Ethanol Produces Tons of Livestock Feed
America’s ethanol plants produced enough livestock feed last year to provide for all the cattle in the nation’s four largest feedlot states.
That is one of the findings in a new report from the Renewable Fuels Association on the role of the U.S. ethanol industry in food and feed production. According to their analysis, America’s ethanol producers delivered 23 million metric tons of livestock and poultry feed to the world last year, or nearly three times the amount of wheat, sorghum, barley and oats fed to U.S. livestock in the 2007/08 marketing year. That is roughly equivalent to the combined total amount of feed consumed by cattle on feed last year in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado – the nation’s four largest feedlot states.
Only two-thirds of every bushel of grain processed by an ethanol plant is actually used for fuel production. The remaining one-third of the bushel is enhanced and returned to the animal feed market, most often in the form of distillers grains, corn gluten feed and corn gluten meal.
“The livestock feed co-products of ethanol production are the best kept secret of this industry,” said RFA President Bob Dinneen. “The focus of the public has been on the industry’s production of fuel ethanol as a renewable alternative to imported oil. But the production of a high quality livestock feed is equally important. Our industry is truly in the business of producing both feed and fuel.”
The report backs up RFA’s new television spots that highlight ethanol production in Hereford, Texas – the beef capital of the world.
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SacramentoE85
It’s amazing to see the tremendous amount of livestock feed being generated by ethanol producers. Now, onto what’s even more important immediately:
There are over 7 million FFV’s on the road today that could be fueling up with millions of gallons of cheaper E85, but not enough pumps for them to make a dent. I bet the ethanol industry wishes it had combined its collective power to get more E85 pumps set up sooner, with this unexpected event driving up ethanol supplies just as many plants had hedged for $8 corn feedstock supply earlier this year. Let’s not dinker around with E15 and E20 for now (will be 2020 by the time EPA, CARB, UL, gov’t etc. gets the studies done and approval), and instead get E85 used by more FFV’s now!! Let’s do the math… One penny on 8 billion gallons of ethanol sold is $80 million that the ethanol industry could give away for free for fuel stations to put in E85 pumps (kind of like a soybean check off). That $80 million could convert at least 16,000 mid-grade fuel pumps to E85 (if $5,000 each to convert, which likely would be less). If each E85 pump sold 5,000 gallons of E85 per month (about 4,000 gallons of ethanol and on the low end for most stations), that would be 64 million gallons of ethanol consumed in one month alone–and over 750 million gallons in one year! That would certainly offload a big part of the oversupply that is occuring now. Also, if done for several years in a row, there would be 48,000 conversions for E85 pumps, and an additional total of 2.25 Billion Gallons of ethanol consumed by FFV’s!! But, would the ethanol plants pay a penny per gallon to make a dime per gallon (tighter supply leads to higher prices, and this seems feasible)? Only time will tell. So far most ethanol plants have focused solely on E10.
Oh yes, and while they are at it they can put in a whole bunch of blender pumps (not just E85 but also E20, E30, E50) as well. Then those with FFV’s can choose the blend that happens to make the most economic sense at the time, rather than either/or. If people with regular gasoline vehicles illegally (according to EPA) use these pumps so be it; they can already do it by filling up with 10 gallons of E10 and 5 gallons of E85, so what’s the difference? Dragging our feet on blender pumps is as detrimental as dragging our feet on E85 pumps has been. Logically, there’s more economic and environmental harm to this nation by dragging our feet on E85 and blender pumps than there is by allowing consumers their free choice of fuels!
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