[Marxism] All bio fuels or bio fuels done McDonald's way?

[dave.walters@xxxxxxxxxxx]

The debate over ethanol specifically, and bio-fuels in 
general, is becoming centrifugal, sort like the increase 
in discussions over nuclear energy.

I generally agree with Fidel Castro's short essay on the 
subject. Growing food for fuel is barbaric. I don't have a 
problem as far as that goes and as it's addressed to ethanol 
specifically. But while ethanol is a bio-fuel, not all bio-fuels 
are ethanol.

I'm sure on this list few if any support the current craze 
around US Mid-western corn based or Brazilian sugar 
based tear-up-the rain forest approach. I suspect we 
don't have to debate this here.

But there are many bio-fuel alternatives that don't rely 
either on current agricultural land or even...any land 
at all. In Arizona, experiments to produce bio-diesel 
are underway in *factories* that grow diesel producing 
algae in large plastic containers. There are many projects 
like this going on around the world. Time will tell if the effort 
is in fact worth it.

It should be noted, too, that all bio-fuels are based on a 
hydrogen-carbon molecule. The carbon gets released 
when the fuel is burned. Not good. But, more often than 
not, a lot better than petroleum derived products we use 
now and that provides 60% more or less of the worlds carbon 
output.

But there is a much larger issue involved when discussing even 
disasters like ethanol that everyone is avoiding and that is how 
we use corn and sugar NOW, especially the former. We feed 23 
kilos of corn to make 1 kilo of beef. 4 kilos of corn to make 1 
kilos of chicken. We grow an astounding amount of corn to 
make...sugar, to use mostly in fast foods and soda-pop. There 
is a total market/consumer side of growing grain that *far outweighs* 
the issues of ethanol that, as socialists, we ought to discuss. Here 
is something I picked up recently on the Internet:
--David

POPTARTS (a peculiarly Yankee fast food):

The figures here would be possible only in the very worst instances of
corn farming, but putting that aside ....

Here's what you get in a pop tart:

Strawberry filling: corn syrup, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup,
crackermeal, water, modified wheat starch, partially hydrogenated
soybean oil, dried strawberries, citric acid, caramel color, red #40,
xanthan gum, soy lecithin

pastry: enriched wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean
oil, corn syrup, water, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup, salt,
leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium
phosphate, calcium sulfate), gelatin

topping: sugar, rice flour, corn starch, partially hydrogenated
soybean and cottonseed oil, gum arabic, xanthan gum, natural and
artificial flavor, mono- and diglycerides, red #40 lake, blue #1 lake

How much crude oil, water etc do you suppose went into that? How much
nutrition out?

If ethanol from corn is bad (it is), then junk food from food crops is
even worse.

According to Hess et. al in "The Taste of America", in 1945, each
calorie of energy nput into growing corn yielded 3.7 calories out. In
1970, this was 1:2.8 -- and that doesn't include the massive cost of
processing corn (and other food staples) into junk food. According to
another source quoted, industrial food system now require 5 to 10
calories of fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of output.

Moreover, something like 25% of all food fails to get from the grower
into the mouths of food consumers, and as the obesity epidemic shows,
much of what does probably shouldn't. 

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