September 07, 2006

Food, Fuel and Economy

Assessing the value of things is usually very easy - see how much it costs and go from there. The current price, in theory, is a reflection of supply and demand in the marketplace. However, the costs of operation in the way we do business today is greatly lessened by externalized costs - letting others take on the cost of road building, cleaning pollution, fighting energy wars, etc. The attached article discusses 'innovative' farming techniques, but it seems to be hot air - the farm as we know it traditionally is leaving town in the face of reduced internal costs of factory farms, which have the leverage to change the law as to not break it. The system is so badly rigged, that we now consider it an advantage to turn foodstocks like corn into biofuel, a much lesser use than food - even lesser than animal food.

If you don't think that this energy game will drive up the costs of beef, pork and other meats that are derived from corn feed, then you aren't paying attention to the circular way things work. It appears to me that the federal putsch toward ethanol is a response to not cleaning up the Mississippi River after the Katrina disaster. There are no cheap barges hauling large amounts of grain from the midwest. Instead of facing high cost truck and rail shipping of low cost grains, the plan appears to be to federally fund R&D to allow ADM to convert their apparent loss into a big gain, at the cost of major hunger a few years down the road. As you look at alternative energies, there is no reason for us to be still shackled to organic fuels of any type - the product carbon dioxide is the same no matter what the source.

Carbon Dioxide is only a proxy of the problem, not the real problem. But this society is hell bent on avoiding the real problems until they smack us over the head with a two-by-four. Consider ourselves smacked. And smacked again and again. Think we'll learn? Stop the world, it's time to get off.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very interesting take on that movement. Wired recently had an interview, along with some nifty photos from a guy who makes steam-powered bots. They're mostly amusing toys, but after I posted it in a forum I learned that steam power is still used in some limited apps, and isn't necessarily as touchy as some have claimed. Might that be a fruitful avenue of exploration?

lemme howdt said...

yes, but...
the energy that it takes to heat the water to 100 degrees, plus the heat of vaporization of the water is required. If you use eutectic salts, the kind that store heat, in a jacket that insulates the water temperature, then you only have to raise the temperature a small amount to get the water to steam. NASA has a huge data base on these eutectic salts, but the materials are not available without incurring some real costs (not all financial).