Here's an idea. Why don't we kill the sugar tariff, reduce the cost of sugar and import sugar for

[JohnWxy]

ethanol production. The World market price for sugar (Oct 2007) was about 9.5 cents per pound. The retail price of sugar in the U.S. was 52 cent per pound for 2006-07 (I tried to get more current data but apparently the USDA site that has this info is inaccessible http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/sugar/data.htm ) so perhaps a comparable wholesale price would have been 26 cents per pound or about 2.5 times higher than the World price.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/041905/opi_20050419004.shtml

Meanwhile, our tariffs keep the cost of sugar for U.S. consumers at about 2.5 times the world, free-market price, which transfers some $2.5 billion annually from consumers to sugar producers. And what national purpose involving security of economic growth does that serve?

{edit} The sugar tariff is why we have so much corn syrup for sweeteners in so many products.

If we could import sugar at the world price we could use it as the raw material for making ethanol and it seems pretty obvious that the ethanol production would expand even faster with a cheaper product. Think of the impact on gasoline prices if ethanol became 10% or more of the fuel supply?

[angrycarpenter]

1. some of the poorest people on earth

work on sugar plantations. They are virtual slaves. Some of them have even been kidnapped and are paid nothing.

I do not want cheap fuel at the price of enslaved orphan children working in cane fields eating nothing but sugarcane to survive, there has to be a better way.

[JohnWxy]

4. Can you say "Depression" - that's what we will have if oil stays this high. and when our economy

tanks so will the rest of the world's.

Many of the people working in the cane fields in the U.S. are brought here from Latin America and live in very poor slave-like conditions. These people are from the same parts of the world we would import the sugar from. If we imported the sugar from their home countries maybe they would find work there (not necessarily in the cane fields - the extra demand for sugar would have a ripple effect on their economies) and they would at least be living at home with their families.

If sugar wasn't produced in the U.S. those growers would find something else to grow - there is a big demand for food, or haven't you heard.

[angrycarpenter]

10. I lived near the sugar fields of south florida

The field workers are paid criminally low wages and treated like a disposable resource. while the owners live on Palm Beach in the lap of luxury.

The Sugar growers in other parts of the world are much worse. If we were to start buying mass quantities from them, not one penny would trickle down to anyone. It would only serve to make them much richer tyrants.


I am all for getting rid of the subsidies for millionaire sugar growers but simply buying cheap foreign sugar without holding those growers to something resembling human decency will only make things worse for workers.
I also think more demand for sugar will put even more third world land into sugar production rather than food.

Ethanol is not the answer. It takes a lot of energy to just produce it and that means more CO2 into our atmosphere. We need to reduce our sugar use just as much as our fuel use.

[JohnWxy]

21. Then get prepared for a major depression that will take years to get out of.

As oil continues its rise it's inevitable. We will be in a depression long before plug-ins will make any appreciable impact on the demand for gasoline. It will take about before plug-ins will reduce gasoline demand by roughly 10%. That's assuming an initial sales of 200,000, for all manufacturers and annual sales growth of 20% and 100 mpg for the plug-ins at the start and 433 mpg at the end of the 20 yrs)(you can enter these numbers at in the spreadsheet here). Both very strong numbers when you consider the cost of this technology(Volt estimated by GM CEO to be priced somewhere from $30K to $45K) and that we will be in a depression long before the 20 years passes because of the rise of gas prices.

If we imported sugar at the international free market price we could grow ethanol supply to that fraction (10%) of the transportation fuel supply in perhaps three to five years. Beyond that we could grow the ethanol industry larger with cheaper ethanol using sugar than we could making it from corn. The ethanol being cheaper would have a more potent impact in terms of restraining and eventually bringing gas prices to a stop or perhaps, bringing them down. Using sugar as the raw material we could probably grow the ethanol supply to 20% or maybe 30% or more of the total gasoline supply. That would certainly bring gas prices down.

