The Ethics of Using Corn or Rice to Make Fuel

These include: the absorption of carbon dioxide and the production of ethanol. Carbon dioxide increases the dangers of the greenhouse effect. This traps in more heat, slowly heating the earth up. Greenhouse gases are a large contribution to global warming in today’s age, destroying the world slowly. Luckily, plants, like corn, absorb the carbon dioxide, lessening the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Another benefit of growing corn would be the output of ethanol. It takes tens of thousands of years to form petroleum (has a limit to how much there is which is slowly running out), which we use a lot for transport in today’s society, while ethanol, another type of fuel, can be easily made with the production of corn. Firstly the corn creates its own glucose for food, which is then made into starch. During this process, the substance, ethanol, is produced. If corn continues to be produced, an endless amount of ethanol will be made as well, therefore supplying the world with endless amounts of fuel for our

Not only does this kill the American Agriculture, but this also starves people. I’m sure everyone of you know the struggle people go through and the struggle of finding food. Instead of land being used for crops to grow food for these people, it is being used to produce ethanol. I believe we should use this cropland for crops because it can help starving and hungry people to be able to receive food so they can have enough to eat.

Corn is not the ideal nutritious food. It wreaks havoc on the animal;s' digestive system and gets turned into sweeteners that makes people obese, aside from giving us an unhealthy diet. In other words, the industrial food chain that American man is sustained on is largely based on corn, whether in its direct form, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose, and the cheapest forms of these are high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol. The former, particularly, through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors, appears in the cheapest and most common of foods that constitute the American diet. It is the ingredient that results in obesity, and, since it appears in the cheapest products, the ingredients that more poor, than wealthier individuals, consume.

Throughout time, humans have pushed forward in every aspect in life in order to improve their living standards, wealth and most importantly the agricultural sector which is the base of every human race. Food is the basic requirement for any individual to stay alive and healthy. In an article by Tamsin McMahon, she states that over the past 60 years, the world population has grown from 2.5 billion to 7 billion while world hunger dropped from 40% down to 15% (McMahon T., July 2012). This shows that our agricultural advances through technology have helped control world hunger and decrease it by more than half, but this is a short-term solution if we want to consider the future generations that depend on our current actions toward the three main pillars of agriculture which are: Health and nutrition, Economy and sustainability all while considering the local small farms and corporate farms.

The higher price of ethanol in many areas is made worse by ethanol’s second disadvantage that it, regardless of the price you pay for it, contains less fuel efficient energy than gasoline. In short, this means cars won’t travel as far on a tank of gas, and most cars fuel economy will decrease by 20-30 percent. This is very

The projected population for our world is supposed to exceed 9 billion people by 2050. With more and more crops starting to be crushed for ethanol, how will we keep up with the ever-demanding trek for food security? The answer to this will decide how life will be on earth for decades to come.

Many things are being done to help resolve this issue. More land is being made available for farm use (Clemmitt 555). On top of increasing farmland, farmers have also been learning how to use more effective techniques to ensure a successful harvest (Clemmitt 559). In order to fix the issue of starvation and malnutrition, from the lack of food, "we must first fix the political and economic issues", say many scholars (Clemmitt 565). Money is a major issue for the citizens in the United States. The amount of food isn't the first problem; it's not having enough money to buy the food that is available (Clemmitt 567). There are many issues with not being able to obtain food. The only issues that cannot be fixed are natural disasters, like hurricanes and tornadoes (Clemmitt 566). Although with all the technology in the world we cannot control Mother Nature. Technique is an important key to a successful harvest. Some farmers believe monoculture would be the best technique because it produces a large amount of one crop. The technique is effective and efficient but it’s harmful to earth's biodiversity. Thankfully there is a large amount of people in the next generation who are taking an interest in farming. This may help with the growth of farming, and fixing the issue of starvation. Genetically modified food is created in a way to grow quicker and easier than regular crops (McLure 719 720). Genetically modified foods have many helpful traits like being resistant to weeds. Another helpful trait of genetically modified food is it can grow in large amounts (McLure 721). The way the modified food is designed to help with growing large amounts with less acreage. The modified food, and organics, is believed to be cheaper because they do not require fertilizer (Kiener 820). Farmers are now trying to convince others to decrease or even stop the use of biofuel. It's becoming known that biofuel is taking away the amount of

The USDA should allow farmers more land for cultivation of switch grass, and less land for corn because switch grass grown for the purpose of producing ethanol will have many more benefits both economically and environmentally compared to corn, which has many harmful outcomes.

