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cowpunk12
01-19-2011, 08:34 AM
I want farming in this country to continue. My extended family is a farming one. I also feel safer knowing that we produce our own food. I oppose farm subsidies as a libertarian, but there's another reason. The amount of corn, the most subsidized crop, that we grow in this country is ridiculous. My farming family lives in the deep South, and while cotton and peanuts are the main crops, there is still plenty of corn grown down there. Why? Corn can be grown in pretty much any arable land. Let the colder climates in Iowa, Nebraska, etc. grow our corn. That's all the corn we need. But we subsidize it, and use it for too many things. Ethanol is a major culprit. We all know that we only use corn ethanol as a reason for handouts and to please the dumber environmentalists. In Southern Georgia, Eastern Carolina, Southern Alabama, Southern Arkansas, Eastern Texas, and all of Florida and Louisiana, what we ought to be growing is sugarcane, not to mention a removal of that import tax. That 10% corn ethanol in your gasoline takes as much energy to make as it actually provides. That is not so with sugarcane, and in Brazil it is 25% of your fuel. In the cars we have now, sugarcane ethanol still gets you less mpg than gasoline, but it has a higher octane rating, meaning that a change in the engine would eliminate the discrepency. Sugarcane is the future.

Lucille
01-19-2011, 10:24 AM
Food should never be used for fuel. It's evil.

Industrial Hemp should be the future.



“Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there’s nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create diesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons. It’s the worst way in the world to try to develop an alternative fuel.” - Ron Paul (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-how-many-senators-does-it-take-screw-taxpayer)

The combination of an asinine ethanol policy and the loosest monetary policy in the history of mankind are combining to kill poor people across the globe.

Koz
01-19-2011, 10:36 AM
Cotton is more subsidized than corn is. Cotton base is ridiculous.

You are correct, there is no net gain in corn etanol. 1 unit of energy goes in and 1 unit of energy comes out, whereas in sugar cane you get 8 units of energy for every unit you put in. My family has famers as well, about 2000 acres worth. Subsidies should be eliminated. My father-in-law gets cotton subsidies on land that hasn't grown cotton for 10 years. He grows rice on it.

Suzu
01-19-2011, 10:43 AM
Food should never be used for fuel. It's evil.

Industrial Hemp should be the future.

Sugar is not food, it's poison.

Hemp is food, but you want to see it used for fuel?

HOLLYWOOD
01-19-2011, 10:50 AM
Plow under the corn and replace it with HEMP. The Taxpayers save $100's of Billions AND a product that has a variety of uses.

fisharmor
01-19-2011, 12:48 PM
Plow under the corn and replace it with HEMP. The Taxpayers save $100's of Billions AND a product that has a variety of uses.

Think about all the cultivars that would be available if the market was able to handle this... someone would long ago have figured out how to cross sativa with indica, and get a bunch of industrially important fibers out of it and sell dank for $10 an ounce at thousands of percent profit, as an afterthought.

dannno
01-19-2011, 01:01 PM
Sugar is not food, it's poison.

Hemp is food, but you want to see it used for fuel?

HFCS is poison, sugar should be used in moderation, but ya, hempseed is the most nutritious food on the planet.. but hemp can be grown sooo easily with little or no fertilizer in nearly any condition, it requires very little care, I think it can be grown for all sorts of uses if they would let people do it without restriction.

dannno
01-19-2011, 01:05 PM
Think about all the cultivars that would be available if the market was able to handle this... someone would long ago have figured out how to cross sativa with indica, and get a bunch of industrially important fibers out of it and sell dank for $10 an ounce at thousands of percent profit, as an afterthought.

There are thousands of indica x sativa crosses.

And there are also some pretty dank sativas (hemp is a non-dank sativa), but haze, Acapulco gold, Maui wowie, durban poison, thai, all those are sativa (or mostly sativa) strains.

dannno
01-19-2011, 01:08 PM
You could grow dank sativas, harvest the buds and process the stalks for fiber, but you wouldn't get the seeds, which I BELIEVE is where you would get the oils (and food)..

So if you want oils/food then you'd want to be producing it for that. You could still use the buds to make hash or edibles, but seed free is preferred for smoking, and is much stronger. If you want dank bud, then you want to kill off all the males so the females don't produce seeds.. but then you wouldn't get the food, and I don't think you'd get a lot of the oils, except that which is in the bud that will be smoked, and I don't think that's the same kind of oils..

The thing is, if they started growing hemp everywhere, it would be very difficult to grow good bud unless you did it miles away or indoor greenhouse with some good air filtration.

amy31416
01-19-2011, 01:20 PM
Sugar isn't poison. Without it, there'd be very little life on Earth.

Suzu
01-19-2011, 01:23 PM
Sugar isn't poison. Without it, there'd be very little life on Earth.

I was referring to sucrose. Refined white sugar. It is as damaging and addictive as cocaine and heroin.

Lucille
01-19-2011, 01:30 PM
HFCS is poison, sugar should be used in moderation, but ya, hempseed is the most nutritious food on the planet.. but hemp can be grown sooo easily with little or no fertilizer in nearly any condition, it requires very little care, I think it can be grown for all sorts of uses if they would let people do it without restriction.

Thank you.

Ninja Homer
01-19-2011, 01:43 PM
Hemp can also replace all plastic and a hell of a lot of steel:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxlj6fgQ-ZU