Mar
2
Responsibility of Conscience
Filed Under Uncategorized | 7 Comments
As I was driving to work today I began thinking about the 10% ethanol blend we Mainers have in our gasoline now. Odd I know but my mind wanders at times – you’ll see where I’m going with this in a moment. You see, most ethanol is made from corn (wheat and barley are being used as well but those fit here as well) and corn is, well, food. It seems absolutely absurd to me that of all the things that we can derive fuel from, food somehow makes the most sense to us.
I began thinking about how much food we burn in our gas tanks every day and then more importantly – how much food do I burn on my daily commute. So, I looked it up. It takes 26.1 pounds of corn to make a single gallon of ethanol and in Maine, we use a 10% blend of ethanol in our gasoline. So, that means roughly 2.61 pounds of corn per gallon of gasoline pumped into my car right? Well, I have a 13 gallon tank and have to fill it about every two weeks so I’m going to say that I use roughly one gallon of gas a day – burning over two and a half pounds of food each day.
How much does an ear of corn weigh? I don’t know and couldn’t find this information on the Internet but what do you think? quarter pound? half pound? Lets go with a half pound. That’s about five ears of corn I burn a day, 35 a week and 1,825 ears of corn a year. Maybe it sounds worse at 952.65 pounds of food?
That’s nearly a thousand pounds of food burned in my engine each year.
It’s hard for me to not imagine what this child would think of that.
What exactly does this do for us? Look it up, please. Find a reason why we burn food for fuel and post it in my comments section. It does not make our fuel cheaper. It is not better for the environment. It does not give me better fuel economy. Corn isn’t even the most sensible or economical thing we could use to make fuel with.
Simply, it only makes sense for corn lobbyists and an insanely over subsidized agricultural industry.
There are lots of issues that seem natural for me to roll into here, child sweatshop labor, children laboring over blood diamonds in Africa, girls sold into slavery in India but nothing seems quite so insane as the amount of food that this country could be feeding the world with but instead chooses to burn in our gas tanks (or feed to cows but that’s another post).
I’ve never felt quite so much like the fat cat banker lighting my cigar with a $100 bill in front of a beggar asking me for loose change while telling him that I don’t have any.
It’s not that I feel that it is our duty to take care of the entire world. It’s nice to think that we could build schools and hospitals in every corner of the world but I know that’s not likely. However, domestic production of ethanol has grown to over 4.5 billion gallons per year and that equates to more than 117 billion pounds of corn…per…year.
Again, it’s not our job to fix the whole world but I’d like to think that maybe it’s our responsibility to at least ensure that the world’s children have food and fresh water. The 143 million malnourished children in the world could eat an extra 818 pounds of grain per year if we simply gave up on ethanol and sent what we use to make it to the poor countries of the world. That’s an awful lot of extra food.
Think about that the next time you fill your tank, eat a hamburger, chicken nugget or drink a Coke.
Typically I would argue against the farm subsidies that produce these massive crops of corn and other grains that are largely not consumed by American appetites but now at the end of this post, I say go for it. I would happily support the continued taxation of my paycheck if only we would leave the food we grow as food and send it to those who are most desperate for that which we so easily discard.
Comments
7 Comments so far
Okay fussy boy…commenting here! Furthermore, the problem with our industrial agriculture system is not only that it ruins sustainable agriculture HERE for our local farms, IT RUINS THEM ABROAD AS WELL! So, all the malnourished people living in those countries could sustain themselves locally if our government subsidized crops weren’t so much cheaper than their own, putting all their farmers out of business as well. No farmers = no food.
I’m not terribly concerned in this post about the sustainability of agriculture in Sudan (et al) – just the starving children.
How do you not see the two as connected?
I’m not saying they aren’t connected. The point of my post is that we could feed the world if we stopped burning food in our gas tanks. The additional point I was making is that I couldn’t care less HOW we feed starving children and until they aren’t starving to death anymore I don’t really care if we are helping them grow their own food or if we are just sending it to them for free.
Yes but we are sending them genetically modified crops, thereby completely undermining their ability to grow their own crops sustainably which creates a sick and twisted dependence on companies such as Monsanto. I think the food crisis is far more complicated than simply feeding the hungry.
Thanks for writing this.
Yes but we are sending them genetically modified crops, thereby completely undermining their ability to grow their own crops sustainably which creates a sick and twisted dependence on companies such as Monsanto. I think the food crisis is far more complicated than simply feeding the hungry.