Where in the US could sugarcane be grown other than Hawaii?

[Horse with no Name]

I am taking complete exception to Bush signing an agreement with Brazil.
We need to cut foreign dependence of fuel.
I also take complete exception that the oil companies will be in charge of bringing ethanol into the country.

[leftofthedial]

1. Louisiana

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

21. That was my first thought a few months ago when I heard about Brazil and their use of

sugar cane. It would do wonders for the economy there.

[bigluckyfeet]

40. My Great Grandparents and Uncles

Had a sugarcane plantation outside of New Iberia,Louisiana.My grandmother and I would come home with a trunk full.

[cureautismnow]

2. Florida, too

Most sugarcane production in the United States occurs in Florida and Louisiana, and to a lesser extent in Hawaii and Texas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane

[Venus Dog]

3. Texas

around the Brazos area.

[rainy]

4. we shouldn't be growing food for fuel period.

[johnaries]

9. Ethanol can be made from many non-food crops. nt

[JDPriestly]

11. How right you are.

First, where are we going to grow it? How many trees are we going to cut down in Brazil or here to grow food for fuel?

Second, doesn't plowing soil and cultivating soil and growing crops on it deplete the soil?

Soil depletion and erosion were big topics when I was growing up. No one mentions them any more. But, climate change and soil depletion are factors that can contribute to the collapse of a civilization. See Jared Diamond's book, Collapse. http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670033379,00.html

[JDPriestly]

12. Dup.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

45. Why not.

Should we grow non-food for fuel?

[JDPriestly]

5. Transporting ethanol is the big catch with the stuff.

They are probably going to import the ethanol to the West Coast in tankers or something. We don't have much ethanol out here in California because we don't have corn fields much out here, and you can't transport ethanol through the oil pipelines.

Sorry, but ethanol is not the answer for California. Neither is nuclear energy because of the earthquakes.

Solar energy is the answer for California. The oil companies like ethanol because it is a product they can sell. They don't like solar energy because there is no product to sell.

[iamjoy]

8. Different Solutions For Different States

Solar would work out west, I think - there is more wide open land that is essentially desert - can't grow much there - but solar and wind - why not?

Little trickier in the east which is more developed, where are you going to put sun and wind farms? OTOH, you can grow sugar in Florida - if only we could figure out a way to do it that doesn't destroy the Everglades.

[Horse with no Name]

16. Very good.

I don't think there is any reason the West shouldn't be moving to being more solar and wind powered.
If only we had a progressive administration that really cared about the solution...

[Toucano]

19. National policy should be limited to only what's good for California?

9 of the 10 most densely populated counties in the US are in the east.

That's just an FYI, not a disagreement with your conclusion.

[JDPriestly]

22. Ethanol from cane, corn and grass is fine for the rest of the country

But California is a huge market. You won't be able to sell cars that run on ethanol in California unless California has ethanol. We can choose to have different energy sources for different parts of the country, but oil has worked well because it is used everywhere. You can drive a car from Florida to L.A. on gas. You might have trouble driving an ethanol fueled vehicle from Florida to L.A.

[Toucano]

42. Very good point, but I think that's the purpose of flex-fuel cars.

Cars that can run on both traditional gasoline and 85% ethanol.

[Bitwit1234]

6. I thought bush made a speech

about dependency on foreign countries for fuel....hm I suppose as long as the oil companies get the loot he doesn't really care.

[johnaries]

7. ? Why sugarcane? Ethanol can be made from many kinds of crops.

Including many non-food crops. The best bet for the US seems to be prairie grasses that don't need to be replanted every year and grow readily in the Mid West.

I'd prefer we start here at home, but I'd rather be buying ethanol from South America than oil from the Middle East.

[Horse with no Name]

15. I was watching the story on MSNBC

I know sugarcane is superior to corn in most instances.
The problem I have is that it would be easier for our government to topple the governments in South America than the Middle East has been.

[jaybeat]

17. Better yet, make it from crop WASTE...

Techniques to make ethanol from farm waste rich in cellulose seems to me to be the best hope of making ethanol something other than a subsidy for mono-culture agribusiness. Factory-farm production of corn, of course, consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels in its production. There's also the question of using food for fuel when there are so many people starving in this world, and when we waste so much energy as it is.

Should we feel ethical filling up our Hummers w/E85 that could have fed starving children in Africa? Or America?

But ethanol from slash takes material that is often burned (creating greenhouse gases, anyway), and burns it in our engines instead.

