this is exactly the kind of lateral thinking we need so much more of.
seems so me there's a possibility of malt manufacture from the corn slurry, and possibly brewer's yeast, both highly nutritious food supplements.
perhaps raising animals could figure in too, with that local supply of food for them, the windpower supplying electricity needs, and the possibility of adding more organic forms of nitrogen to give heart to the land.
aren't ammonia and urea harsh on the microorganisms that keep soil from being too rapidly depleted?
systems thinking, small is beautiful, jejeje The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
Wind driven ammonia fuels and fertilizes the corn crop. You're right that ammonia is bad for soil organisms ... I think urea is kinder. We used to rotate corn and soy so the legume would have a chance to fix nitrogen, but now they're doing corn on corn ... madness, I think, and we'll see how long it lasts.
Ethanol needs heat, wind driven ammonia produces it. Ethanol produces distiller's grain ... and a feed lot can use the protein. Corn oil should be fractionated for biodiesel first. Note that I am only considering ethanol EROI and not global food security concerns - this is the environment in which I have to work.
The feed lot waste can produce either methane or ammonia. We hear that biological methods are going to be better/faster/stronger than any other renewable ... but I wonder how that works if they don't have the feed for the animals to produce the waste. I think they'll be complementary - we need every bit of every renewable source we can lay our hands on. E3 in Mead, Nebraska was powering their ethanol production with feedlot waste generated methane. The plant had a design fault and it blew up ... but it was working well until that time.
I just hope we get a chance to address these things before everything lets go with a bang. I think we will see/hear bangs before we get it - Pakistan being the name that comes to mind first.
I am surprised to see the monocropping and the farmers are a bit befuddled by it all as well. We always had corn/soy in rotation until just a few years ago and corn/soy/alfalfa(unharvested) would be even better. I suppose we'll have to see some ort of systemic failure before it changes - crop failure due to things you describe, or ethanol plant failure due to policy changes related to global food security, etc.
Interesting times in which we live ...
