"  I  have noticed the 
almost complete conversion to corn for many years here in South 
Central Ontario with little or no crop rotation."

I wonder how much of this increased corn is due to the US laws requiring ethanol to be added to gasoline?  I have done very careful tests on my personal car, a 2013 Honda Fit, and shown gas with 10% ethanol gives me about 5% lower mpg than 100% gas at 70 mph on freeways at 75 degrees.  I have calibrated the mpg given by the on board computer versus mpg given by refill volumes and get the same 5% either way althou the on board computer gives on average a 2% higher mpg than refill volumes which seems a quite reasonable calibration error.  Last I looked it up fuel ethanol was selling in the $1.50 a gallon range.  So, in terms of moving my car down the road that 10% ethanol in ordinary gas costs the equivalent of $3.00 per gallon of gas.  Add in that such use of corn not only does nothing significant to carbon dioxide emissions (or even increases them according to some studies) and results in more pesticide use and the whole program seems misguided to me.

By the way, if you try to do such tests air temp is really critical.  The lower the air temp the more pounds of air a car must push out of the way per mile resulting in higher drag forces at freeway speeds.  Also tests must be done on dry pavement.  All that spray off the tires on a wet pavement is energy lost due to increased drag.  You need to do the test under conditions where you are neither significantly climbing or dropping.  Going from mid Neb to Cheyenne WY where you climb 4000 feet will drop your mpg.  The final thing you must try to control is the % ethanol in the stuff you buy.  Most tanks are pretty good, but the occasional tank either has well over or under the labeled 10%. 

Dick




" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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