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Why I Would Not Be a Farmer Time was when most Americans were farmers. Today, about two percent of the population does an astonishing job of raising and harvesting all the crops that turn into an astonishing variety of foods that we take for granted. Our supermarkets are stuffed to overflowing and, given the abundance, so are a lot of us.
I was raised in the suburbs. My mom had a rose garden, but that, plus mowing the lawn and trimming the hedge was about as close as I ever got to grow anything. In the 1980s, though, I had the opportunity to travel widely throughout the nation, visiting farmers and getting to know what it was like to work long hours and still end up in debt because the price of wheat, soybeans, corn, and other products were tied to international competition and other factors beyond their control. One of those factors today, affecting all of us and in particular our nation’s farmers, is the price of energy. Recently, the Agriculture Energy Alliance, a coalition of 75 organizations, has been lobbying Congress to implement policy changes that will protect, expand, and improve our energy supplies. Most of us don’t give much thought to the way energy is vital to the provision of a safe and abundant food supply. I doubt that most of us think of food in terms of our national security, but stop a moment and think what you would do if there wasn’t a constant supply of food in your local supermarket, restaurant or hamburger chain. Most of the nation’s population lives within fifty miles of either the east or west coast. Few of us have a clue about raising produce or livestock. There’s another aspect of energy and food most of us never connect. It is the role of natural gas and other chemicals play in the production of fertilizers used to increase the output of every acre of farmland. Add that to the gasoline or diesel used to run the huge tractors and combines modern farming requires and you may understand why the "Farm Bill" is actually called the National Food Security Act. These days farmers are increasingly frustrated and they have good reason to be. Agriculture is perhaps the most heavily regulated industry in America. Moreover, it comes with no guarantees that Mother Nature will cooperate. While those of us in the suburbs and cities of America hear reports of drought conditions in various parts of the nation, we rarely give it much thought. Too much rain or too little rain wreaks havoc for farmers. Too much sunshine means irrigation and farmers must pay for the water they use. When the federal government turns off the spigot as it did with the Klamath Valley farmers of Oregon, the hard work of generations is destroyed in the name of saving an "endangered" suckerfish. This is how we thank farmers who have over the years tripled yields, reduced erosion by eighty percent, and wind blown dust by six hundred percent. These are huge achievements in productivity and stewardship since crops were first planted 11,000 years ago. What we have in America today is a genuine farm crisis and, if you are dependent on the mainstream press, you are probably totally unaware of it. How bad is it? The first Northwest wheat crop was planted in 1815 at Fort Vancouver, Washington. When the railroad lines arrived in 1883, the area boomed. Today it is the principal white wheat producing area in the nation; a major supplier to both national and international markets. In 1992, there were 5,000 wheat farmers in Washington. Today there are about 3,000. And if the price of gasoline increases along with all the other costs of farming, these and other farmers around the nation will stop farming. When that happens, the rest of us are going to find out about it the hard way. That’s why we have to begin now to find and extract the energy that exists in abundance here in the United States. It’s offshore in areas where drilling for oil is prohibited. It’s trapped in shale deposits in Utah and Colorado. It’s in Alaska in the ANWR. Congress and the States are not permitting the energy industry to get at it for the rest of us. When it comes to sustaining our current farming population we have a genuine crisis and we are running the risk of losing the next generation of farmers. Federal energy, agriculture, and foreign policies have created this crisis. A look at Congress today suggests it is oblivious to it. What’s So Great About Ethanol? I don’t know how many years I have been hearing how great ethanol is as a gasoline additive. I mostly thought of it as a boon to farmers who raise corn and other crops that are converted into this form of alcohol. The energy bill, a mishmash of giveaways to all kinds of energy interests, mandated more use of ethanol and biodiesel. Then the President gave his State of the Union speech and talked about using woodchips and who knows what else to make it. Ethanol has some significant incentives going for it. It receives a 51-cent-a-gallon federal subsidy. Biodiesel gets a $1-a-gallon federal tax credit. Politicians love ethanol, particularly if they are from farm states, but some farmers are not as thrilled. In the February issue of Wheat Life, a magazine published by the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, the president of the Association of Washington Business, Don C. Brunell, had some words of caution. "Washington State seems poised to jump on the biofuel bandwagon, but before we do, it may be wise to look before we leap." Brunell pointed out that the concept of biofuel has been around for more than a century, but "the idea faded because making gasoline from crude oil was cheaper and easier to refine." Brunell is far from alone is raising a warning. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted, "Ethanol, touted as an alternative fuel of the future, may eat up more energy during its creation than it winds up giving back, according to research by a UC Berkeley scientist that raises questions about the nation’s move toward its widespread use." Geoengineering professor, Tad Patzek, was published in the journal, Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. His view was that "up to six times more energy is used to make ethanol than the finished fuel actually contains." Patzek is cited as believing that "those who think using the ‘green’ fuel will reduce fossil fuel consumption are deluding themselves—and the federal government’s practice of subsidizing ethanol by offering tax exemptions to oil refiners who buy it is a waste of money." Prof. Patzek is not alone. A Cornell University ecologist, David Pimentel, came to a similar conclusion. "There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel. These strategies are not sustainable." Together with Patzek, the two conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass, and wood biomass, as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report was published in Natural Resources Research. Corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, switch grass requires 45 percent more, and wood biomass requires 57 percent more. Prof. Pimentel concluded that, "The United States desperately needs a liquid fuel replacement for oil in the near future, but producing ethanol or biodiesel from plant biomass is going down the wrong road." He noted that the government "spends more than $3 billion a year to subsidize ethanol production when it does not provide a net energy balance or gain, is not a renewable energy source or an economical fuel." Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., on February 20, the chief economist for the U.S. Agriculture Department, Keith Collins, announced that the United States, the longtime number one corn exporter in the world, will soon distill more corn to make ethanol than it sells abroad. Does this make any sense at all? According to the USDA, United States corn exports are projected to rise to 2.0 billion bushels in the 2006/07 marketing year, while ethanol production is forecast to consume 2.15 billion bushels. Despite those large numbers, corn-based ethanol is now used in only three percent of U.S. gasoline, while consuming fourteen percent of the nation’s corn crop this marketing year. The United States is the largest ethanol producer in the world, producing 4.3 billion gallons in 2005. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, production is expected to climb to 5.1 billion gallons this year and 6 billion by 2007. The question is why? Why would the United States throw billions in tax subsidies at a gasoline additive that requires more energy to produce than the energy it generates? On that basis alone, using petroleum-derivative fertilizers and fuel energy to produce ethanol is idiotic. Once again, environmental hype has triumphed over reality when it comes to addressing the problem of a finite amount of oil. Between being told that the Earth is running out of oil and being told that we are polluting whenever we drive our cars and trucks, ethanol seems like some kind of answer, but in terms of the energy it saves, the answer is none. We are decades and maybe even centuries away from running out of oil. Known reserves exist and technology to exploit them exists. It is far too soon to push the panic button, but not too soon to stop wasting money and energy producing a useless panacea. It is easy to be confused by the many conflicting reports about energy and other current issues, but visitors to this website have learned that valid, researched, and documented commentaries are available every week to help make sense of it all. To insure they continue, The National Anxiety Center needs your donation. If you prefer, you can send a check to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you for helping. And tell your friends about this website!
©
2006 Alan Caruba. |
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You know something is terribly wrong when the price of wheat at harvest time nets less than $3.00 per bushel, a price that is well below the cost of production. Many of us are paying about as much for a gallon of gasoline and therein lies the problem facing farmers today. Historically, it hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression.