Ethanol Is Not A Alternative to Cheap-Oil

[Nbadan]

Higher food prices is no-way to combat oil dependency....

From The Times July 16, 2007
Ice-cream makers frozen out as corn price rises
Suzy Jagger and Carl Mortished


What’s the connection between ethanol, the biofuel produced from corn, and a cherry vanilla ice-cream? Answer: the first is responsible for pushing up the price of the other.

This month, the price of milk in the United States surged to a near-record in part because of the increasing costs of feeding a dairy herd. The corn feed used to feed cattle has almost doubled in price in a year as demand has grown for the grain to produce ethanol.

Christina Seid, whose family have been making ice-cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory for 28 years, said yesterday that she expected to have to raise her prices, along with all competitors in the short term. “We are holding out as long as we can, but prices will rise,” Ms Seid said.

<snip>

The squeeze on ice-cream makers, chocolate manufacturers and pizza companies – all of whom use dairy produce as a raw material – is set to tighten as the price of a gallon of milk in the US – up 55 per cent in the past 12 months in some American states – is now the same as a gallon of petrol, with dairy prices accelerating faster than the cost of fuel.

timesonline (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article2080599.ece)

Ethanol is a total scam, we simply cannot grow enough corn to produce enough ethanol to make a dent our continued growing demand for oil, but the politicians have to make it look like they are doing something....buying shale oil from canada would be cheaper...just don't buy oil from that dictator Chavez!

[boutons_]

dubya's 10s of $Bs in subsidies and tax breaks to the ethanol industry is supposed to be one of his fantastic accomplishments. dubya's defenders are looking sillier everyday when dubya's support of dead-end ethanol is an accomplishment.

Remember the article I posted where the oilco's said they weren't investing in gasoline refineries if ethanol was going to reduce gasoline demand. This keeps the supply of gasoline restricted (aka as keeping the price up) so that when ethananol is seen to be a bust, the gasoline refiners wil reap yet another windfall from high gasoline prices due to restricted refinining capacity coupled with high oil prices.

As ethanol boondoggle pushes up the price of corn and the 1000s of products dependent on corn, Americans will pay 100 of $Bs more, but don't anybody ever talk about taxing gasoline to discourage consumption.

Americans are stupid, dumbed-down suckers, just the way the Repugs and corps want them to be.

[xrayzebra]

^^^What! two of the biggest supporters of "alternate" fuels is
bitching about ethanol. Guess you all want to go back to the
hay burners of yesteryear and methanol.

[sickdsm]

Higher food prices is no-way to combat oil dependency....

From The Times July 16, 2007
Ice-cream makers frozen out as corn price rises
Suzy Jagger and Carl Mortished



timesonline (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article2080599.ece)

Ethanol is a total scam, we simply cannot grow enough corn to produce enough ethanol to make a dent our continued growing demand for oil, but the politicians have to make it look like they are doing something....buying shale oil from canada would be cheaper...just don't buy oil from that dictator Chavez!



Estimated 93 million acres of corn was far beyond the most optimistic figures. That number is only going to rise.

150 BPA yeild looks like thats going to be shattered too.

Corns now only at $2.86 Where is all this expensive corn at? I'd like to sell some more.


Pick up a fucking newsweek instead of highlights and you wouldn't be 6 months over due on current events.

[Wild Cobra]

buying shale oil from canada would be cheaper...just don't buy oil from that dictator Chavez!
I wonder what would happen if people started protesting Citgo stations?

Another thing. Now that fuel prices are so high, the $0.51 per gallon ethonal subsidy needs to be removed. This was placed some years back to keep ethonal blended gas competative. Not needed now that fuel prices have more than doubled since.

[Wild Cobra]

Pick up a fucking newsweek instead of highlights and you wouldn't be 6 months over due on current events.
I haven't read a newsweek in years, but I recall a study finding it as a neutral paper rather than a left or right leaning paper.

[PixelPusher]

I wonder what would happen if people started protesting Citgo stations?

I'd say boycott Citgo gas, but then it's not as if there are better options out there, like the repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran...Vladimir Putin is a piece of work too.

It's best all around to simply consume less oil, period.

[Wild Cobra]

I'd say boycott Citgo gas, but then it's not as if there are better options out there, like the repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran...Vladimir Putin is a piece of work too.

It's best all around to simply consume less oil, period.
The thing is, we don't have Iranian or other mid-east gas stations here in the states. Citgo however, is in essense, owed by Chavez.