Like making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, biofuels are the most sustainable when they make something useful out of material that would otherwise be thrown away. When there is so much biofuel being made from waste material that the demand for that material starts to exceed the supply, then we can worry about problems of food vs. fuel and deforestation, etc. But we're a long way from there, and there's a lot of "waste" material that we're not using.

But, as others have pointed out, Bush and his corporate cronies would much rather pay pennies for fuel made from food crops grown on deforested land, and then ship it in tankers just like oil, so they can continue to reap windfall profits while calling themselves "green," than to do anything that would actually help us survive the twin tsunamis of peak oil and climate change.

Besides, the Bush/Moon cabal already have theirs in nearby Uruguay; they can buy off the neighbors and buy themselves some political breathing room at the same time.

Jr. may be dumb, but the cabal is not.

[niceypoo]

10. I dont mind oil companies producing altenative energy

Unless its Exxon Mobile who are greedy, global warming loving, pigs. I am also against using food for fuel. We need to have a massive effort to find ways to produce hydrogen within our own borders. Every time we fuel up our car, more US dollars go on a one way trip OUT of the country. Ethanol is a half measure. Sooner than later our addiction to oil will bite us in the ass.

[madokie]

13. bio-fuel gasification is the answer to the production of ethanol I think

http://www.cecarf.org/Programs/Fuels/Fuelfacts/Bio-Fuels%20Facts.html

not the fermentation process so therefore any carbon based feed stock is usable

[Le Taz Hot]

14. California

We grow pretty much everything.

[JDPriestly]

24. Not like they do in Iowa.

[JDPriestly]

25. We grow certain crops better than others.

We are good for lettuce, oranges, dates, garlic, etc. But I haven't seen the kinds of corn or wheat fields that you see in the Midwest.

[AnnInLa]

18. One of our main crops in Louisiana

During cane season, the cane stalks are all over the roads, in the ditches, just everywhere. There is no doubt when cane season arrives.

[meldroc]

20. What about sugar beets?

They can be grown across the U.S.

Sugar cane can only grow in a tropical climate, which is why Brazil grows lots of sugar cane and we don't. We can and do grow sugar beets here.

[Blue Belle]

36. Thank you... I was wondering why no one mentioned sugar beets.

It's a huge crop in Eastern Oregon.

[China_cat]

23. We grow sugar cane here in SC.

In fact, one of the truckers where my husband works not only grows his own cane, he makes his own molasses. (I'd guess there's probably a still somewhere, too and he makes his own rum but I doubt he'd admit to it.) Cane is sold at the farmers markets and even in most of the grocery stores here. It's a lot like bamboo...once you plant it it's hard as hell to get rid of it.

[kestrel91316]

33. Molasses comes from sorghum, a crop more related to milo or

corn, IIRC. Molasses is not from sugar cane.

[China_cat]

38. Yes it is. Did they not teach this in your history courses?

It was a major factor in the slave trade. Slaves were bought with rum and brought to the island colonies to work the cane plantations. Molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining was distilled into rum which was then used to buy more slaves.


http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:JhWfpocHbGEJ:rcrec-ona.ifas.ufl.edu/mol.pdf+molasses+production&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
Cane Molasses is a by-product of the manufacture or refining of sucrose from sugar cane. It must not contain less than 46% total sugars expressed as invert. If its moisture content exceeds 27%,its density determined by double dilution must not be less than 79.5%.


http://www.answers.com/topic/molasses
What is Molasses?

Molasses, from the Latin word melaceres, meaning honey-like, is a thick dark syrup that is a byproduct of sugar refining. It results when sugar is crystallized out of sugar cane or sugar beet juice. Molasses is sold both for human consumption, to be used in baking, and in the brewing of ale and distillation of rum, and as an ingredient in animal feed.

Yes, there IS a sorghum molasses but it is nowhere near as good as the real thing (and has to be labeled sorghum)

[eppur_se_muova]

39. Sorghum makes a nice syrup which is sometimes call "sorghum molasses", but...

it's not really the same thing. Most Southerners just call the syrup "sorghum". True molasses is made by boiling down sugar cane syrup. White sugar crystallizes out, followed by brown sugar, and molasses is what's left.

[raccoon]

47. Yep. I remember as a kid in lowcountry SC, sometimes we'd

go to a cane grinding and chew chunks of cane.

[JDPriestly]

26. How is ethanol being transported in the areas where it is used?

In tanker trucks? Have any ethanol pipelines been built? How much infrastructure would be needed to replace petroleum with ethanol? How much raw vegetable product would be needed to replace petroleum with ethanol nationwide? Is ethanol really feasible as a gasoline and oil substitute once you start considering transportation and supply for general use by the whole country?

