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| Pimentel has been in the forefront against ethanol basing his energy balance on doubling inputs charging farmer education, seed, and other production costs against the cost of ethanol production while also charging the cash price paid to the farmer by the ethanol plant, and then he's carefully based his erroneous computations on the earliest technology ignoring improvements in efficiency.
I expect no better of him in this area, basing farm fuel efficiency on a gas IH hydrostat tractor (less fuel efficient than a gas 4020 which is often used as the epitome of bad fuel economy) or broken down mules. Farming with horses and mules was really bad at energy efficiency using a third of the crop produced to feed and maintain the work animals.
Today I expect the total farm fuel use costs less than 5% of the crop, probably more like 2%. And as we adopt notill practices that consumption goes down. There is a point where adding fuel consumption can increase crop production way more than the increased fuel cost. And that depends on soil conditions, weather, and commodity prices for both fuel and crops.
Pimentel is the worlds worst advocate for energy efficiency, a puppet of big oil.
Gerald J. | |
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how much fuel-energy could we save-conserve??