Oil on the market doesn't really matter that much. Buy for a source, boycott another, it's a world wide commodity. The only actual thing we can do with them is physical blocades so they cannot ship their oil.

[boutons_]

"buying shale oil from canada would be cheaper"

BS. US shale oil and Canadin oil sands are extremely difficult and expensive to extract and refine. In 2020, at very best, estimates are maybe 4M barrels/day from Canadian oil sands, when US demand will be at 83 M barrels/day.

[Nbadan]

Shale oil will never cost less than a barrel of sweet-crude to pump out of the ground and clean, or even Venezuela and Mexico's dirty crude for that matter, but there is enough shale-oil to last for centuries still in the ground. Besides subsidies to ethanol growers are costing taxpayers $30 for every $1 in ADM subsidy..

(1995) Cato org says$1 of ADM ethanol profit costs taxpayers $30
A Case Study In Corporate Welfare
September 26, 1995
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

Executive Summary



The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30.

[sabar]

Of course ethanol is pointless. Corn takes 30% more fossil fuel energy to produce the ethanol than the actual energy that ethanol would create. All you would do is cause a food shortage and use even more fossil fuels. Not to mention that the U.S. doesn't even have enough farmland to produce enough energy to run off itself.

Ethanol is a bandwagon, a false band-aid fix to the oil problem.

We need to get over Chernobyl and make some nuke plants, plus get more research into converting oil shales and tars.

[Wild Cobra]

Of course ethanol is pointless. Corn takes 30% more fossil fuel energy to produce the ethanol than the actual energy that ethanol would create. All you would do is cause a food shortage and use even more fossil fuels. Not to mention that the U.S. doesn't even have enough farmland to produce enough energy to run off itself.

Ethanol is a bandwagon, a false band-aid fix to the oil problem.

We need to get over Chernobyl and make some nuke plants, plus get more research into converting oil shales and tars.
I think technology has taken the ethanol issue to better than 30%, but the energy equation and carbon footprint is pointless to anyone who is educated on the subject.

At least it's politically correct!

Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Too bad that human error was the cause for Three Mile Island, and technology now makes that impossible without someone actively seeking to do it.

I agree. Nuclear is the way to go.

We should still use wind, solar, and geothermal. I say build nuclear, disassemble the dams. We still need dams for flood control, but make them fish friendly.

[xrayzebra]

Whatever happen to thermal energy. I remember years ago
some articles on the hot spots off the coast of Texas where
is was feasible to drill into these hot sports and produce
electricity. I know that they do use thermal energy in some
place here in the U.S. and of course Iceland uses lots of it.

[Wild Cobra]

Whatever happen to thermal energy.
That's a good question. We have 'hot spot' here in the Pacific Northwest also.

How about a biased guess...

It isn't something that stands out and makes a statement like wind power? Little PC propagandna value because the sites go pretty much unnoticed maybe?

[sickdsm]

Why does everyone seem to downplay ethanol bc it isn't a cure all? We don't have enough of ANY (save for coal maybe) energy source to power the us.


Anyone that still uses the negative energy debate is still in a 1980's frame of mind. I've seen those numbers breakdowns and us farmers pass them around laughing at what they say it costs us to combine/plant/raise corn so I can tell you for a fact that the growing process numbers are horribly wrong.


Plus they never go as in depth as to what it costs for gas.

[sickdsm]

I haven't read a newsweek in years, but I recall a study finding it as a neutral paper rather than a left or right leaning paper.



Your point being?

[Wild Cobra]

Your point being?
That Newsweek is a paper I would trust over most others for accurate news. At least as long as they haven't changed the way they cover stories.

[Wild Cobra]

Why does everyone seem to downplay ethanol bc it isn't a cure all? We don't have enough of ANY (save for coal maybe) energy source to power the us.


Anyone that still uses the negative energy debate is still in a 1980's frame of mind. I've seen those numbers breakdowns and us farmers pass them around laughing at what they say it costs us to combine/plant/raise corn so I can tell you for a fact that the growing process numbers are horribly wrong.


Plus they never go as in depth as to what it costs for gas.
I don't recall the newer numbers with more efficient processes, and yes, it is much better than old repeated numbers. It still takes a ridiculous amount of energy put into the process compared to what you get out. When you consider the energy put in for fertilizers, running the farm equipment, running the still, water recovery, etc. it makes more greenhouse gasses than fossil fuels, and uses a great deal of water.