Without this, depression - and we will take the rest of the world with us. Being in a depression won't help the adoption of plug-in hybrids (very expensive to start with) as much fewer people will being buying them (or any new cars) - (by the way when we go into the depression how many of our domestic auto companies will survive 2? 1? 0? While in this depression the Government will have to fund programs to feed people who don't have work. The government will therefor be in less of a postion to provide the tax rebate incentives plug-in technology will require to get started.

It may be appealing to put your head in the sand but action will be required to deal with this energy crisis or we will see a much bigger economic and social disaster. Will this help the people you are talking about.

You think by refusing to import the sugar you are going to change things in the countries where sugar cane is grown? think again. You say buying more sugar from them will just make matters worse. That is an assertion but not a truth. IT's not an absolute that us buying sugar from them instead of somebody else will make matters worse.

Inaction regarding the energy crisis is not a rationally defensible position. IF you want to talk about the United States or the world taking some action to improve the lot of people in certain countries that's certainly a worthy objective (but how would we go about doing that, invade and rebuild an entire society? I think we've tried that one.), but don't pretend not taking action to avoid the coming energy induced world-wide depression is how to help these people.

[global1]

7. Tobaccohol.......nt

[Prophet 451]

2. Because...

...then you'd devestate those parts of the world where sugar is a major export crop (i.e. parts of Africa and much of the Carribean) so while it's logistically do-able, it has very nasty ethical repercussions. What would work better is splitting the difference between the US and world prices. For example, let's say most of the world pays 10 cents a pound and the US currently pays 25 cents. Work out a middle ground (say, 15 cents) and that reduces US prices without adversely impacting the sugar exporting nations.

I don't know if there are any parts of the US which produce sugar but if there are, it would hit them hard as well.

Finally, ethanol isn't a sustainable replacement. It's a stopgap.

[SharonAnn]

3. If we permitted imported sugar at world prices, exporting nations would win and so would we.

Right now, they effectively can't import to here because of the added duties we put on sugar, making the price high.

ADM and others promote the high sugar subsidies and tariffs so that high-fructose corn syrup (which they manufacture) seems reasonable in price. If we had affordable sugar, high-fructose corn syrup would either drop in price or disappear.

And, our U. S. sugar barons in Florida are Cuban "gusanos", former Batista supporters who are now right-wing Republicans.

So, lowering our prices would permit imports, which would benefit exporting nations. And, it would benefit us because we would have access to more affordable sugar. Also, we would significantly reduce the use of unhealthy high-fructose corn syrup and the corn could be used for animal feed or ethanol.

[Prophet 451]

5. Works in theory

Look, I'm not an economist, I have only a hazy idea how this stuff works but from observation, it seems that whenever you remove a tariff, the person who takes a hit is the person who's already living on the edge.

If you say this one would be different and work, fine, I believe you but the last point I made still stands, ethanol is nothing more than a stopgap that lets us put off the day when we have to start searching for sustainable forms of energy.

[JohnWxy]

6. YEah, let's do nothing while we wait 20 years for plug-ins to make an appreciable dent in the gas

demand.

Sustainable??? You plant a crop, corn, or cane or sweet sorghum (and later switchgrass). You harvest it and it's made into ethanol. THen you plant the crop again, harvest again and get ethanol ,,, again. That's what renewable means.

It will take http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x160775"> 20 years for plug-ins to make an appreciable impact on gasoline demand. Do you seriously think we can do fucking nothing for that long? IF gasoline stays at these prices for very long were going to experience a depression and when our economy tanks we will take the world's down with us.

Get real, we can't wait a generation to produce some results.


on edit link (above)was fixed.

[IrateCitizen]

12. Is that all agriculture is to you???

Sustainable??? You plant a crop, corn, or cane or sweet sorghum (and later switchgrass). You harvest it and it's made into ethanol. THen you plant the crop again, harvest again and get ethanol ,,, again. That's what renewable means.

