With all the talk about dependence on foreign oil, surplus in the farming industry and desires to balance the budget, you would think that the powers at be would have put 2 and 2 together and planned America's recovery. The recovery I'm talking about is the one that would result if all gasoline would contain 10% domestically produced ethanol, that is fuel from corn. According to the 1995 Almanac, approximately 40 billion gallons of gasoline are burned each year in this country, 10% of this is 4 billion gallons. Translated to dollars its $4,000,000,000/yr. or $333,333,333/month or $11,000,000/day or approximately $1/2 million/hour 24 hours a day.

One half million dollars per hour may not seem like much to the big business or big government, but to us, it amounts to about 200,000 jobs @ $10.00/hr. that can be in this country rather than in the country we import oil from. One hundred fifty thousand jobs would go a long way to offset unemployment nation wide.

Now that your really stirred up, lets talk about how it's done:

1. A National Ethanol policy must be established to create market for ethanol and encourage its use.

2. Ethanol production barriers must be dropped, change ATF regulations.

4. Establish informational services to help people learn about ethanol and its uses.

5. Continue investment and use incentives.

6. Use ethanol production to offset only import oils so as not to harm the domestic oil industry.

All this will help us keep our energy independence and our farming industry strong by producing our own food and fuel.

On a large scale the following scenario could be in our future:

Corn is produced at about 65 bushels per acre, if farm prices were stable a bushel of corn would sell for $2.50/Bu. This would allow the farmer to make a living. Either a farmer, a coop, or an entrepreneur would buy the corn at harvest and store it for year round production. Based on 1000 acres, 65,000 bushels of corn would yield a price of $162,500. Each bushel can yield 2.5 gallons of pure ethanol which is 162,500 gallons of ethanol from 1000 acres. At 1.00/gallons the cost versus selling price would be offset. No one is in the market to break even, except maybe the farmer, who makes his profit on the grain. But wait, what is left over after the ethanol is produced. For each bushel of corn converted to ethanol, 17 lb. of high protein food is produced.

When ethanol is produced from corn or other grain, most of the protein in the original food remains after the process. In a nut shell, the 8% protein in the corn becomes 24% protein Dried Distillers Grains (DDG). Lets feed this DDG to catfish. It is known that a catfish at optimum conditions will gain 1 pound of weight for each 2 pounds of high protein food eaten. This same 17 pound per bushel or 1,105,000 pound of DDG (1000 acre farm) can produce 500,000 pounds of fish. That's hi-protein farm raised low fat people food. What's that worth? Based on supermarket prices, that's $1,000,000. What's wrong with this picture, you take $162,500 worth of corn and you produce $162,500 worth of fuel and $1,000,000 worth of hi-protein human food. Well, for one thing catfish is produced only commercially in the South, thus the market is limited. Secondly there is pressure not to use a renewable fuel, namely ethanol. Thirdly there are misconceptions about ethanol concerning the environment and economics. Lastly, we have not yet said - enough is enough, lets do what made this country strong. It's not big business, not big government but its the people that make the difference.

As the ocean's fish are depleted, this source of fish could be the export of the future. If all the high protein food derived from the production of 4 billion gallons of ethanol was used to feed fish, over 13 billion pounds of fish could be produced. At 50 cents per pound, that's $6,500,000,000.00 per year. this could create another 300,000 jobs. And that's only the beginning, we import over $100,000,000 of oil per day.

What can we do:

Let your congressman or woman know that you want to see a national ethanol policy this year. Legislation is now being written that could drastically reduce farm subsidies. These are the methods used to deal with the surplus and keep farmers from going broke. With a national ethanol policy, farmer subsidies may no longer be necessary or could be reduced without drastic consequences to farmers.

Why should we do something:

If subsidies are cut and an ethanol policy is not passed the following scenario is apt to happen.

Farmer Jones has 1000 acres and grows corn, he makes a modest income and does not get any direct subsidy from the government. As long as corn sells for $2.50/bushel or more he makes enough to stay in business. He grosses $162,500 with expenses of over $100,000. After expenses he might net $40,000 per year. Since subsidy programs are gone, farmer Smith no longer is paid to leave his 1000 acres idle, he grows corn next year along with 20,000 others just like him. There are approximately 20,000,000 acres in the set aside and diversion programs. This action drives the price of corn down to $1.50/bushel since there are no longer any subsidies in place the price remains at this level. Now even though the expenses remain at $100,000 per year, the gross income drops to $97,500.

Farmer Jones, farmer Smith and 59,998 other farmers go broke. What do we do for food next year?

Can we take this chance? The answer is I hope is NO.

The agrafuel concept can keep this from happening and create 500,000 new jobs instead of costing 60,000 farmers their jobs. The total revenue generated from Agrafuel could soon top $20,000,000,000 annually and it doesn't have to stop there. That may not impress some, but in the immortal words of Senator Everett Dirksen, " a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon your talking real money".

For more information on this subject contact: E-Mail comments to:

The American Technology Exchange P O Box 150011 Tulsa, OK 74115 Thanks for your concern,

Joe T. Moore