Now that corn has an increased demand and oil process have increased, the subsidies at farm levels and the $0.51 per gallon ethanol subsidies need to be removed. It is still cheaper than gasoline, right?

[sickdsm]

I don't recall the newer numbers with more efficient processes, and yes, it is much better than old repeated numbers. It still takes a ridiculous amount of energy put into the process compared to what you get out. When you consider the energy put in for fertilizers, running the farm equipment, running the still, water recovery, etc. it makes more greenhouse gasses than fossil fuels, and uses a great deal of water.

Now that corn has an increased demand and oil process have increased, the subsidies at farm levels and the $0.51 per gallon ethanol subsidies need to be removed. It is still cheaper than gasoline, right?


Telll me about those subsidies at the farm level. Because for corn your going to have VERY little this year or any at higher prices. $10 an acre or so is nice but in now way needed. Factor all the FSA offices downsizing needed into the fossil fuel debate, because its not under the figures you or I have seen. See, I can explain alot more forgotten factors than a guy crunching numbers can. Rural towns are picking up jobs and people with the ethanol plant. Do you know how much money is spent on saving dieing towns? The fuel that business's and individuals use to get needed supplies and parts from larger communities? A few years ago the LDP payments for corn was about 50 cents. That's a lot of money. You won't have any of that with 2 dollar or above corn.

[boutons_]

"It still takes a ridiculous amount of energy put into the process compared to what you get out."

and it will never amt to a couple % of total US gasoline needs even if all arable land was planted with corn, making no effective dent in dependence on foreign oil.

ethanol from corn is total bullshit.

[sickdsm]

That Newsweek is a paper I would trust over most others for accurate news. At least as long as they haven't changed the way they cover stories.


Which is why i told him to read it once in a while instead of Highlights for children.



Fact is everyone said we couldn't produce enough corn to make a dent and thats why it spiked to $4. When those pundits were proved wrong on the acres planted, that's why it dropped to a today's price of $2.63.


His info is so out of date its not even funny.


The retards making a point about the increase in food products need to take a look at where $2.63 fits historically.


Most normal years i'd START selling some about $2.10.

I said START.

[sickdsm]

"It still takes a ridiculous amount of energy put into the process compared to what you get out."

and it will never amt to a couple % of total US gasoline needs even if all arable land was planted with corn, making not effective dent in dependence on foreign oil.

ethanol from corn is total bullshit.


BS numbers.



1985 thinking.


First self contained ethanol/feedlot is under production now.

[Nbadan]

Boutons is right, the amount of ethanol we produce is minuscule compared to the amount of oil we use every year...the best way to use fuel more efficiently is to cut back on current energy use...annually, we use almost as much oil as the rest of the world combined...building toll roads and new super-highways is 1970's thinking....

[gtownspur]

Boutons is right, the amount of ethanol we produce is minuscule compared to the amount of oil we use every year...the best way to use fuel more efficiently is to cut back on current energy use...annually, we use almost as much oil as the rest of the world combined...building toll roads and new super-highways is 1970's thinking....


IF we were to cut on energy consumption, would you take a vow of dignity and not bitch about the stock market declining because of the new energy policy? Or is that asking too much from an assclown?

[Wild Cobra]

So sickdsm, how many gallons per acre of ethanol do we get annually from corn? To replace gasoline with ethanol, it would take 5,443,750 square miles devoted to corn, assuming 50 gallons of fuel grade ethanol per acre. Simple math will give us different results with different yields per acre. Does this statement sound true:


We currently burn 134 billion gallons of gasoline per year, and corn ethanol will net us – net, net – 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per year. How many million acres of forest are we willing to sacrifice to get small amounts of another low-grade auto fuel, when Canada has more oil than Saudi Arabia in the Athabasca tar sands, that are now being produced by steam injection at less than $20 a barrel?

Source:

BOOK DISCUSSION ON “UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING: EVERY 1500 YEARS,” BY S. FRED SINGER AND DENNIS T. AVERY (http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/UnstoppableGlobalWarming.pdf) page 20.

My earlier calculation in a thread titled "How many acres for ethanol?" (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70368):


Consider now the implications. Some legislators want to mandate a 10% ethanol or higher mix in fuels. That would require 418,750 square miles of farmland devoted to ethanol, and how much water to irrigate it? If this was one square piece of land, the sides of the square would be 647 miles long!

