Andersons Inc. (ANDE)

All Comments on ANDE

  • commenter
    PA007
    Aug 03 10:55 PM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Here comes a shill for the ethanol industry - User 237607

    > creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn.

    Maybe we can do that with our wheat and rice and oats - make ethanol and eat leftovers and become leaner animals and drive ethanol filled cars. Maybe even drink some of that given the completely made up arguments.
    Look at the work of UC Berkeley scientists instead of this bizarre comment to get some facts: berkeley.edu/news/medi...

    Reply
  • commenter
    User 237607
    Aug 03 09:25 PM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Please listen to both sides of this debate before you rule out ethanol as part of the energy solution.
    David Blume is the best source of information I have found that gives you up to date detailed info on the ethanol debate not a 30 second sound bites from 25 year old studies done with outdated equipment to make ethanol look bad and oil look good.

    With alcohol fuel, you can become energy-independent, reverse global warming, and survive Peak Oil in style. Alcohol fuel is "liquid sunshine" and can't be controlled by transnational corporations. You can produce alcohol for less than $1 a gallon, using a wide variety of plants and waste products, from algae to stale donuts. It's a much better fuel than gasoline, and you can use it in your car, right now. You can even use alcohol to generate electricity. Alcohol fuel production is ecologically sustainable, revitalizes farms and communities, and creates huge new opportunities for small-scale businesses. Its byproducts are clean and valuable. Alcohol has a proud history and a vital future.

    To learn more, watch the Five-Minute Video www.permaculture.com/ by ethanol expert David Blume he hits many of the high points as to why alcohol fuel is the smart, sustainable alternative energy solution, in this mind-opening 5-minute version of a longer interview (conducted by Wayne Garcia of Portland, Oregon, Fox 12 KPTV, in October 2007).
    David Blume’s Two-Minute Summary www.alcoholcanbeagas.c... .

    Busting the Ethanol Myths
    www.alcoholcanbeagas.c...

    Myth #1: It Takes More Energy to Produce Ethanol than You Get from It!
    Most ethanol research over the past 25 years has been on the topic of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). Public discussion has been dominated by the American Petroleum Institute’s aggressive distribution of the work of Cornell professor David Pimentel and his numerous, deeply flawed studies. Pimentel stands virtually alone in portraying alcohol as having a negative EROEI—producing less energy than is used in its production.
    In fact, it’s oil that has a negative EROEI. Because oil is both the raw material and the energy source for production of gasoline, it comes out to about 20% negative. That’s just common sense; some of the oil is itself used up in the process of refining and delivering it (from the Persian Gulf, a distance of 11,000 miles in tanker travel).
    The most exhaustive study on ethanol’s EROEI, by Isaias de Carvalho Macedo, shows an alcohol energy return of more than eight units of output for every unit of input—and this study accounts for everything right down to smelting the ore to make the steel for tractors.
    But perhaps more important than EROEI is the energy return on fossil fuel input. Using this criterion, the energy returned from alcohol fuel per fossil energy input is much higher. In a system that supplies almost all of its energy from biomass, the ratio of return could be positive by hundreds to one.

    Myth #2: There Isn’t Enough Land to Grow Crops for Both Food and Fuel!
    According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. has 434,164,946 acres of “cropland”—land that is able to be worked in an industrial fashion (monoculture). This is the prime, level, and generally deep agricultural soil. In addition to cropland, the U.S. has 939,279,056 acres of “farmland.” This land is also good for agriculture, but it’s not as level and the soil not as deep. Additionally, there is a vast amount of acreage—swamps, arid or sloped land, even rivers, oceans, and ponds—that the USDA doesn’t count as cropland or farmland, but which is still suitable for growing specialized energy crops.
    Of its nearly half a billion acres of prime cropland, the U.S. uses only 72.1 million acres for corn in an average year. The land used for corn takes up only 16.6% of our prime cropland, and only 7.45% of our total agricultural land.
    Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today’s levels. Corn could easily produce this level—and a wide variety of standard crops yield up to triple this. Plus, of course, the potential alcohol production from cellulose could dwarf all other crops.

    Myth #3: Ethanol’s an Ecological Nightmare!
    You’d be hard-pressed to find another route that so elegantly ties the solutions to the problems as does growing our own energy. Far from destroying the land and ecology, a permaculture ethanol solution will vastly improve soil fertility each year.
    The real ecological nightmare is industrial agriculture. Switching to organic-style crop rotation will cut energy use on farms by a third or more: no more petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers. Fertilizer needs can be served either by applying the byproducts left over from the alcohol manufacturing process directly to the soil, or by first running the byproducts through animals as feed.

