Ethanol from corn is an idea that needs rethinking

From April 2008


Now, I'm not a farmer and I don't even play one on TV, so much of what I understand is from, well, shall we call it observation. Some of it is close observation, mind you, as I did spend a few years of my youth on the unforgiving end of a seat on a scatter rake. I know who John Deere is, trust me.

There might only be a dozen people who amble through this column that would even know what a scatter rake was used for and it would take me about 600 words to explain, but suffice to say that, by and large, I kind of "get" this whole farming supply and demand equation. Most of us understand how the circle of life begins with the hope of a seed and ends up on our dinner plates.

And also having a vague understanding of how a butterfly in Japan flaps his wing and a whirlwind in Oklahoma is the result, I was skeptical from Day One about biofuels in general and producing ethanol from corn in particular.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist -- or a farmer -- to see that the amount of actual product (corn) and effort (energy or fuel) needed to reconstitute corn into a usable fuel or replacement for gasoline is probably more than the value of the end product.

Would it be great if we weren't paying $110 a barrel for oil? Would it be great if gasoline were only $1.25 a gallon again? Do we need to find ways to make the oil companies more competitive, to make our vehicles and users of petroleum more efficient? Do we need more fuel sources than one, so we are not vulnerable to blackmail or inordinate fluctuations in the supply and demand curve?

Certainly.

But as one pundit put it, corn may turn out to be a con job.

So, the butterfly flaps his wing and now I hear something about this circle of life that I can't quite believe. So I went to my neighborhood grocery store to check it out for myself -- there is, indeed, a national wheat storage.Sacks of flour at many Utah grocery stores are being rationed. You can only buy x-number or pounds of flour at a time. Flour!

If you're not into this whole global game of bio-dominoes, check out last week's Time magazine. Here's just a few random facts in a nutshell, or in a cornhusk, in this case:

• If 100 percent -- a total depletion -- of soybean crops and corn harvests in the United States (and we lead the world in both categories) were turned into biofuel, it would only be enough to offset about 20 percent of fuel consumption of cars alone (not counting jets, trains, etc.).

• When many soybean farmers in the United States switched to corn, hoping for a biofuel profit, soybean prices rose (and supplies diminished), causing enterprising farms in Brazil to expand into their treasured rain forests. And — are you sitting down? — the acreage of Brazilian rain forest lost to soy and corn production in the last six months alone is equal to the area of Rhode Island (750,000 acres). Worried about global warming? Forget your car's emissions and start pointing your finger toward the loss of rain forests.

• Corn-based ethanol is not any cleaner than gasoline. In fact, when its use is combined with the emissions caused by its production, corn isn't considered "green" fuel by any stretch.

• One person could be fed for 365 days on the corn needed to fill up one ethanol-fueled SUV.

Now, back to your neighborhood store and your Western Family flour. Wasn't it only a dozen years ago or so when wheat farmers were being paid to not grow wheat? This almost panic-like dash to biofuels needs more thought, more planning and more coordination. Butterflies are flapping like crazy.

So what's the answer? Currently U.S. gasoline consumption is 320,500,000 gallons per day or about 3,700 gallons per second. Thus, there is no easy answer.

The American consumer and those that represent them in Washington need to lean on Detroit to get more serious about hybrid and more efficient automobiles. Get out of the box — it's going to take new thinking to reduce a 3,700 per second appetite.

We have to use mass transit, and that includes the soon-to-be Frontrunner. We have to get out of our boxes. We need to even rethink how much meat we eat and how that impacts the entire chain. If corn continues to go out of food production, I guarantee you that you'll be rethinking your meat eating.

We need to urge appropriate biofuel production. Take switchgrass, for example, which can also produce ethanol, but does not disrupt the food chain and can actually be grown in areas generally considered "unfarmable." Algae as fuel shows some hope. We need to come up with ways to develop oil fields within U.S. borders that satisfy the many concerns over such development, and that includes arctic fields.

We need to get our nose out of Middle East politics and do whatever it takes to change the label of aggressor to that of equal partner on the planet.

But, unless you like dipping into your food storage for the next several years, this whole corn plan needs to be popped.