This is not a sustainable agricultural system, because it is based on a single crop (or narrow range of crops). Where is the biological diversity? I'm a big believer in Wendell Berry's philosophy -- and that of old-school farmers -- that the only sustainable agriculture is that which mimics natural ecosystems, because agriculture is so incredibly dependent upon the ecosystem. A system based on monoculture, OTOH, is one that runs in the other direction.

Monoculture is already wreaking havoc on the environment -- for proof, just look to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico each year the size of NJ that is the result of fertilizer runoff down the Mississippi. And what you seem to be proposing here is a form of monoculture, disproportionately dependent upon chemical and fossil fuel inputs to make up for increasingly depleted topsoil.

The problem of all of these "solutions" that are based upon using this crop or that crop to maintain our current lifestyle is that NONE of them are truly sustainable. They ALL will result in significant destruction of natural ecosystems -- as well as the long term health of existing agricultural land.

Crises such as these demand that we ask the most radical questions and challenge our most basic assumptions. One of these, I believe, is that we examine the most basic elements of the modern economy and the rationalizations that have been constructed to justify it.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Everybody forgets about agriculture

It's easy to overlook, but we'd better learn to pay attention to it.

We have reduced the nutrients in soil by over half, and a lot of what is there comes from petrochemical-source amendments like ammonium nitrate. The macronutrients are not the only problem, either -- micronutrients, generally minerals, are greatly depleted in many agricultural areas. Plants that are starved for essential metals will take up anything with similar properties, like lead, mercury, uranium, and cadmium, all of which are present in the atmosphere courtesy of coal combustion. There is even still some tetraethyl lead in the ecosystem from the lead-enriched gasoline that hasn't been used for 30 years or more.

Biofuels do have potential, but mainly as survival energy, and preferably for use in the same agricultural areas from which they came. If it was just a matter of replacing nitrogen, we could rotate planting beans and lace the soil with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. But our agricultural system has been hard on the soils of every productive area.

Between that, the monoculture you pointed out, and other boondoggles like untested transgenic plants, we are not looking at a fat future.

Of course, most Americans (North) and Europeans (West) will still have plenty to eat. We can watch the news on the kitchen TV while we eat dinner.

--p!

[JohnWxy]

16. use crop rotation like most farmers do. The point is crops are a renewable source of energy. unlike

petroleum of which we have a finite supply.

[poopfuel]

24. for more on all this and numerous alternative crops

including cattails, pimelon, buffalo gourd, mesquite pods, and so on, tune in tonight to
COAST TO COAST AM with GEORGE NOORY hosting DAVID BLUME, author of "Alcohol Can Be a Gas!...."
who will set matters straight on alcohol fuels and oil company misbehavior.

If it's too late at night, listen on the web the next day
coasttocoastam.com

[JohnWxy]

25. Thanks for reminder!

on edit: WOW. that shows on in the middle of the night!

[zbdent]

8. I have to laugh when I think of how some South American country uses sugar

to replace their oil dependency (Venezuela?) ...

Reminds me of something I heard in Hawaii ... a developer wanted to clear land of all the "vegetation", so he could build ... so he set fire to the vegetation ...

however, the "vegetation" was sugar cane ... and he had just unwittingly re-planted it, making it grow even more ...

[Fledermaus]

9. Sugar not fit for human consumption can/is imported @ 9.5 cents per pound!

EFuel100-FM (Sugar with ethanol yeast included)

The EFuel100-FM is the highest quality sugar feedstock for use with your MicroFueler and insures the utmost efficiency in operation and output. The EFuel100-FM is pre-mixed with yeast, so there is no need to combine anything with the sugar to achieve optimal ethanol production. The EFuel100-FM comes in convenient 50lb bags and is available from multiple outlets that will deliver to your door. (Coming late 2008.) Note: EFuel100-FM is unfit for human consumption.
http://www.efuel100.com/t-product.aspx

[JohnWxy]

18. That's the basic way around the sugar tariff - mix it with something else and then sift out the

other stuff (not in the case you have cited of course, but for those who actually want the sugar unadulterated) and you've got your sugar at (approximately) world market prices.

