>Kurt Schasker wrote: > >In David Blume's book: "Alcohol can be a gas" are listed several >facts regarding corn as a food. > >In summary, it goes like this. (I have always found this book to be >factually accurate, and I have tried to find irregularities). > >1. 10 lbs of corn makes about one-half gallon ethanol and 3 lbs of >DDGS (Dried Distiller's Grain plus Solubles). > >2. 3 lbs of DDGS makes about....one pound of beef > >2. 10 lbs of corn, fed to cows, makes about one pound of beef.(No >difference from #2 above, in other words, pulling the carbohydrates >out of corn prior to feeding to cows does not affect its usefulness >as a cow feed)
That's not what David Blume says. He says: "If you feed 33 pounds of DDGS to cattle instead of 100 pounds of corn, you get 14 to 17% more meat up to 30% faster, with a fraction of the veterinary costs. ... So, fermenting the corn to alcohol results in more meat than if you fed the corn directly to cattle." I think he's correct. >3. 80% of corn grown in the US is fed to cows, 10% is exported, 10% >is human consumed (2002 numbers). Source please? I don't think your numbers are right. >(Probably more is fed to cows because the exported corn is, you >guessed it, fed to cows). > >So, in summary, first pulling ethanol out of corn, then feeding the >by-product to cows does not alter the amount of beef produced. It increases the amount of beef produced. >There is one issue that does need discussion: > ><http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11175.cfm>http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11175.cfm >The above URL references an article that indicates DDGS is not >sanitary, and its use is promoting E.Coli in beef. If that is true, >it seems easily remedied by more sanitary DDGS handling practices. Indeed, but in fact they shouldn't be eating DDGS either, there's no good reason nor any excuse for factory-farmed meat. There's good reason and every excuse for free-range pastured livestock on sustainable mixed farms though, but they don't need either corn or DDGS. >Anyway, back to the main arguement: ALL corn should first be >refined to ethanol, that way we can harvest the ethanol, which will >lower the price of fuel worldwide by increasing supply. This will >help lower food prices by lowering the energy costs of food >production. Your assumption is the usual one, that current food prices have got something to do with costs or with food production, but about the only thing that supports that assumption is the sheer number of people who assume it. The same goes for the assumption that current fuel prices have something to do with supply and demand. We've covered all this quite thoroughly already. Do some homework in the list archives please. Keith >Kurt _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