[ncteechur]

27. Mr Grandfather grew it in eastern NC when my dad was a kid.

[TreasonousBastard]

28. There's a chart here...

http://ipmworld.umn.edu/chapters/meagher.htm

showing the US sugar production in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Coupla points I've been hearing over the years...

US sugar prices are artificially high due to price supports and import controls, while world sugar prices are artificially low due to subsidies. The imbalances in supply and pricing are mainly of interest to food and candy processors, but may affect everyone if we make more alcohol.

Sugars to make alcohol are in pretty much everything, but most other crops require an extra intermediate step to get the sugar out of the fruit or veggie. Cane sugar is, then, a far more efficient and less energy intensive way to make alcohol.

What I haven't heard much about from the policy wonks is methanol-- well known and used for years in racing engines. It has less energy density than ethanol, and there are poisonous properties that are problematic, but it's still a good, cheap fuel that can be made from coal, methane, or any other biomass lying around. And there are experimental fuel cells running off of it.

What methanol doesn't have is a farm lobbty pushing for it.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

29. Florida is a huge sugar cane provider. Problem is, big sugar already

owns all of Florida's politicians. Even the Dems have been known to sell out when given a "sweet deal". I work at a resort in the Keys and we have a patch of sugar cane so that our guests can sample a stick if they desire.

[morningglory]

30. The upper counties of NW Florida used to grow a lot of sugarcane, then

someone talked them into growing cotton (lots and lots of poison involved) and watermelons, and assorted other stuff. They could easily grow sugarcane again.
Edited to add: Land is still cheap there. Oops! Land boom! Wagons Ho!!

[RebelOne]

44. To my knowledge, sugar cane is grown in Central Florida

around the Clewiston area. At least it was when I lived in Florida.

[alarimer]

31. It's grown in Puerto Rico

we also grow sugar beets here in Texas and other places.

[kestrel91316]

32. Who the hell needs sugar cane to make sugar?

Ever hear of sugar beets, lol? Grown all over the west and midwest, IIRC.

U & I Sugar stands for Utah & Idaho.

[Horse with no Name]

34. That would work too

;)

[Iceburg]

46. Sugar beets beat corn, but willow beats em all ...

For every unit of energy put into the willow-->ethanol process you get anywhere from 11 to 15 units of energy out. Compared to the best data available for corn, for every unit of energy put in, one would obtain 1.67 units of energy out. Sugar beets produce roughly twice that of corn.

http://www.glrc.org/transcript.php3?story_id=3054

[donco]

35. Heres something that can be grown

all over the United States Hemp, check this out.

http://www.hempcar.org/petvshemp.shtml

[nosmokes]

37. bio-diesel makes more sense all around. you can localize

production and it's much less volatile. diesel engines are realtively simple and efficient. the only reason we're on this ETOH kick is because bushco pals in bigAG see more money coming their way from the government and they see themselves as the next exxon/mobil. if the switch was to bio-diesel you could have a refinery in every state. no one could have a strangle hold on the market. hell, it's easy enough to produce from waste vegetable oil you can make in your garage with about $300 worth of stuff from a junkyard and the h'ware store. or you could even refine it yourself from the raw material if you were a farmer. ethaanol makes a lot of sense in tropical brazil, not so much in the states.

[jaybeat]

43. Agreed, but there aren't enough diesels available to buy

Automakers have kept almost all of the world's clean, efficient, reliable diesel cars and light trucks out of NA. Most people won't make a big compromise in what they drive in order to run bio. (I wanted a compact, four-door pickup--no can do. I bought a Jetta TDI. Works great for commuting but won't help when I need to haul hay, gravel, dirt, animals, etc.) Emission standards needlessly biased against diesels don't help. (Cars and light trucks in Europe are 50% diesel and climbing.)

This will hopefully start to change as new, clean, 50-state diesels start coming out in '08 and beyond, but I think anything that can help the millions of gassers out there is worth looking at.

I DON'T think the Bush-AgraCrime approach to Ethanol is viable; it's just a shell game to enrich giant mono-culture agra-crooks and uses almost as much dino-fuel as you get corn-fuel out the other end. But if we would invest in techniques to make ethanol from corn and other ag-waste, then we might be able to increase the % of ethanol in all gas (or make E85 cheaper than dino-petrol), and consumers would pollute less without having to make an effort. Sadly, that's probably the best way to achieve widespread use of biofuels, at least in the short-term.

[opihimoimoi]

41. Chicken/beef going up in prices due to normal food supply disruption

corn usually set aside for chicken/beef feed....instead goes to making fuel....prices go up due to scarcity...old axiom.