NOnetheless, many companies which want sugar (and not corn syrup) to sweeten their product are leaving the U.S.

http://hotdocs.usitc.gov/docs/pubs/103/pub3928.pdf

"Also, the growth in U.S. imports of SCPs(Sugar Containing Products), caused in part by the shift of
U.S. confectionery production facilities to foreign locations, has reduced U.S. sugar
demand."

I like your comment, but if we could end the sugar tariff and import sugar freely we could make ethanol cheaper and grow the ethanol industry much faster and reduce our imports of petroleum that much faster and have a healthy impact on the price of gasoline.

I can't think of any sensible argument againsst it. If we don't want a depression we are going to have to do something to reduce our use of gasoline (in additon to conservation and efficiency improvements) that won't take 15 to 20 years to have an appreciable affect.

However, you have shown a way around the import tariff and maybe someone will take advantage of this approach on an industrial scale and start supplying much more and ethanol and probably at a lower price too.

[lfairban]

19. Good link!

The company says that it can produce 100% ethanol for as little as $1/gal. At that price, everyone should buy one even though they cost $10,000.

If a car goes 100,000 miles and gets 20 mpg it will use 5,000 gallons of fuel. At $4/gal, that is $20,000. If you can substitute ethanol at $1/gal., it would cost only $5,000 for a savings of $15,000. If the car is driven 12,000 per year, which is about average, it would take 8 years to drive 100,000 miles. In this amount of time, the unit will have paid for itself and more. You would be $5000 ahead!

[JohnWxy]

20. and that's without inflation of the gasoline price!

[JohnWxy]

23. $1.00 a gallon. And at a larger scale it would be even less. But just use $1.00 a gallon -

If we could import sugar and grow the ethanol supply much faster and farther than we could on corn Imagine ethanol replacing gas at $1.00 a gallon. What an impact that would be on gasoline prices. We might even be able to avert the coming depression.

go to www.congress.org to tell your senators and representatives we need to be able to import sugar at the free market price and start really growing the ethanol supply.

Then, when Ford comes out with their ethanol enabled direct injection engine (which gets 25% to 30% better gas mileage - using 5% ethanol85) in 2010-2011 we could really start having an impact on gasoline demand.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. More like $2.40 a gallon

That site say it takes 10 to 14 lbs of sugar to produce a gallon of ethanol. I'd say 13 at minimum, because the basic chemical equation of fermentation of carbohydrate to ethanol and carbon dioxide is

C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH + 2 CO2

the molecular weights of those are

180 -> 92 + 88

ie you basically get half the weight of ethanol as you had of carbohydrate.

Ethanol weighs 789 kg per cubic metre, which works out at 6.6 lb per US gallon

So you need about 13 lb of sugar for 1 gallon of ethanol

Current New York No. 11 raw sugar price (in a Caribbean port) is 13.83 cent a pound - round it up to say 16 cents to allow for delivery costs to where you are in the US (that works out at about $50 a ton, for the delivery). So that 16 cent * 13 = $2.08 per gallon - but that site also point out you need 3 kWh of electricity to distil 1 gallon, at 10.24 cents per kWh US average for residential in Feb 08, you're basically up to $2.40 per gallon. Still cheaper than $4, of course, but you might also want to think what would happen to world sugar prices if people did try to produce a significant amount of ethanol for the US from it.

It looks to me as if that "$1 per gallon" comes from their dubious sounding carbon credit coupon program. I would be highly wary of schemes that are promising to get you sugar for a special price (one third of the actual price?) because of some carbon trading scheme.

