into gardening ... but it produces 80% of our vegetables from June until November.

Family of 5 ... only reason it doesn't produce 100% ... is that corn and carrots and onions take 100 days to mature.

The whole point is ... people will start growing food more and more ... simply because it is cheep and healthy.

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

I still have yet to see an ethanol station in Michigan.

We have one here in Portage at the local Meijer, a single pump off to the side.

[screwballl]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

I still have yet to see an ethanol station in Michigan.

really? 10 years ago when I was there in the Vassar, Flint, Sagniaw area they were all over... so I wonder if they took them out? or maybe only certain areas or stations have it?

[fstroupe]

During the mid-1980s, all Texaco gas had ethanol in it. The percentage varied from state to state. (there may possibly have been some states that did not allow ethanol, I think NC, where I was living at the time could have possibly been one, and there were no Texaco stations where I lived) TN allowed a max of 10% ethanol. My Mitsubishi engine would not burn gasahol, it would spit, sputter, backfire, and barely run.

The gas station at the local WalMart now has ethanol in it. At least I guess it still does, I haven't been back since I first saw the sign on the pump a few months ago.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

We have one here in Portage at the local Meijer, a single pump off to the side.

Originally Posted by screwballl

really? 10 years ago when I was there in the Vassar, Flint, Sagniaw area they were all over... so I wonder if they took them out? or maybe only certain areas or stations have it?

Oh, well, it must just be a northern Michigan thing then... :dontknow:

[PTRMAN]

To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.

- WSJ, 5/7/08

[Boy'nBlack]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

I also don't think that Ethanol production is leading to higher food prices. It might contribute to it a bit, it just doesn't seem like Ethanol production is high enough to really make that much of a difference.

Ethanol production is huge. It's a mandatory component of fuel. There's more energy put into making the ethanol than in the outcome of the ethanol itself. PTR's stats are correct. As it's a mandatory component, it's connected to the price of fuel itself (fuel is now obviously not connected to the barrel price). If gas rises, the cost of corn rises, the cost of corn food products rise.

Why it's mandatory is about as blatantly stupid as one could imagine. It's toxic, the most harmful and damaging component toward the environment, is bad for your vehicle, and there's not one logical reason to use it from our side. If you go to a business that has gas, it has that big warning sticker on entry of the location: it's for the ethanol. It's thinning the petrol, and not sure why they do that, and making politicians look good for states like Iowa and Indiana.

[screwballl]

This is why I am glad it has not come to my stretch of FL yet... I hate ethanol.. we had nothing but problems with it in SD... only newer vehicles (2004-newer) with E15 or E85 designation are designed to handle it. For all other vehicles it is killing the engine off faster than it normally would. You would be surprised at how many 1990s and early 2000s vehicles have gone into the shop for a total rebuild at 80,000 miles because ethanol ruined the seals, fuel injectors, lifters, rods and anything else that was not aluminum or ceramic.

My Story:
When we took a trip to SD a few years back (from FL), we went in a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder with 3.5L V6. This SUV averaged 15mpg around town. We were seeing 21-23mpg the whole way up and never had a problem... until we got close to Sioux Falls and all pumps had ethanol, we had no choice since the needle was on E, we had maybe 10-15 miles worth of gas left. So I filled up with that... the entire way across SD the Nissan was stumbling, felt like it lost a noticeable amount of power and the gas seemed to be disappearing faster...
So I used about 3/4 of a tank and stopped in Phillip (or was it Murdo, I forget) and filled back up with non-ethanol. I checked my mileage and for that stretch it had dropped to 14 mpg!!! This is almost completely straight (I-90) and rolling hills. We saw worse long stretches going up and down mountain passes in TN.
So on the way back I did not use ethanol once and the entire trip including going across SD and back to FL was back up to the same 21-23mpg.
Another thing about this same timeframe, about the time we got back to FL, the check engine light came on. I had the code checked and it said "water in fuel" multiple times meaning it had been liek that for at least 2-3 weeks. I reset the code and never saw it since.

[Boy'nBlack]

I'm not sure if I can compare with ya SB, but it's good info to have there. My big trips are mainly from the other SD (San Diego) through the bottom half and to, at best, SW Missouri. I think it's all Ethanol.

What I can see are in bikes though since they go from pump to VP cans off and on. The actual mileage number change according to style of riding for said day, but distance is surely shorter on pump gas. At home I keep VP U4.1 which is oxygenated and MR11 90 Octane which is not oxygenated at tracks. Pump gas is used for sighting and warm up. With 2Gallons of pump gas/U4.1 you get a count of laps and let it go dry. Put 3.75G of MR11 in and there's the benchmark for distance. If you went on the ethanol you'd just be screwed. Prior to running out of gas 2 laps down (lessons learned), the DA gives some very funky data. It's more than the oxygenated fuel not going as far because the Lambda sensor shows lean! If it were using the same amount of fuel, that'd probably be 3 laps down.

I'd be willing to bet that we could all get better mileage without ethanol. The engine wouldn't lean out and use the fuel it's given a lot better. I've also came to a conclusion that I can NOT get 2 of our vehicles here to pass smog in Cali without using the expensive canned fuel...for whatever reason? New cat, old cat, whatever...just drop the gas in and they pass. Now that's absolutely nuts in this "green" age.

[screwballl]

Interesting info Chum...

Thats the thing, in this "green" age, we had help from the top about a decade ago... Ihe greenies pushed for more emissions controls... so the auto manufacturers did their preliminary testing... they found they could add the $500 worth of equipment, tack on $1-10,000 per vehicle, and this very equipment also drops gas mileage 10-30%... so big oil is happy because people are buying more gas, greenies are happy with "less" exhaust, and auto parts manufacturers are happy because more parts to go bad and be replaced. Of course to manufacture these items uses much more pollution that it saves from vehicles, refineries making more gasoline puts out more pollution, and when the equipment goes bad, the car ends up putting out more pollution then it would without it.
Add ethanol into the story and now that already low gas mileage drops even more, it wears on parts more meaning more $$$ for the auto parts manufacturers, and the pollution out the tailpipe is reduced 4-20%. The only real good side is more money for farmers that have had surplus corn stocks for years.

No matter what way you look at it, it is a win-win situation for all involved, good and bad.