Posted
7/29/2005 05:55:00 PM
by Douglas
Local ethanol plant gives farmers something (local) to do with their farm
subsidy checks. Kim Ames has weathered good times and bad on the 4,000 acres his family has farmed for three generations.
He hopes a $125 million ethanol plant being built near his central Indiana farm tips the scales in favor of the good, giving him a local buyer for half the 300,000 bushels of corn he produces each year.
"I think it's good," he said. "We've always been exporting our corn somewhere. Now we'll be doing something (local) with it."
The Putnam Ethanol plant being built in Cloverdale, about 40 miles west of Indianapolis, is one of dozens of ethanol plants being developed across the country as part of a national push toward alternative fuels.
What an incredible waste of money. The government gives money to farmers to raise a crop that is converted into fuel, yet the plant where it's created doesn't even create enough energy to run
its own plant!At what point in the discourse of "alternative energy" are we going to discredit totally impractical and infeasible sources, such as ethanol, pixie dust, and magic beans?