The king of Washington State is pushing for 20% ethanol.
Back when all of this nonsense started, Washington had a chance to be in front of all of this by making fuel additives from poplar trees.
They are just big weeds and we have plenty of them.
Poplar makes a much more stable and effeciant fuel than corn does and is not a food crop or a feed crop and they dont require any irrigation.
They are an invasive tree and just about impossible to stop.
But starting back in the 80s the state forced the timber companies into replanting clearcuts with fast regenerating species.
On this absurd theory that somehow there was a huge market for poplar and that would transform the logging industry.
The only real market for poplar at that time was pencils.
But we dont make pencils in the US anymore.
And all of the mills went bankrupt and now our logging towns are full of tweakers and meth labs and we have massive "Pencil Forrests" that cant be logged because the **** bags who never worked a day in their lives have decided that weeds planted in 1985 are now "Old Growth"
And now that Poplar is seeding into the old growth and bringing all of the bugs and disease that comes with it.
Corn based ethanol was just a political giveaway traded for concessions in order pass an agenda that had nothing to do with fuel efficiency or environmenal concerns.
I am not a farmer. I can barely mow my own lawn.
But my Step Father was.
Straight out of Bode, Iowa.
Before he passed he explained to me that there are two types of corn.
"Feed Corn" and "Sweet Corn"
Feed corn feeds the animals.
sweet corn feeds the people.
If you use the feed corn to make ethanol, the price of livestock feed goes up.
And the price of meat and dairy goes with it.
Less acreage for feed. Less meat to market.
More money in ethanol.
And the incentives have changed.
Crop farms now get more of an incentive to produce feed corn for ethanol than they do to produce food for livestock.
Not to mention that the government has pretty much ripped the mom and pop farmers to shreds and opened the door for big corporate factory farms.
And all of the E-Coli that comes with it.
Throw in some open Borders and some Nafta Cafta.
Asperagus used to be a U Pick farm thing just like strawberries and raspberries and blueberries and Salmon berries etc...
Show up, pay 5 bucks bring your own flats or buy them for 50 cents and haul enough out of the field in a couple of days to preserve it and get you through the winter.
Go out in a crappy little boat and pull a few steelhead and maybe a King.
Hit the rivers and pull some cutthroat trout.
Rake the cherrys off of the tree and harvest the apples and the pears.
Take a couple of deer.
Go to the ocean beaches and get some clams.
And stack wood. Lots of wood.
That, and some flour and some butter and you were set.
This wasnt in the 1870s folks.
This was in the 1970s.
And everybody got panic shoved into the cities by politicians and the non stop 24/7 news in order to make them afraid of living .
Put the phone down and go outside.
Find people and agree that you only use the phone in an emergecy.
Dont spend your life trying to impress other people on social media.
******* waste of time.
Go out and chew up the world and make lifelong freinds and stack up some memories and some crazy ****.
When you get old and your bones are chewed up?
Which will happen.
Aint nothing quite like calling an old freind and asking them about the time you smoked Thai stick on the roof of Madison Square Garden.
Or about being bit by a Camel.
Or being washed out to sea in Mexico and barely making it back to shore only to be left gasping at the feet of your cheating ex.
Life is crazy. And it is yours.
Stay somewhat safe.
Dont **** yourself up.
But just go do it.
It can be a dangerious world.
But the worst danger us letting your life slip by because you are afraid.
The clock is ticking my freinds.
