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Corey Deitz
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I live out in the country on a few acres of land. It’s remote enough
that deer still feel comfortable lounging in my woods and often creep into
my front yard just feet away from the doorbell.
Every day, I toss a about a pound-and-a-half of dried corn onto a
feeding spot in my backyard which the deer have become accustomed to
visiting. It’s within close range from my kitchen window and I love to
watch them quietly ascend the slope and get their meal.
I’ve been providing corn to the deer for the past two years, ever
since I moved into this home, and over the last year in particular the price
of a 40-pound bag of corn has almost doubled.
Why? Because in order to be greener, the liberals lobbied to turn a
lot of our corn into ethanol so we could mix it in with our gasoline.
Usually, if you can buy it, the mix is 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline.
Unfortunately, the subsidies coughed up for fuel blenders and ethanol
refineries have a regrettable side effect: it drives the price of corn up.
So look: if I have to pay higher prices for corn just to appease the
proponents of bio-fuels I want something in return. I want my gas to
smell like popcorn. And not just that crappy microwave popcorn which
always yields a bunch of burnt kernels. I want the smell of theater
popcorn with extra butter that’s been layered in by some bored teenager
whose face looks like a well-drilled Oklahoma oil field. Got it? Freshly
popped, buttery, theater popcorn.
By the way, we used to call this stuff “gasohol” but that term
wasn’t sexy enough so now a lot of folks refer to it as “E10 Unleaded”.
To me it’s simply “the cheap stuff “.
Look: you can make ethanol out of a whole lot of things like sugar
cane, sugar beets, sorghum, switchgrass, barley, sweet potatoes, wheat,
cotton, and many more plants. As far as efficiency of crop versus yield
and greenhouse gas savings, the miscanthus (native to Africa and Asia)
and switchgrass (from the North American prairie) pack a lot more punch
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