Now this 50 gallons net per acre sounds reasonable for me. I'm sure more can be produces, but that is if you use traditional energy sources for the distillation process. To use ethanol and burn it to heat the distillation process, the 50 gallons is reasonable. If you really look at the energy required to make ethanol, consider the CO2 impact, then the CO2 when ethanol is burned, it is a greater impact of CO2 emissions than gasoline!

Now correct me if I'm wrong. The 10% number is 418,750 square miles. To replace gasoline, it would take 4,187,500 square miles devoted to corn. That's a pretty big plot of land, a square with sides of 2,056 miles! Can we grow that much?

Can we irrigate that much? who has water rights priorities?

[RandomGuy]

Meh. Ethanol will be an alternative to expensive oil, though... ;)

[xrayzebra]

BS numbers.



1985 thinking.


First self contained ethanol/feedlot is under production now.


Question. You seem to be more up-to-date than most,
have they figured out a way to transport this product,
other than by truck. The last I heard was that was
the only way to move it to the points needed. The
reason given was that it was to corrosive to move by
pipeline and very susceptible to moisture.

Obviously you farm and raise corn. Would you please
tell me when we can expect to get a decent ear of corn
in the store again.......LOL :lol . I have never seen
such small ears and high price. Ah for the good old days
when my Grandfather would announce the corn was
ready to eat and come in with an arm load and that
was dinner that day. And for a couple of weeks until
it got to tough to eat off the cob. Still made good
cream corn, cut off the cob and the cob scrapped for the
milk.

[Wild Cobra]

BS numbers.
Enlighten us please.

1985 thinking.
So you know the latest developments in ethanol production, maybe better than we do. Yes, the process has become more efficient, but you still have to heat an approximate 12% ethanol brew past 176 Fahrenheit for distillation. How many BTU's is this vs. BTU's of fuel net. Where does this energy come from? Did you know extra energy demands in the USA are met by burning fossile fuel?

First self contained ethanol/feedlot is under production now.
It is the self contained that yields 50 Gallon per acre after using most the ethanol produced for maintaining the distallation right? How much more CO2 greenhouse gas is produced like this rather than refining and burning gasoline?

Then the water supply. Brazil has that extra sum by being on the equator and the massive irrigating waters from rains and the Amazon. We average ~ 45 degrees lattitude which meand abot 70% the sun that Brazil gets, plus how do we possible supply enough wather for irrigation and the corn mash process for auch an increased operation?

The fermentation process alone produces mass quantities of CO2 From wiki ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol):


Fermentation

Ethanol for use in alcoholic beverages, and the vast majority of ethanol for use as fuel, is produced by fermentation: when certain species of yeast (most importantly, Saccharomyces cerevisiae) metabolize sugar in the absence of oxygen, they produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. The overall chemical reaction conducted by the yeast may be represented by the chemical equation

C6H12O6 → 2 CH3CH2OH + 2 CO2

The process of culturing yeast under conditions to produce alcohol is referred to as brewing. Brewing can only produce relatively dilute concentrations of ethanol in water; concentrated ethanol solutions are toxic to yeast. The most ethanol-tolerant strains of yeast can survive in up to about 15% ethanol (by volume).

Up to 15% yes, but how fast? Time is also a factor as it changed how much space is set aside for fermentation. Figure on 10% to 12% maximum in my opinion as someone who has brewed.

Now if we go to a 9 September, 2004 report titled The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update (http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/265.pdf) we find that ethanol can be made at a rate of about 250 gallons per acre. However, on the best study, the conversion process took 68,450 BTU’s of energy for the 1 gallon of ethanol. Pure ethanol has LHV of 84,600 BTU’s of energy, These studies use 76,000 (not 100%) BTU. Oh… Remind me again, how much does mileage decrease with ethanol?

The best of 10 studies in the yields a net 29,826 BTU. There is one that nets 30,589, but it uses the HHV BTU measurement which is actually lower. It takes 68,450 BTU to net this 29,826, but that’s with a 14,055 BTU energy credit. If my assumption is right, that is energy saved for other processes like the residual mash used as feed for cows. Does it really have food value? I don’t think it should count, but I will calculate the values with and without the credit. It takes the 68,450 BTU to make 15,771 BTU’s of ethanol. This makes a 39.2% yield with the credit and a 20.8% yield without. Converted to ethanol gross to ethanol net is 2.55 with credits except that credits don’t yield more ethanol, just a sellable product without expending more energy. The real value is 4.82 gallons gross vs. 1 gallon net. This same study used a value of 116 bushels per acre and a conversion rate of 2.69 gallons per bushel. That makes 312 gallons per acre gross, divide by the 4.82, we get 64.8 gallons per acre.