[lfairban]

27. There goes my $5000 bucks!

That is a very good analysis. I didn't look at the the company web site as thoroughly as you did.

I guess there was a touch of sarcasm in my previous post. At $2.00/gal. you would break even at 100Kmiles, so it would take you about 120Kmiles and 10 years at $2.40?

And they are getting a special price on the sugar because of the reduced green house gasses when you use ethanol rather than gasoline. What is that molecule on the right hand side of the equation next to the EtOH? Did they include it in the estimate of the green house gas reduction?

I am not so sure about these guys, their site includes videos that imply that ethanol production for fuel was the real target of Prohibition. I doubt that because as I recall the Prohibition amendment specified beverage production and excluded fuel.

I found a Wikipedia article that says that cellulose ethanol is preferable to corn or sugar.

The part about recovering Alcohol from discarded beverage spirits reminded me of Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. The other molecule on the right is carbon dioxide

which you'll always get in fermentation - the bubbles in beer or champagne, for instance. Yes, they do acknowledge that carbon dioxide is produced at that point - taking the growth, fermentation cycle and combustion cycle as a whole, it's just like the plant taking some CO2 in, and then releasing it again. See Fledermaus's post below for a bit about 'inedible sugar', which may have a lower price.

A process that can handle cellulose and produce ethanol would be great, because then you get to use the vast majority of any plant. I'm sure many people are working on one now.

[lfairban]

31. I C

So, if I get one of these incredible $10K machines and instead of venting the CO2 to the atmosphere, I pipe it to a greenhouse that contains 420 plants in various stages of growth, the plants will grow fast and get bigger than without the CO2.

With an improvement in plant growth of only 6%, the machine should pay for itself in only 6-8 months!

:evilgrin:

:party:

[JohnWxy]

37. very clever! Make that man a project leader.

BTW the links on you homepage are very interesting! Halliburton: &%$&%%!!

[poopfuel]

38. yes ADM has done that sort of thing

It's a closed system but apparently once the oil company exec took over ADM, she ended all the work in this field. Thanks, oh Chevron loyalist CEO!

It's all in Dave's book, except for the part about the CEO. Back then, it was Andreas and he was very involved in funneling co2 into greenhouses to produce multiple heads of lettuces in shorter amounts of time.

[JohnWxy]

39. thanks. Jeez, the oil industry has shown boundless energy in efforts to kill off any competition.

[JohnWxy]

36. Absolutely, cellulosic ethanol is better and many smart people are working on making this a

practical reality. It's estimated to be about 5 yrs away. Of course, it will take 10-15 years build it up to 5% to 7% (I would like this to be faster and it could be faster but people being people and Republicans being around...)... so what do we do in the meantime?? nothing at all?

I don't think so. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x164765#164910

" One thing the OECD report discretely did not go into was the reduction in the price of oil and gas due to biofuels meeting some of the demand for transportation fuel. estimates vary and depend upon whose estimate of price-demand elasticity for oil you are using but a Merrill Lynch commodity strategist Francisco Blanch estimated increased ethanol production cut the cost of gasoline by 15% or an additonal $.60 per gallon or $22 per barrel (at the peak price). OF course, that additional cost would have affected food prices too.

And how significant is 15%? well, I hate to contemplate this but, if gas tries to go to $5.00 next summer (or the next)that 15% changes $5.00 a gallon to $4.35 a gallon. WHat's the difference between $5.00 and $4.35? well, yes $.65 but more importantly it's also the difference between going into a depression and not going into a depression. If gas gets to $5.00 a gallon the odds of going into a depression get uncomfortably high. (I don't even like talking about this but it's better to not ignore the possibility)."


BTW I did read Fledermaus comment on inedible sugar WITH GREAT INTEREST. I have been emailing various people about importing sugar to rapidly boost ethanol production and used that information.

