No wonder so few (here) believe GM will actually build the Volt. Lutz is a fool.

I wonder what percentage of those millions of Flex Fuel vehicles are actually using E85? I can tell you that in California (which has the most registered vehicles of any state) it is essentially 0% because there is nowhere to buy it.

Officially, there are 10 stations in the whole state, but 4 of those are for Private fleets only (LLNL, LBNL, SMUD, Vandenburg AFB ) and 3 others are not open yet.

National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NEVC) and E85

Lutz is a Putz.

Good luck for a simple explanation of subsidies and farming programs! They tried to revamp that last year (one criticism is it favors big corporate farm over small farmers, hard to figure out how that happened!)

But according to this USDA page, there are over 36.7 million acres enrolled in CRP (Conservation Reserve Program), which retire on a rotating basis, up to 15 year contracts (but can be re-enrolled). There's apparently another million acres in the CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program). I'm not aware of any other large programs like this. I believe the payment per acre depends on the type of land, erosion risk, value of crops that it replaces (a fair bit of this land should never be farmed, for erosion/water quality purposes). Not all land is eligible for this program. I don't see any numbers higher than $100/acre in a quick scan, but I may be wrong. (Land in CRP can also be taken out for emergency hay/grazing in case of drought, and there's some kind of new biomass program - for cellulosic ethanol perhaps?).
Farmers planted 93 million acres in corn in 2007, according to this site and ones like it. So Lutz was definitely wrong, but closer than I expected. I thought it would 10 acres of corn per acre in reserve, not 2.5 to 1.

Some quick calculations - the U.S. produced 12 billion bushels of corn last year, so for 93 million acres that's an average of about 130 bushels/acre, at prices approaching $4/bushel => about $500/acre for corn. Several years ago it probably made sense to put all eligible land into CRP, but I doubt that's still the case, and I bet the better land will be returned to crop production, unless the USDA adjusts the payments every year to match current prices? I don't really understand how those payments are determined, it looked to be a long formula with money coming from different sources for different purposes.

I do not know the present state of farm supports. But several decades ago my father bought a piece of land, intending to build houses on it. He was unable to get the zoning changed from agricultural to residential, so he was stuck with this land for a number of years. For a while, the government paid my father not to grow crops on it. Great for my dad, but stupid national policy. Eventually he was able to sell the land to a farmer.

I was under the impression that the government was still paying farmers to leave some land idle. But the requirements and conditions were such that most of that money goes to big corporate farms, and little if any goes to small farmers.

At least some of this idle land is environmentally sensitive, and using it to grow corn for ethanol would be a big mistake.

I do not believe that Lutz is a fool. I do believe he is a criminal: He is getting paid a lot of money to screw the nation by delaying our inevitable switch to sustainable energy. He is doing that job very effectively and getting rich doing it.

Thanks Nerfer, that was very helpful.

I followed your lead and found a press release describing that program, showing the average payment at a little under $50/acre.

By the description, this really isn't a program to pay farmers not to plant, in the sense that you can't just take any farm field and get that (small) payment to leave it fallow. The lands have to be environmentally sensitive marginal lands, and include things like riparian buffer zones that I don't think you could legally plant most places these days anyway. By their description, the point of that program is to pay farmers' costs for establishing and maintaining ground cover and wildlife habitat on marginal lands.

News Releases

Also, to expand on your point about whether you could grown corn on this land, I see that about 10% of the land is in Montana. I don't think much of Montana is suitable for corn.

But I'm sure that total crop support payments are larger than then $1.8B listed for that program in the press release for FY 08.

OK, finally found the spending data on the USDA website.

ERS/USDA Data - Farm Income

IN 2006, direct payments to farmers totaled $15.8B, with all land conservation programs (including the one discussed above) at $2.9B. So the land conservation (payment not to farm) is a small slice of the total farm price support subsidy.

The big-ticket items are the programs that, as I recall it, pay farmers the difference between market price and the USDA estimate of average cost. But you have to grow the crop to get that payment. So, I still think that on net, Federal payments to grow crops, in a typical year, exceed the payments not to grow crops on marginal land, by a substantial amount.

Anyway, the clear upshot is that Lutz was way off on the facts, which, given the educated audience for the WSJ, doesn't seem to be a very smart approach.

Yes, and that puts it kindly. Thanks for the article ... not that I needed more proof, of why he'll eventually be tossed out on his arse. corn fuel. Too bad no one is allowed to show him how much more CO2 is released in fermenting grain into fuel than just using the fuel you wasted to do the process. Besides Lutz has already said CO2 issues are a crock of shi_. (shaking head)