Corn based ethanol would like a word. Also, it’s ironic to me that subsidized industrial monoculture has a number of insecurity producing effects:

1. Topsoil loss 2. Mismanagement of surface water and subsurface reserves 3. Centralization and consolidation, decimating rural communities which would be producing more labor intensive food in a crisis 4. Lower biodiversity, increased risk of catastrophic loss 5. The whole system relies on global trade to make useful food anyway

If national security were the actual driving force, farm policy would look a lot different.

You should read up on modern farming techniques. That would mitigate a lot of your concerns.

Thanks… but I do. My state is responsible for more than 1/3 of the total nutrient entering the Gulf of Mexico, and our major city recently tried and failed to sue counties to the north for making their water cost prohibitive to treat.

What exactly don’t you think I know about farming practices? I personally know both commodity farmers and sustainable vegetable farmers.

I agree with the benefits of crop subsidization, however the subsidies on corn are way beyond national security. Corn is a very robust crop that grows in nearly any conditions and has limited nutritional value, subsidies need to be spread out among more varied and vulnerable crops. We should also be focusing them on more sustainable farming techniques that don't deplete the topsoil.

I used to not like farm subsidies, but the free market tends to plan for supply shocks poorly, and the cost of shortages is incredibly high, so I don't mind paying farmers to overproduce food.

The problem is that the government tells you to produce a limited selection of crops. Then subsidy farmers will try to optimize the crap out of the subsidies. It's ok for food security but now all the food processing companies will try to use the subsidized crops everywhere because they are much cheaper.

Not if the farm subsidies incentivize dumb things.

We should have a universal subsidy, not preferential subsidy for some food groups.

For instance, 87 cents of every dollar that a dairy farmer makes is from subsidy. That is ridiculous.

Do you have a source for this? I believe you, but there are multiple ways of parsing that sentence, and a source would clarify things.

One reading (87% of gross income) is obviously problematic, and another (87% of profit) is exactly what you'd expect to get if you add almost any subsidy to a previously low-margin activity.

Revenue, but the number is actually 73%, I misremembered.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/12/best-way-...

Thanks

But you don't need subsidies for that - you can just buy on the market and rotate reserves

This is also a subsidy.

Absolutely, but depending on how you do it, you can cause less market distortions - what I've seen subsidies do locally is make farmers do things that would be unprofitable instead of searching for what's profitable for them (eg. planting sub-optimal crops because they know they get subsidies, prevent small inefficient farmers from going bust effectively becoming a welfare program that prevents more efficient farming, etc.)

Having a functioning farm sector a food reserve is sooooo much better than having any amount of food in storage. You can only store so much, it won't last long given the huge amount needed every day. Disruptions that last years rather than weeks or months look more likely now than in the past century.

That can be generalized and of course is not limited to farming.

Maybe on the US level it makes sense, but I live in a small country and I hear this argument a lot and it makes 0 sense :

a) our agricultural sector isn't diverse or strong enough anyway, if we get cut off from imports we are fucked even with subsidies

b) ramping up basic agriculture doesn't seem that hard, as in that's an easier crisis scenario to handle

c) on the market if global food prices jumped (has happened in the past) the subsidized farmers were quick to export to richer markets at a higher price, I believe US also saw similar price jump effects when China was affected by pork shortages IIRC

Best case scenario is government just increases the emergency supplies they already have to cover the period it would take the production to ramp up

> Maybe on the US level it makes sense, but I live in a small country

In case you missed it, this entire discussion here is about the US situation. The "U.S:" even is in the article's subtitle (once you click on the article) and the US and NAFTA are all over the article and this discussion.

Mexico

The country talked about as the one subsidizing their products, leading to the problem elsewhere, is not Mexico. Not sure what you were reading here. It's the USA.

And apparently, see the current topic, Mexico too thinks having a functioning farming sector is more important than having access to the cheapest goods. Other wise they would welcome that the US pays for them being able to import the products more cheaply because of the subsidies.

So, given that, I'm not sure why you think pointing to Mexico refutes my point?

> [...] but the free market tends to plan for supply shocks poorly, [...]

Well, when you ban people from raising prices when they prepared for an emergency better than others, that tends to disincentives preparing for emergencies.

(And, yes, the US and many state ban raising prices whenever they declare emergencies.)

That might sound appealing, but economics isn't with you here.

In addition, the farmland in eg the US isn't going away, just because you drop subsidies and tariffs from corn. People will just grow something else there, when corn isn't as profitable anymore.

(Or the land might drop in value.)

Farmland in the US has been going away for years, and getting turned into developments and urban sprawl.

For context, about 5% of the US is developed, and about 45% is used as farmland. Sprawl can be pretty bad and still not have much of an effect.

Do you have numbers on how much of an issues that is?

3-ish percent between 1992 and 2012: https://www.ngfa.org/newsletter/report-outlines-dramatic-los... (and it's disproportionally the good land)

^ not to mention biofuel from corn actually takes more energy to produce than it provides

The dream would be for that energy to come from renewable electricity, so I think it's still a viable fuel to consider for the future as a holdover fuel for the enormous internal combustion engine fleet the world has. We can't immediately convert everyone to electric, so a good holdover might be making renewable fuels more viable.

I intend to keep my car in operation for a long time, as a car for motorsport, so I converted it to E85 for performance and long term robustness of fuel supply. My guess is that as petroleum and diesel fuels go out of fashion, only niche consumers will need combustion fuels, and that will be motorsport and ethanol blends. Companies can already make ethanol racing blends work financially, so I expect it to stick around.

Do you run gas through your lines and injectors before storage?

Not currently but I still use the car once a week, we have an all year driving season so I just inspect the lines occasionally and I haven't seen any erosion yet. I think I would run unleaded through it if I had to store it for 6+ months though.

What lines?

EDIT: Fuel lines? Are these things which one simply modifies for fun and profit?

There are two statements here that you are getting mixed up.

Ethanol absorbs moisture. You cannot store gas that contains ethanol for as long as you can non ethanol gas. If you are putting your car in storage, it is prudent to flush out the ethanol. This can be as simple as running the tank down and filling up with regular gas, and then driving more so the lines don't have ethanol gas anymore.

Ethanol attacks rubber compounds in a different method than gasoline. You need to have special lines to run E85 gas. I presume he switched it out himself. Not sure what else is involved in the conversion.

Yep that's all correct, there were a few lines that needed to be replaced with E85 rated lines, it wasn't a big task though.

For my setup I have an ethanol content sensor so I can run regular and ethanol based fuels, and I upgraded my fuel pump and injectors, as you need about twice as much fuel volume per combustion compared to regular unleaded.

To answer the "Why" of the parent post, typically it's because you can get more power out of a vehicle with ethanol.

The reason you can get more power out of ethanol fuels, is because the aforementioned increased volume of fuel cools the combustion temperature. Ethanol brings some of it's own oxygen, hence why you can combust that extra fuel without adding more air.

Lowering combustion temperatures reduces the tendency for an engine to "knock" or "ping". Knocking is when the flame front is uneven, which gives a poorly timed and high peak pressure combustion that can lead to catastrophic failure.

Most turbocharged or supercharged engines are "knock limited" meaning you could produce more power if you could eliminate the risk of knocking. This only gets worse as turbo/superchargers increase intake air temperatures, which increases combustion temperature, increasing the tendency to knock. So by using ethanol fuels, you decrease combustion temperatures and get back the ability to push the engine further using other parameters.

If it took less we would already be a post scarcity world so that's hardly a problem with biofuels. They are a reasonably good solar battery.