With grain prices up 3X of a year ago, a barrel of oil up 2X of a year ago, is ETHANOL still a viable source of energy?. 

Indonesia, Malaysia, and India have either closed their exports of rice or overwhelmingly cut exports. 

If each country closes their grain markets as some have already done what do you think will be the the greatest affect on the rest of the world?  Grain for Oil?  That seems extreme, but will it come to that?

Give me your thoughts 

Ranger

Quoting from [Ranger]:

With grain prices up 3X of a year ago, a barrel of oil up 2X of a year ago, is ETHANOL still a viable source of energy?

Ethanol is still a viable source of energy as Brazil as a nation has proved that it can be done. But at a global scale, apparently it has created the food crisis among the developing and underdevelop countries and make the situation very bleak. Moreover, the energy policies among nations have created this crisis and in my opinion everybody is to be blamed. Ethanol seemed to be such a good source of alternate energy many years ago, but now it backfired.

If each country closed their grain markets as some have already done what do you think will be the the greatest affect on the rest of the world?  Grain for Oil?  That seems extreme, but will it come to that?

Grain will overshadow Oil if the food crisis keeps getting worse and worse. If every nations were to close its grain export (which many were already doing), it will create a crisis that may even extend to world wide war. I may sound extreme, but it is a reality if citizen became hungrier and hungrier. Like the poverb says, "A Hungry man is an angry man". First it is the riot and simple skirmishes with the local authorities, and later it may turn to civil war or neighbouring war. Many historical data showed that wars were started due to food crisis. Remember the Battle between Rome and Egypt in 30BC when Cleopatra and Antony stopped all grain export to Rome. Octavian invaded Egypt. But of course it will not happen since this will destroy every nation's national, economical and political agenda. UN will butt in and save the day.... LOL.... I hope.

 

Thanks Thomas for your reply.  I found this while doing some research on my home states University of Illinois website:

"A University of Illinois economics team calculates that with oil at $50 a barrel, it is profitable—with the ethanol subsidy of 51¢ a gallon (equal to $1.43 per bushel of corn)—to convert corn into ethanol as long as the price is below $4 a bushel. But with oil at $100 a barrel, distillers can pay more than $7 a bushel for corn and still break even. If oil climbs to $140, distillers can pay $10 a bushel for corn—double the early 2008 price of $5 per bushel."

IM not sure how many U.S. taxpayers realize it but the subsidies given to Big Oil 20 billion dollars in 2007 and the grain farmer subsidies 10 billion dollars is actually killing the economy and forcing more and more people into insolvency because they cant pay for their families basic needs.

IM not saying that all subsidies are bad but as grain now is considered an energy source and its estimated that up to 34% of the 2008 U.S. crop could be used to produce ethanol and or bio-diesel its going to be a major concern that will have an alarming affect not only on the U.S. but all around the globe. 

If 34% of the crops in grain producing nations were used for ethanols and or bio-diesel the United Nations (WFP) might as well pack it up because there won't be any extra grain to buy or distribute.

A 42-gallon barrel of crude oil can generate roughly 44 gallons of petroleum products. About 20 gallons of gasoline and 7 gallons of diesel are produced from each barrel of crude oil.   For ethanol on the other hand if the average biomass yields are about 10 to 15 dry tons per acre depending on the plant matter used, it would yield 80 to 100 gallons per dry ton. 

Therfore an acre of bioenergy crops could generate 800 to 1500 gallons of ethanol.  But it takes 1.4 gallons of Ethanol to replace 1 Gallon of Gasoline.  So if you take in the world consumption of 85.3 Million of Barels of Oil Equivalent Per Day x 22 gallons per barrel thats 1.9 billion gallons per day, or if you consisered replacement by ethanol using 12.5 dry tons per acre and an average output of 1050 gallons per acre.

1.9 billion x 1.4 = 2.66 billion gallons of ethanol or 212 million acres of crops per day.  It doesnt take long then to realize based on the total cultivated acreage in the world that all but the very rich would starve. 

In the last 3 years my attitude towards alot of things have changed, and I think its going to come down to thinking as a world than that of seperate nations with different political and ideological views.

Ranger