David Blume speaking on the history of alcohol fuel and gasoline

Winning Health and Security
- by Howard Switzer

Perry County Tennessee is a wonderful place to live, if you can earn a living here, and despite the high unemployment many do. Productive small farms, small to medium sized sawmills, various crafts and other independent livelihoods are some examples. The closing of the auto parts plant is also an example, an example of how dependency on outside corporate enterprise can lead to disappointment. That is one wagon it would be unwise to hitch your prized team to because it means that the profits of the enterprise leave the county continuously and for good instead of being re-circulated through our own local economy. Don’t believe those highly engineered corporate sales pitches on TV designed to make you think the corporations have all you want. They don’t, really. The industrial mode of food production, for instance, is designed not to produce more food per acre, which it cannot and does not do, but is designed to produce food using the least amount of human labor possible. In this system food is a commodity not a necessity and quality is considered only a marketing issue. It is the same in every industry dominated by the major corporations. While corporations were able to buy legal personhood over a century ago they have avoided the responsibilities of a person on a massive and devastating scale.

I believe there are two major issues that concern everyone, health and security. Just about every other issue can be listed under one or both of these. There will be much blather about them in the corporate political campaigns but we should all know by now that neither will be adequately delivered. Our centralized government is dedicated to the idea that what is good for the wealthy few is good for everyone. This is the epitome of selfish interest and runs counter to every moral system. Instead, what is good for everyone is good for the few and it is time we started thinking about how to take care of ourselves as a county and a community because, seriously, who else really cares, the corporations? The Federal Government? I don’t think so. Communities will have to put aside petty divisions and get together to figure out how to create health and security for themselves and their children’s futures. It will be an exciting project for a community to engage in strategic planning and develop a robust local economy producing healthy food, energy and ethical local governance.

Health requires healthy food and water which means a healthy clean environment. Without one’s health security would be difficult to obtain. In order to be assured that you have healthy food it needs to be grown locally and organically just as it was before WWII. No part of a plant is wasted and nutrients from the excess are returned to the soil. Waste is a verb, not a noun, and is an action everyone would try to avoid. If something is reusable or recyclable it is utilized, if it is toxic it is treated with appropriate care to neutralize it. With fewer health issues to be dealt with, a local healthcare system is easier to maintain.

Security means a robust local economy to support that healthcare system while creating diverse community wealth, including good food and water, again a healthy environment. Security also means a community needs to produce its own energy to power its economy and that everyone is on their best behavior, fair with one another and united for collective community success. When those conditions exist, there is little interest in crime.

Fortunately these are not impossible for a community to obtain. While the corporations have focused on their own bottom lines, at any cost, other people in this country have been doing research in how to create sustainable systems for energy, food and building.

The energy we are using up today comes from the fossilized solar energy of plants from 500 million years ago but before oil was discovered the fresh solar energy of many plants was being utilized. Plant oils were used for lubrication, fuel, food and medicine. The diesel engine was designed to run on plant oils but before that the internal combustion engine was designed to run on alcohol distilled from plants. In fact when fossil oil was discovered it was used only for heating fuel. The highly volatile and toxic materials that had proved dangerously explosive were dumped by the refineries at night into the rivers to get rid of it until they discovered it would work in an internal combustion engine. They called it gasoline and the fuel war was on. In 1916, Henry Ford, whose cars were designed to run on alcohol said, “why should the farmer pay an ever increasing price for gasoline when he can produce all the alcohol he needs and a lot more on his own farm.” The Ford had a lever on the steering wheel to adjust the spark advance on the distributor to accommodate the variations in farmer’s alcohol. Today a computer is programmed to do it and flex fuel cars can run on 100% alcohol, like the race cars. Alcohol can be used to heat and cook with, boats have used alcohol stoves for a long time, and it can do refrigeration with an ammonia cycle unit that takes only a small flame to run, as in your RV perhaps.

Rockefeller won, of course, and the power of oil company propaganda is still a force to be reckoned with. In 1918 Rockefeller, under the ruse of Christian temperance, gave 4 million dollars (50 million in today’s dollars) to the temperance movement, which he did in other countries as well, and succeeded in getting alcohol production banned eliminating his competition. That sort of thing has been repeated many times as the corporations of the few supplanted the law and came to dominate our economy over the many independent producers. In 1931 Thomas Edison said to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, “I’d put my money on solar energy …I hope we don’t have to wait until the oil and coal runs out before we tackle that.” Oil, like coal, is a finite resource all owned by a few. The price will continually go up because it is increasingly hard to get. If you count the government give-away to the industry we already pay more than $10 a gallon for gasoline coal is poisoning our air.

Sometimes it is wise to take a step back and start again. We have improved technology and the resources now to build a distillery. Our farmers can provide the solar energy in the form of sugars and starches to make alcohol and the distillery can pay for it with some of the fuel and the distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS), which is the minerals, vitamins, oils and proteins left, a very high grade animal feed. But also it has been discovered that if you return the DDGS to the soil it acts as fertilizer and a natural pre-emergent herbicide for the next crop. Corn is not even the best energy crop to grow, beets or sweet potatoes yield 3 times the amount of fuel. Cattails can be grown in marshes normally drained, or in man made marshes to clean up sewage naturally and much more effectively that chemical treatment. We need clean water. Cattails grow 3 times as large while cleaning sewage water and they are nearly all starch yielding 10,000 gallons per acre. Corn, just the grain, yields a few hundred gallons per acre but if the stalk and cob are utilized as well that number soars.

Security is enhanced with more choices. If you have a bumper crop of beets and the market is low make alcohol with the excess. Cellulose, the entire plant, can be utilized as well as sawdust or slab wood. In short, we have the resources in Perry County to make not just all the energy we need to run a growing local economy, we would have enough to export in trade. In a really smart food/energy system, you don’t just build a still, you build a feed lot and a green house operation along with it. Plant material comes in and is fermented generating carbon dioxide that is pumped into a greenhouse increasing plant production by 30% while keeping insects at bay. The DDGS is fed to the animals, increasing meat production 30%, which generates manure that is then digested into methane to run the still and what is left is returned to the soil. There are infinite options.

I have only touched on a tiny tip of this iceberg of possibilities but I hope it will arouse some interest in creating a system of health and security for this community. I think many of you know stuff and would have much to add to this effort. Don’t we need a community conversation about the future? There are tools that can help people do that. We can see clearer now that the veils are being lifted and we can learn and act for the betterment of creation. We, bankers, business people, farmers, workers, all of us working together locally, can make the change we truly need, not just the change we deserve or believe in.
- from Howard Switzer’s letter to the editor of the Buffalo River Review