Six of One, Half Dozen of Another
June 12th, 2007 by Vihar ShethPosted in Agriculture, Energy
I’m back. Getting away was much needed, but it’s good to be back in the thick of it, it being the increased chatter about ethanol these days. Ever since I started this blog I’ve argued that pushing corn-based ethanol was a ridiculous waste. The only difference between being beholden to oil or corn-based ethanol is just a geographic change. It seems that more people are starting to come to this conclusion.
In my local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a feature story and an editorial this week highlight the costs associated with corn-based ethanol. The feature story, “More ethanol means more corn — and more water pollution“, highlights the pros and cons of using U.S. grown corn to create ethanol. From what I can tell, the only benefits are that farmers get richer and a semblance of patriotism is created. Beyond that, it’s all down hill. Pollution, in both gaseous and liquid forms, is rampant, and efficiency is very low. Further, food prices increase substantially, putting the increased burden of affording necessities squarely on the shoulders of the poor.
In Assumption, Ill., Len Corzine, a fifth-generation Illinois farmer and a former president of the National Corn Growers Association, is seizing the day: He planted corn on 90 percent of the more than 2,000 acres he farms. Five years ago, he was splitting his plantings equally between corn and soybeans.
Corzine, 57, described what the recent high prices mean for farmers. At 200 bushels per acre for 1,000 acres, an increase of $1 per bushel means an additional $200,000 in receipts.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “You can do more things with your family. You can give more at church.”
Really?! Is that so the church can then give money to the poor whose grocery bills have skyrocketed? Sounds like a winning plan to me.
The editorial I referenced earlier, “Do no (more) harm“, says essentially what the feature story does in parts but is much more to the point:
- Some ethanol plants, for example, burn coal for power, so part of the overall cost of the process is increased air pollution, as Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Bill Lambrecht has pointed out in an indispensable series of articles (including the feature referenced herein)
- It also can take three or more gallons of water to make each gallon of ethanol, Mr. Lambrecht has reported. Some of that water can be recycled, but much of it is lost, so part of the cost of producing ethanol is an increased need for water — a scarce resource
- Unlike other crops, corn can’t process nitrogen from the atmosphere; helping the plants mature requires significant amounts of added fertilizer. When the fertilizer runs off the land into rivers and streams, Mr. Lambrecht reports, it encourages the growth of plants such as algae, which consume the available oxygen in the water, choking out other forms of life, including fish. The result is that the runoff from small creeks and rivers in the upper Midwest have contributed to a vast and growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where the health of the commercial and sport fishing industries is in jeopardy
The editorial ends with,
The risk is that we may be trading one set of problems for another. There has been too little cost-benefit analysis of the ethanol-from-corn process, and much of what has been done has been too limited in scope. And there has been almost no effort to mitigate the predictable effects — dead waters, dirty air, diminished water supplies — of a corn-based ethanol boom.
Ethanol subsidies should be tied to policies that reduce fertilizer overuse, protect potable water supplies and prevent new sources of air pollution. The logical place to do that is in the giant farm and energy bills Congress is taking up this summer.
The failure to act could leave us with the illusion of a solution, instead of the real thing.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. If we change our ways but remain equally ignorant, there’s no hope for a cleaner, greener, future. It seems the American people have decided that being stabbed in the heart by someone else is bad, but easing the knife in ourselves is perfectly okay.
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2 Responses to “Six of One, Half Dozen of Another”
By Mike Haubrich on Jun 20, 2007
I think that the push towards ethanol is a sign that the corporate ag world is figuring out how to use the push towards environmental concern to make more profits. They are focusing on one issue, decreasing use of petroleum to deflect those Concerned (sort of) citizens who are willing to jump on the first solution as the best one. Once people start realizing how bad ethanol is for all concerned, new pushes for coal gasification are ready to pick up the slack. I would like to see Americans taking the time to educate ourselves more fully on the subjects of how we can conserve our combustible fuel dependency through conservation, and not be misled into thinking that there is a free ride out there somewhere.
We have a bad history of taking half-measures as solutions and then dropping the subject as if it were solved and it were time to move on to the next thing. Ethanol is a dangerous fad that makes us feel good while possibly making things worse.