[JohnWxy]

32. cellulosic ethanol is not economically viable yet. Hopefully, there are those who say in 5 to 6 yrs

it will be practical (right now the cost of enzymes to breakdown the cellulose into simple sugars is too high. They are working on bringing these costs down).

making ethanol from sugar is efficient and cheaper than making gasoline. As one of the links I gave in my OP said the U.S. price for sugar is 2.5 times the free market price around the world. The price for sugar in US is artificially high because of the sugar tariff. HOwever, if you import sugar mixed with other substances it's not considered sugar as far as the tariff goes and the example given reflects the 'real world' price of sugar.


The important point here is if we made ethanol from sugar (imported at world market price) we coudl grow the supply of ethanol much faster, it would be cheaper than it now is and we could impact the skyrocketing price of gasoline much quicker. We could probably grow the supply of ethanol by 2 to 3 times in 4 to 5 years and that would get us to about 10% of the supply of transportation fuel supplied as ethanol. This would have a very healthy affect on the price of gas. Not to mention bring down GHGs.

[Fledermaus]

28. Inedible surgar costs much less...less than 9 cents/lb in mexico.

Some claim 3 cents per pound.

Edible sugar is trade protected and will cost more.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. I'm not sure what 'trade protected' is

I did pick the international sugar price that is before any duty is paid, as opposed to the "New York No. 14" sugar price, which is "US-grown (or foreign origin with duty paid by deliverer) raw cane sugar at one of five U.S. refinery ports". So the No. 5 price is the international market price. If it's 'waste' sugar that has accidentally become contaminated, or less care is taken in the refining process (as opposed to something that's had some thing added so that it can't get round the import duty), then a lower price might make some sense, I suppose.

Here's the current price of ethanol in Brazil:

Between June 23rd and 27th, the CEPEA/ESALQ Index for the hydrated (Sao Paulo state) averaged 0.7231 real or 0.4517 dollar per liter (excluding taxes), increasing 6.76 percent in Real over the previous week. For the anhydrous, the raise was of 6.51 percent in Real, at 0.8207 real or 0.5126 dollar per liter (excluding taxes).

http://www.brazilintl.com/agnews/agnews_sugarcane.htm

0.5126 per litre is .5126 * 3.78 = $1.94 per US gallon.

[JohnWxy]

34. YOU lost me. You were talking about the price of sugar and then quoted the price of ethanol?

You see, Sugar and ethanol are two different things.

[JohnWxy]

35. Just to review: domestic price of sugar is 2 to 2.5 times the World market price of sugar.

to put that in perspective: 2 x $1.94 = $3.88. and 2.5 x $1.94 = $4.85

Now do you get the picture???

[JohnWxy]

33. thank you for this info!

[RC]

11. The Red River Valley (ND-MN) grows $10 of millions worth of sugar beets.

But we have a worse problem: Biotech Critics Challenging Monsanto GMO Sugar Beet

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/23/6563/

KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Opponents of biotech crops said on Wednesday they were filing a lawsuit to challenge the USDA’s deregulation of Monsanto Co’s genetically engineered sugar beet because of fears of “biological contamination” and other harm to the environment.0123 02

The Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club and two organic seed groups said the lawsuit involved the United States Department of Agriculture’s approval of Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant sugar beet, which is engineered to withstand treatment of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

The “Roundup Ready” sugar beets are slated to be grown on a commercial scale for the first time in the United States this year, the groups said.

[JohnWxy]

17. another good argument for killing the sugar tariff. thank you!

[NNadir]

14. Concern about urinary carcinogens, maybe?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/16/105448/03">Those Happy Sugarcane Workers In Brazil: The Car Culture and Urinary Carcinogens.

Oh, wait a second. I forgot that I was talking to a member of the car cult.

Never mind. Let's just kill at will. Our cars are sacred.

[madokie]

15. this is sorta off topic but do you remember back when C&H sugar

was from Cuba and Hawaii. This was pre-Castro days.

[Name removed]

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