Before I started this best case scenario, I thought I would get closer to 100 gallons per acre. Now even if I mix best yield values from the studies, I get 332.5 gallons per acre gross. That is still 69.0 best case gallons per acre net.

Answers please....

[xrayzebra]

Then the water supply. Brazil has that extra sum by being on the equator and the massive irrigating waters from rains and the Amazon. We average ~ 45 degrees lattitude which meand abot 70% the sun that Brazil gets, plus how do we possible supply enough wather for irrigation and the corn mash process for auch an increased operation?

The fermentation process alone produces mass quantities of CO2 From wiki ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol):


There is a good column that our local columnist wrote
this morning on this very topic.


Carlos Guerra: Rush for energy alternatives may overlook the need for water

Web Posted: 08/01/2007 10:44 PM CDT

Express-News

As the clamor to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels grows, entrepreneurs are looking closely at alternative energy sources, including some that once were in wide use until cheap oil made them obsolete.

Everyone remembers the windmills that pumped water out of Texas' shallow aquifers. But for centuries, wind also turned mills, and beginning in 1888, it generated the electricity that lit up many an isolated farmhouse until the Rural Electrification Act turned the home-system whirligigs into antiques.

Similarly, the first mass-produced automobiles were flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on several fuels, including alcohol.

Thanks to our state's unique geography — and very generous state tax incentives — Texas already is the nation's leading producer of wind-generated electricity. This lead is also fueling research in new, more efficient wind generation technologies.

"We will soon have a wind turbine blade-testing facility on the coast," says R.J. DeSilva, spokesman for the Office of the Texas Comptroller.

Within that agency, the State Energy Conservation Office promotes energy efficiency by state agencies and is pushing the production and use of alternatives, especially biofuels.

Texas being a major grain producer — and thanks to the recent development of new carbohydrate-rich, drought resistant grain hybrids — SECO's Web site is enthusiastic about the state's potential in the production of ethanol.

According to the Web site, at least eight Texas ethanol-production projects are in the works: five in the Panhandle, one near Temple, a five-plant South Texas project and a test plant in the Rio Grande Valley.

"No large ethanol plants are up and running yet," DeSilva says, "but two of them, in Hereford, will be on-line soon."

Two of Dallas-based Panda Energy's Panhandle plants, each slated to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol from locally produced corn and sorghum, will fuel their distillers with other local products: cattle manure and manure biogas and waste from cotton gins.

The six Panhandle plants plan to make alcohol from corn and sorghum. The South Texas plants — three in the Rio Grande Valley, one near Corpus Christi and one south of San Antonio — plan to use sugar-rich sweet sorghum. And the other Valley plant will produce cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, sugarcane bagasse and other nonfood products.

But if this is — as many are now saying — only the beginning, we'd better consider another aspect about alcohol production that isn't often discussed.

Last month, City Pages, a Minneapolis alternative weekly, tackled an element that's absolutely critical to ethanol production. In the rush to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy, an ethanol plant was hurriedly built in Granite Falls, Minn.

After state hydrologists warned that the aquifer expected to be the plant's water source couldn't sustain the planned pumping levels, state regulators authorized pumping for only three years.

"After one year of operation, however, the plant had reduced the aquifer's water level by 90 feet, exhausting roughly half the reservoir," the paper reported, though luckily, a nearby river was able to serve as an alternative source of water.

But "the example points out a little-known downside to the ethanol craze: The industry uses massive amounts of water," City Pages reported. "It's a key component during the fermentation and cooling stages of ethanol production."

Efficiency of water use for making ethanol has improved, but it still takes 2.7 to 5 or more gallons of water to produce a single gallon of ethanol.

Together, the eight projects on SECO's site plan to produce 544 million gallons of ethanol annually. So, in addition to the irrigation water needed to produce the grains they will use, fermentation and distillation will consume 1.469 billion to 2.720 billion gallons of water.

Are we ready for this?

[boutons_]

August 8, 2007

Ethanol Is Feeding Hot Market for Farmland

By MONICA DAVEY

DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.

“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.

Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”

Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.” Still, he said, he believes that to make it a viable, “not quite so lean” full-time career, he needs to work more acres. Just the other day, he called about a farm that was up for rent. He did not get it.