    Myth #4: It’s Food Versus Fuel—We Should Be Growing Crops for Starving Masses, Not Cars!
    Humankind has barely begun to work on designing farming as a method of harvesting solar energy for multiple uses. Given the massive potential for polyculture yields, monoculture-study dismissals of ethanol production seem silly when viewed from economic, energetic, or ecological perspectives.
    Because the U.S. grows a lot of it, corn has become the primary crop used in making ethanol here. This is supposedly controversial, since corn is identified as a staple food in poverty-stricken parts of the world. But 87% of the U.S. corn crop is fed to animals. In most years, the U.S. sends close to 20% of its corn to other countries. While it is assumed that these exports could feed most of the hungry in the world, the corn is actually sold to wealthy nations to fatten their livestock. Plus, virtually no impoverished nation will accept our corn, even when it is offered as charity, due to its being genetically modified and therefore unfit for human consumption.
    Also, fermenting the corn to alcohol results in more meat than if you fed the corn directly to the cattle. We can actually increase the meat supply by first processing corn into alcohol, which only takes 28% of the starch, leaving all the protein and fat, creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn.

    Myth #5: Big Corporations Get All Those Ethanol Subsidies, and
    Taxpayers Get Nothing in Return!
    Between 1968 and 2000, oil companies received subsidies of $149.6 billion, compared to ethanol’s paltry $116.6 million. The subsidies alcohol did receive have worked extremely well in bringing maturity to the industry. Farmer-owned cooperatives now produce the majority of alcohol fuel in the U.S. Farmer-owners pay themselves premium prices for their corn and then pay themselves a dividend on the alcohol profit.
    The increased economic activity derived from alcohol fuel production has turned out to be crucial to the survival of noncorporate farmers, and the amounts of money they spend in their communities on goods and services and taxes for schools have been much higher in areas with an ethanol plant. Plus, between $3 and $6 in tax receipts are generated for every dollar of ethanol subsidy. The rate of return can be much higher in rural communities, where re-spending within the community produces a multiplier factor of up to 22 times for each alcohol fuel subsidy dollar.

    Myth #6: Ethanol Doesn’t Improve Global Warming! In Fact, It Pollutes the Air!
    Alcohol fuel has been added to gasoline to reduce virtually every class of air pollution. Adding as little as 5–10% alcohol can reduce carbon monoxide from gasoline exhaust dramatically. When using pure alcohol, the reductions in all three of the major pollutants—carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons—are so great that, in many cases, the remaining emissions are unmeasurably small. Reductions of more than 90% over gasoline emissions in all categories have been routinely documented for straight alcohol fuel.
    It is true that when certain chemicals are included in gasoline, addition of alcohol at 2–20% of the blend can cause a reaction that makes these chemicals more volatile and evaporative. But it’s not the ethanol that’s the problem; it’s the gasoline.
    Alcohol carries none of the heavy metals and sulfuric acid that gasoline and diesel exhausts do. And straight ethanol’s evaporative emissions are dramatically lower than gasoline’s, no more toxic than what you’d find in the air of your local bar.
    As for global warming, the production and use of alcohol neither reduces nor increases the atmosphere’s CO2. In a properly designed system, the amount of CO2 and water emitted during fermentation and from exhaust is precisely the amount of both chemicals that the next year’s crop of fuel plants needs to make the same amount of fuel once again.
    Alcohol fuel production actually lets us reduce carbon dioxide emissions, since the growing of plants ties up many times more carbon dioxide than is created in the production and use of the alcohol. Converting from a hydrocarbon to a carbohydrate economy could quickly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

    Reply
  • commenter
    Jacamar
    Aug 03 07:13 PM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    If we would eliminate the tarrifs on imported ethanol, Brazil is the best choice for imported ethanol if you don't mind converting tropical forests to row sugar cane. As for PBR and I don't mean "Blue Ribbon. Have owned it for about 4 years. Great investment. Lots of offshore oil and ethanol investment to boot. Also don't have the negative climate conditions tha the Gulf of Mexico has, nor the politics of the Middle East or Venz. Reply
  • commenter
    John Egan
    Aug 03 04:33 PM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Re: The study indicated that the ethanol actually caused a 1-2% increase in the overall smog levels in areas tested in California. Actually, that has been scientifically proven to be a lot of hot air emanating from Sacramento as Schwartzenegger and the State battle about how to handle our multi-billion dollar shortfall.

    Congress is unlikely to upset the Midwest. It seems to me I read that ethanol has just been factored into the new housing bailout bill.

