Subject: Re: Non-agricultural ethanol - assessment please?

How terrific the people may be!

They look at the ground and see a factory. Modern man does not see a
live organism, with nutrients evolving from organic matter into
plants and back to the earth, in a living cycle. They just see a
factory with a programmed annual output of biofuel per hectare, to
feed gas guzzlers, to move humans in a forest of concrete, steel,
asphalt and bricks, to go to routinely jobs at 30 miles from home, or
to entertain at 200 miles from home in the weekends.

This is what the modern man expects from the earth: to behave like a
clock machinery (round the clock manufacturing), because obviously
the modern farmer does not look for his/her own survival and that of
his/her family on the same piece of land, for generations. No. He/she
obviously wants equal rights and the same living standard than an
urban citizen: car, home appliances, holidays in the other side of
the moon, motorized weekends, a 1,000 sq feet home/10,000 cubic feet
conditioned volume of air per family or individual and so forth.

Therefore, modern farmers also see the piece of land as a factory, a
tool to produce a given and pre-fixed output, regardless the weather
or the rain fall or natural, logical nutrients as input, as a return
or gift to earth for the given output. They can not afford the land
the have a breath, in a literal sense, to lie fallow, to rotate to
have a rest, perhaps for years, when the sensible and sensitive eyes
realize the earth is tired. This close relationship of human beings
and earth is lost. Earth is a factory and has to produce as per the
market demand. The god Market is now in the altar, together with the
Goddess economy.

Do not have any doubt that we will pay for this behaviour. I am not a
believer in any faith or religion and less of all, in the Market and
Economy gods. I just try to explain myself something that understand
is common sense, but I do not see much common sense these days. I do
not personally find much sense in discussing Patzek, Pimentel or
Naredo rich sources of information, getting into ratios,
crosschecking piles of data, etc., to see if it is interesting to
produce fuel from food, to feed the uncountable number of machines we
are able to produce in the present industrial society. I see now,
with all respects to those doing it, that he simple time spent in
these analysis is already a hint on our own craziness.

Pedro from Madrid