“You keep trying to fight your battles,” Mr. Burrs said, “but it’s frustrating and hard, and sometimes I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”

In central Illinois, prime farmland is selling for about $5,000 an acre on average, up from just over $3,000 an acre five years ago, a study showed. In Nebraska, meanwhile, land values rose 17 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same time last year, the swiftest such gain in more than a quarter century, said Jason R. Henderson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.

A federal-government analysis of farm real estate values released Friday showed record average-per-acre values across the country. The analysis said property prices averaged $2,160 an acre at the start of 2007, up 14 percent from a year earlier.

“For everyone who owns an acre of land, we love this,” said Dale E. Aupperle, a professional farm manager and real estate consultant in Decatur, Ill., who said the rising land values were being driven by rising commodity prices (though corn has dropped some since June) and the prospect of increased demand for ethanol.

“For everyone who doesn’t own an acre of land, these prices mean it gets a little harder to get into,” Mr. Aupperle added. “For an entry-level land owner or a renter, there’s a bit of a thought right now that the train is leaving and I’m not on it.”

In Iowa, which produces more corn and is home to more ethanol plants than any other state, farm rental prices are mimicking purchase prices: they were up about 10 percent this spring over a year ago, according to a study by William Edwards, a professor at Iowa State University who said it was the largest jump since he started tracking farm rents in 1994.

And ethanol is leaving marks everywhere. New grain bins seem to be popping up all around the Midwest, farmers from Indiana to South Dakota say, and some of the highest farmland prices have been seen around the nearly 200 existing or proposed ethanol plants, where the cost of transporting the corn would be the cheapest. Mr. Henderson said he heard that land close to such facilities, most of which are in the Midwest, had jumped by as much as 30 percent over a year ago.

Some of the boom here may be tied to the dip in other urban and suburban markets: As has been true for several years, out-of-town investors (some of whom can put off capital gains taxes by taking money made from selling one piece of real estate and investing it in another) are buying some of this land. But local farmers are doing much of the buying this year, said Lee Vermeer, a vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company, a farm-management firm in Omaha.

“These are established farmers, though, who own other land,” Mr. Vermeer said. “For a young farmer to get in, the amount of capital required is almost prohibitive.”

So the land prices are, in some cases, scooting beyond reach, even as young corn farmers — and hopeful farmers — are enticed by the sudden demand for ethanol as a replacement for the nation’s dependence on oil.

Near Dixon, 40 miles west of DeKalb, Kyle Sheaffer, 28, serves as the local leader of a Farm Bureau committee focused on the worries of young farmers. For them, he said, the high prices have become a regular focus of concern. Meanwhile, well-off buyers and investors, he said, seem to arrive in places like Dixon with “an open checkbook.”

“At this point, it’s just super hard to rent — much less buy — ground,” Mr. Sheaffer said. “On top of the land, the initial investment to farm is so much: the tractor, the startup costs, it’s crazy. If you want to rent land, you either have to find a landlord who is sympathetic to your cause or who knows you.”

Without a family member who already owns a farm or without having a personal connection with a retiring community farmer, there is little chance of a young farmer getting in, most farmers here said. Mr. Sheaffer himself farms 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans, with his father. Without the family tie, he said, he would be out of luck.

Brent Johnson, 29, a farmer in Ashland, Ill., said the established operation run by his father and uncle are the only reason he can even consider farming.

“I don’t know anyone anymore who is doing this who didn’t come from a farm,” Mr. Johnson said. “Starting one up from thin air? I don’t know how you could now.”

Not surprisingly, the farmers are aging. In Iowa, about one-fourth of farmland is owned by people 75 or older, said Michael Duffy, a farm economist at Iowa State University. Another one-fourth is owned by people 65 to 74 years old.

Unknown is what will come of land prices if corn loses its place in the ethanol world and is surpassed by another source like cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass.

“Right now, a lot are still betting that corn-based ethanol will be around a while,” said Mr. Duffy, who is also the director of the Beginning Farmer Center, which assists farmers who are starting out. He noted two other farming booms, in the 1910s and the 1970s, which were each later followed by periods of depression.

“In five years, corn-based ethanol will be around,” Mr. Duffy said. “Fifteen years? I’m not as convinced.”

=============

Any serious observer know ethanol would be dead, except for dubya's $50B subsidies and tax breaks, and the $1.50/gal tax on imported ethanol (from Brazil, which is also destroying ancient forests to plant sugar cane and soy beans).

"there he goes again!" dubya fucking up another thing he's touched.Ethanol is screwing up land prices, and pushing up the cost of corn world-wide and all the 1000s of products that derive from corn.