MEXICO CITY, May 29 (Reuters) – Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.
The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.
Despite rapid growth in tequila drinking, especially overseas, the over-supply of agave has driven prices for the plant to rock-bottom levels.
Uh-Oh, the price of tequila is gonna go sky high.
Found by Bubba Martin
Good luck going from a desert based low water plant to a high water needs plant…especially with that darned climate change coming….
#5…hhopper….lol….boy does that look familiar. Everytime we go down to the house in Mexico, my older brothers and I do just what your little smily is doing…..then crawl home up the beach.
#21….your right. Corn is a hig maintaince crop…even feed corn requires a lot more water than agave.
#3 – BubbaRay – That PhysOrg link is fascinating – thanks. I wonder if the relative silence about that, even with the Bushies pushing for hydrogen as a replacement fuel, has to do with the inherently decentralized nature of the technology (no centralized big bucks for our corporate overlords).
I note it requires gallium, which can be cmplicated to handle. Still… it promises to enable internal combustion engines that run on water. Like you, I’d think people would be more excited about it.
#19 – based upon the USA reserve for biofuel, the price of corn already did shoot up in Mexico, around 6 months ago, and caused widespread protests and unrest. That happened in Mexico, though, so you wouldn’t have heard about it.
Regarding agave, there was a natural disaster in Mexico about 6 years ago. A frost? Which killed a lot of the agave plants. The price of Tequila has been sky high for 5+ years. It might have been beginning to fall now, were it not for this, ah, market adjustment. The price of agave shot up, so Mexican farmers planted it like crazy (at the same time they were taking cornfields out of production because the international price of US corn was so low). The rest you already know from the article.
Corporate profits are high, people are starving. Cocoa, maize, … it’s an old story. And you don’t see the World Bank suggesting commodity price stability, just the opposite, even though it would cut out a lot of hardship for ordinary people around the world. Corporate profits are highest when the commodity price is based on supply and demand, not upon an intrinsic value of the commodity (an intrinsic value of corn maize for example would be that people can eat it).
I wonder if they are really burning their fields, or harvesting (the manufacture of tequila does involve toasting the agave flesh) the plants. But if the agave price really is rock bottom, then I fear the former.
#23, TJGeezer, package the gizmo up (gallium included), and in a short time you’re feeding beer cans and water into the “gas tank”, sort of like the Mr. Fusion in “Back to the Future.” Well, it’s not yet quite that simple, but who knows? It could be.
“This reaction splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in water, releasing hydrogen in the process. ”
I’m honked that there isn’t a lot of investment money going into this tech right now.
The worst thing about the ethanol scam isn’t that it’s a redistribution of wealth to farmers and ADM. When we wake up from our ethanol hangover in five or 10 years and realize it has made no difference in our dependence on foreign oil, we will have squandered that much more time to find a REAL solution.
This makes no sense at all to me. The Blue Agave sugar could be used to make the same ethanol that is made from corn. In fact, it’s sugar is more readily available than corn. And since Ethanol at the pump is still $3 a gallon and my tequila costs $40-50/gal, you’d think the Agave is still more profitable. I call shenanegans on this story.
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