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Chris Thorne,
Director of Public Affairs at Growth Energy
Washington D.C.
To the editor:
Charles Raney is off-base about ethanol in Ethanol not good solution for fuel (January 2012). When trying to assign blame for rising food prices, he clearly misses the mark.
What most Americans don’t know is that more than one third of every bushel of corn used in ethanol production is returned to the food chain in the form of highly-valued, nutritious livestock feed – known as distillers grains. All ethanol production removes from the corn kernel is the starch. The rest – the oils, the fiber and the protein – become distillers grains, which cost less than corn, are more nutritious than corn and ultimately save the livestock producer money by displacing a greater amount of corn by volume.
The real costs of putting food on the shelf – and subsequently on your dinner table – are transportation, processing and packaging costs. All of these costs are driven by oil, and together with rampant Wall Street commodities speculation, they account for increasing commodity prices and grocery store bills.
Instead of scapegoating ethanol, it’s time to focus on the oil industry, which has long enjoyed a hodgepodge of unnecessary loopholes and tax breaks that have cost taxpayers trillions of dollars over the last four decades.
Oil is a limited resource that is only getting dirtier, costlier and riskier to extract. Ethanol is a cleaner, greener renewable alternative fuel source that reduces America’s dependence on foreign oil, is better for our environment and produces both food and fuel.
Chris Thorne,
Director of Public Affairs at Growth Energy
Washington D.C.
To the editor:
Charles Raney is off-base about ethanol in Ethanol not good solution for fuel (January 2012). When trying to assign blame for rising food prices, he clearly misses the mark.
What most Americans don’t know is that more than one third of every bushel of corn used in ethanol production is returned to the food chain in the form of highly-valued, nutritious livestock feed – known as distillers grains. All ethanol production removes from the corn kernel is the starch. The rest – the oils, the fiber and the protein – become distillers grains, which cost less than corn, are more nutritious than corn and ultimately save the livestock producer money by displacing a greater amount of corn by volume.
The real costs of putting food on the shelf – and subsequently on your dinner table – are transportation, processing and packaging costs. All of these costs are driven by oil, and together with rampant Wall Street commodities speculation, they account for increasing commodity prices and grocery store bills.
Instead of scapegoating ethanol, it’s time to focus on the oil industry, which has long enjoyed a hodgepodge of unnecessary loopholes and tax breaks that have cost taxpayers trillions of dollars over the last four decades.
Oil is a limited resource that is only getting dirtier, costlier and riskier to extract. Ethanol is a cleaner, greener renewable alternative fuel source that reduces America’s dependence on foreign oil, is better for our environment and produces both food and fuel.