    Two answers to the Ethanol issue:
    (1) Buy from Brazil. Why not get on the Petrobras/Brazil bandwagon.
    (2) Get away from corn. Go to switchgrass and other plant types. (Can't remember the name of the plant (my brother-in-law called it jojoba, and now that's the only name that comes to mind... ) But the results can yield 6 to 8 times more energy and the plants grow in uglier less useful soils, thereby freeing up land needed for food. Remember where the caucuses are held though! Iowa.

    Anyway.. This also from Wikipedia:

    Added to gasoline, ethanol reduces ground-level ozone formation by lowering volatile organic compound and hydrocarbon emissions, decreasing carcinogenic benzene, and butadiene, emissions, and particulate matter emissions from gasoline combustion.[39]

    Combustion of ethanol in an internal combustion engine yields many of the products of incomplete combustion that are produced by gasoline and significantly larger amounts of formaldehyde and related species such as formalin, acetaldehyde, etc..[40] This leads to a significantly larger photochemical reactivity that generates much more ground level ozone.[41] This data has been assembled into The Clean Fuels Report comparison of fuel emissions[42] and shows that ethanol exhaust generates 2.14 times as much ozone as does gasoline exhaust. When this is added into the custom "Localised Pollution Index (LPI)" of The Clean Fuels Report the local pollution, i.e. that which contributes to smog, is 1.7 on a scale where gasoline is 1.0 and higher numbers signify greater pollution. This issue has been formalised by the California Air Resouces Board in 2008[43] by recognising control standards for formaldehydes et al as an emissions control group much like the conventional NOx and Reactive Organic Gases (ROGs).

    jegan ;-)     Reply
  • commenter
    xpatUSA
    Aug 03 02:12 PM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Yep, ethanol has actually less than 2/3 the energy compared to gasoline - the ratio is 0.627 [Wikipedia] to be a little more exact.

    The cellulosic process is proven and starting to be used. Check out Verenium VRNM for example.

    I see a gradual move to B99 bio-diesel fuel in the medium future. Also if E85 became more commonly available, ethanol-only engines could have much higher compression ratio which would, to an extent, offset it's lesser calorific value.

    We talk a lot about energy balance, efficiency and so forth but, if push came to shove, I would happily drive to town in a steam-powered conveyance burning Yaupon holly from my property!

    xpat     Reply
  • commenter
    Jacamar
    Aug 03 10:11 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Energy master-  Your are nuts. Anyone the misrepresents the facts to make a case does no one any good. First the 7% is really about 5% when you take lower BTU content into account.  Second the energy used to till, plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, process, ship the ethanol to terminals, etc. ends up yielding about 10% energy benefit at best.  Therefore at best we may be seeing 0.5% benefit from ethanol. And where does a large part of the energy to do this come from, big oil... As for all of this great research towards cellulosic ethanol or butanol, don't hold you breath.  these "operations" are pilot scale plants that will not make a dent in ethanol demand. Oh don't forget that ethanol gets a 50+ tax subsidy per gallon paid for by OUR taxes.  Oh forgot to mention the the money TN is is contributing is OUR tax money, Oh forgot to mention we subsidize the farmers with OUR tax money.While the vehicular emissions form "gasohol" is higher, modern vehicles emit very little non CO2 emissions and therefore ethanol is not as bad as on makes it out to be from a regulated emissions point of view.As for repealling the EPACT 2005, it for all practical reasons is history.  The 2007 Energy legislation took care of that.  We will be at 10% ethanol in every drop of gasoline in 2014, i.e. ~15billion gallons per year.   After 2014 our cars designed t run on upt to 10% ethanol will be exposed to greater than 10% because congress "knows" that it will be OK.    I suggest we let market forces drive energy.  Gasoilne consumption is down between 2-3% this summer in the US due to the high price of fuel.  If fuel stays high, people will cut back more and prices will receed.  By the way,  what did you think of BIG Oil 7 years ago when they were not making hardly any money, gasoline in some parts of the country were less than $1/gal.   Remeber when you say big oil you are probably talking about yourself.  Do you own any mutual funds???  If so you are "BIG OIL".  Most non-national oil companies are owned by their shareholders.  SO look in a mirror...    Reply
  • commenter
    redbaron
    Aug 03 08:57 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    I have been involved in research on feed and grain products since 1964, and I give your review of the topic a 'B' on overall content and fairness (the article is not biased, IMHO).