The demand for corn has greatly increased because of its many new found uses but mainly because it has been discovered that corn can be use as an alternate energy source. This great demand for corn has increased many area of farming and production of corn here and other countries such as Mexico and South America. This great demand has lead to an increase in farmers who are willing to cash in on these cash crops and try to earn a few quick dollars because of the great demand for it. In 2007 Corn farmer saw record profits because famer where getting twice as much for corn as they did in previous years. The same trend continued but farmers dealt with so many obstacle such as weather, bugs and lack of

Ethanol is the fuel of the future. Really? How so? Ethanol will solve the energy crisis. That sounds a little far fetched. Ethanol stimulates time travel. Alright, that’s just a flat-out lie. It seems that these days everybody and their brother thinks that ethanol is the magic key to the future of powering automobiles and solving the problem of dependence on foreign oil. Well, that is not the case. Ethanol is not the energy source of the future; in fact ethanol only creates more energy problems.

Ethanol is a much cleaner burning source when compared to regular gasoline, which has been a hot media topic for some time now. Another positive that truly benefits everyone is the fact that it is also cheaper when compared to regular gas, much cheaper, ranging anywhere from 15 to 30 percent cheaper. To many consumers around the world this is actually a really big deal. While researching I was able to learn some pretty interesting facts about this product. According to fuelfreedom.org, Ethanol does in fact have less energy contents than gasoline, however I learned that the engine efficiency gains from ethanol likely means that E85 can cost less per mile to use (fuelfreedom.org). That’s not all, there are also other ways ethanol could potentially be better as well, and that is by creating thousands of new jobs. I learned that Iowa leads the nation in ethanol production having 47 percent (1.3 billion bushels) of the corn grown right there in Iowa, which goes to create roughly 30 percent of all American ethanol. The renewable fuels industry (including biodiesel) supports around 43,000 jobs in Iowa. Primarily this accounts for approximately $4.6 billion of Iowa’s GDP.(iowacorn.org). Another really hot topic that people love to debate is our planet. Well, Ethanol is also better for the environment. “Mother Nature is all about ethanol”. We were actually able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 41.2 million metric tons due to the 14.7 billion gallons of ethanol produced in 2015. To put that in perspective, that would be like removing 8.4 million cars from the road. On top of that ethanol production requires less water than gasoline, by a three to one margin (iowacorn.org). Next we can talk about how Ethanol is also good for energy security. I was able to read in a information article that, “Without 14.8 billion gallons of domestic ethanol used in the U.S. in 2015, the United

Energy, especially from fossil fuels, is a key ingredient for all sectors of a modern economy and plays a fundamental role in improving the quality of life in less developed economies. In 2007, India is ranked fifth in the world in terms of energy demand; accounting for 3.6% of total energy consumed, and is expected to grow at 4.8% in the future. India imports 70% of the oil it uses, and the country has been hit

Well we all know that the energy system is very unstable because the total energy available on the earth is limited, and man has exploited all the conventional technologies to fulfill his needs. By the use of these conventional technologies, the world also has a disability, with problems such as global warming. Consumption of energy by man increased gradually as his wants also increase. The conventional energy resources mainly include fossil fuels, but research shows that this fuel source will be depleted completely in approximately 20-25 years. This could cause major setbacks around the world. As a result, we need an alternative source of fuel that could keep the world running on its wheel. One possibility is ethanol. Chemically extract

In the world of global warming, all kinds of pollution and fuel shortages going on, renewable and clean/ green energy is increasingly the ideal solution of energy related problems we have to solve one way or another. Biofuel is one of the mainstream and highly supported solutions nowadays, an idea to make renewable fuel by living organisms such as fiber, corn, vegetable oil or sugar cane. Unlike nonrenewable fossil fuels over extracted by people causing various environmental problems like generating a considerable amount greenhouse gas, current technology already lets renewable fuel like biofuels to shrink a certain amount of greenhouse gas production, making it a more ‘clean’ source of energy.

Dry-mill, the more common and standardized of the two processes, utilizes the four basic processes of ethanol production, “clean corn is ground and mixed with water to form a mash… enzymes are added to convert starch to sugar… yeast is added to ferment… then distilled and dehydrated to create fuel-grade 99-percent ethanol” (Shapouri 2). The Wet-mill process commonly referred to as a “biorefinery” process approaches ethanol from a more atomic level. In Wet-mill ethanol production “grain must be separated into is components including starch, fiber, gluten, and germ” (Shapouri 2). Nevertheless Wet-mill production still uses the three processes above to create ethanol, the difference between Wet and Dry-mill is the quality of their byproduct. Through Dry-milling you avoid the complexity of multiply biochemical disseminations, which save energy and money through lower skill labor and lower tooling costs. However Wet-mill production makes more efficient use of mass and higher quality byproducts that will have greater market value. In the end the net cost of either method is variable, yet on the average the cost to produce a gallon of ethanol is less for Dry-milling than for Wet, yet when you consider the sale of extra byproducts this figure is reversed (SEE Table 2).