.corn bubble
by
Charlie Bess
I was reading an article in CNNMoney.com about the current state of corn supply and demand. It made me reflect back on my agrarian background and the amount of time I spent in the field growing up and the skin cancer I’ll likely have someday to prove it. The farming profession is definitely the ultimate professional gambler. They have much at risk and so much outside their control.
It does worry me a bit, since Corn is not the best ethanol generation alternative, since it takes so much energy to produce and convert into ethanol. The current high demand could be undermined by other techniques. On the other hand, there is an industry that knows how to produce in volume across a wide cross section of the US today. A bird in the hand is worth two in the field. The ability to use other products like sugar, silage, or even purpose grown or waste cellulose to produce ethanol have less greenhouse gas impact, but need a different set of infrastructure to be produced. There have been numerous podcasts on NPR Science Friday and Scientific American on these alternatives.
The current IT industry focus on energy consumption, CPU utilization improvement through virtualization as well as reduced heat production and energy loss through new