    Where you fall short is buying into the concept of cellulosic ethanol, as that technology has not been developed, and may never be developed. If you had gone back to the 1970's, and looked at this subject then, you would have seen similar research projects on-going to convert rejected crop residue to ethanol, and those projects were not successful either, and eventually dropped. Developing the bugs to do the conversion, failed.

    I predict a similar outcome this time, and like you said, even if it can be developed, the costs are going to be huge. The crop residue from corn is one feedstock being proposed, as it currently is being just left in the field (another is switch grass). How much can one expend in the way of fuels and time in collecting and hauling these very nearly wothless 'crops'? For instance, could one spend days collecting these so-called crops, then hauling them hundreds of miles to a processing plant? The economics simply do not work out, and that is if the process can be developed. I would add, if it could have been developed, after decades of work, it would have already be available. And that does not address your point of the lesser energy output from ethanol, which is a major problem.

    Why not just take the subsidy off ethanol and see what happens? If it such a great idea, it will fly on it's own. At the same time, take off the tarriff on imported ethanol, and let Brazilian ethanol come into this country without the 51 cent tax, which would allow it to compete as well. One wouldn't have to completely repeal the original mandate, just take those two steps and give it a chance to survive on it's own. If it works, leave it in. We are going to need all the energy we can get. And if it doesn't work, it will die a silent death, and no one will even notice.     Reply
  • commenter
    energy
    master
    Aug 03 08:36 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    You sure don't know what you are talking about.

    Studies by Argonne Laoratories contnue to show the benefit of Ethanol.

    THE COEA has old Congess that the availability of Ethanol , priced at 40 cpg below gasoline is helping to stop gasoline from going up at least 30 cpg saving the US consumer about $ 40 billion per year.We are only spending $ 5 biilion a year on the subsidy; so we are getting a great return

    Ethanol has taken 7 % of the market away from the oil bandits and they hate the product.The great Dupont has formed a J/V with the best enzyme company--Danisco-- in the world and are rapidly developing cellulosic based technology that will start operations in late 2009. Dupont, Danisco and the state of Tennese have committed $170 to the venture.

    Reply
  • commenter
    tjschoenlein
    Aug 01 03:17 AM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    user155010.. and other folks who think Jim Rodgers is great?
    He has called for Frannie & Freddy to fail-uh should fail.., complaining that everyone has committed theft, fraud,etc. When ask by the interviewer if he was short these stocks he said of course. He stated yes he was making money being short but who cared if he was making money?? After all he said, "I have to pay taxes on it".. right!!
    He spends his TV time bad mouthing the stocks so he can make his money short..a nice ethical guy.
    just my view..     Reply
  • commenter
    SA Editor
    Eli Hoffmann
    Jul 31 12:55 PM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    JennH1310,

    Our bad. Thanks - it's been corrected.     Reply
  • commenter
    JennH1310
    Jul 31 12:42 PM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    ALKS does not report today after the close as you have listed.... They report on 8-6-08... Scared me... Reply
  • commenter
    heartdoc
    Jul 31 09:19 AM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    One of the best sources for financial information.
    I love it
    fss     Reply
  • commenter
    RightinSanFr
    ancisco
    Jul 31 09:06 AM
    My Website
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    Eli keeps getting better. Between the headline news, the overnight foreign markets, the earnings reports, and the day's economic calendar, what more material could a reader want? One hopes that Eli doesn't get dragged into the trap of doing a lot of analysis. Reply
  • commenter
    mrbill for V
    Jul 31 07:25 AM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    Eli, great to see you i was wondering who the editor was, let's
    hear from you more often.     Reply
  • commenter
    Grain
    Analyst
    Jul 04 11:56 PM
    Ethanol Is Dead: How You Can Still Profit From It [view article]
    You need to look at the numbers again. On June 30th, it was confirmed there will be another 100 million bushels of corn added to the carryout. And you you not overlook 95/96 when the caryout was extreemly low. Stocks below WWII will not happen. There is less than 3 months left in the crop year. Next year I predict the carryout will be under 700 million bushels, but my crop year nearby futures high was established two weeks ago. Note world less US corn and minor course grain production will be up in 2008-09, thus allowing the rest of the worls less dependent on US corn exports, and a rising US $ will help curb exports. Corn for ethanol is forecated to be less than what the USDA forecasts. Look for USDA to lower corn for ethanol usage by 50 and 100 million bushels, resp. on July 11.

    And finally, eveyone has thier own metod on calculating margins. Mine for a dry mill plant for the OH, IL, IN, IA, NE, and SD areas are still positive, so why would any plant not take advantage of this, reagardless of the size of the plant.     Reply

Trading Center


Loading...
Symbols:
Authors:
Quick Links: