The amount of Ethanol used this year, estimated at 2.15 billion bushels, would amount to 20% of the US's entire crop. The enthusiasm for ethanol makes farmer Lynn Phillips want to grow more corn. Phillips helped raise the money for the farmer-owned Tall Corn plant, which opened in 2002 as a way to make more money by processing every kernel of locally grown corn. "We saw train cars after train cars of raw material being shipped away and value being added somewhere else," said Phillips. Now, the corn "is still going out on train cars -- it's just going out in the form of ethanol and distillers' grain." Corn can cost more to grow because it needs heavy applications of fertilizer. Right now, Phillips plants corn on about half his 2,000 acres and soybeans on the rest.
The article goes on to say:
"Meanwhile, lawmakers envision vastly more ethanol in the nation's automobiles. Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., are pushing to require 60 billion gallons of ethanol and soy-based biodiesel by 2030."
Now the first thing to notice is the two representitives are from Indiana and Iowa, where the price of corn going through the roof would benefit the most. Second, let's consider how much corn it would take to produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol. An acre of corn produces about 500 gallons of Ethanol. So 60 billion gallons would require 120 million acres of land producing corn. There are 427 million arable acres in the United States.
In my opinion, this is pork barrel politics disguised as environmentalism.
Here is the USDA's assessment for Ethanol. Keep in mind that the United States Department of Agriculture has a ton to gain by Ethanol use as it will drive up the price of grains. Take a look at the net BTU totals. They vary from -33,000 BTU/gal to +25,000 BTU/gal. In other words, in half the studies, Ethanol uses more energy than it produces.
Ethanol
