# We may need to wage war against corn-based ethanol productio



## Bob Kellam (Apr 8, 2004)

We may need to wage war against corn-based ethanol production
CHRIS NISKANEN

Article Launched: 01/27/2008 12:01:00 AM CST

In southeast Minnesota, trout fishermen are fighting a proposed corn-ethanol plant near Eyota, arguing the plant will draw excessive water from local aquifers and endanger trout streams and drinking-water supplies.

The Hiawatha chapter of Trout Unlimited recently passed a resolution decrying the plant as "a significant environmental risk (to water supplies) in a sensitive area."

Elsewhere in Minnesota, Department of Natural Resources officials and conservation groups are warily watching the impact of high corn prices on wildlife-enriching grassland programs.

Ducks Unlimited officials released a report last week showing contracts for nearly 600,000 acres of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program will expire in Minnesota by 2010 - about one-third of the 1.8 million acres currently enrolled - and no one is sure how much land will be re-enrolled.

About one-third of North Dakota's CRP contracts also will expire by 2010, but North Dakota wildlife officials were shocked this fall when 400,000 acres of CRP grasslands were plowed up.

DU officials say increasing demand for corn production, spurred by government-endorsed increases in ethanol production, is encouraging farmers to drop out of CRP, endangering some of North America's most productive duck-rearing areas.

All told, DU officials report, contracts for about 4.5 million acres of CRP in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana will expire within five years, roughly one-third of the

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CRP grasslands in the Midwest's Prairie Pothole region. Wildlife experts aren't hopeful many acres will be re-enrolled with soaring corn and soybean prices. 
Back in Minnesota, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which has strong ties to hunting and angling groups, is fighting a number of legal battles over ethanol plant air emissions, water pollution and plans by plants to draw large quantities of water from local aquifers.

MCEA officials also are concerned about a push by ethanol plants that would burn cheap coal to power "clean" ethanol plants.

"It doesn't quite make sense to burn coal to produce ethanol, does it?" said MCEA lawyer Janette Brimmer.

GRASS-BASED ALTERNATIVE

Corn-based ethanol, the environmental fuel of the future? It's probably the biggest taxpayer-subsided environmental lie promoted by our government in a generation.

Minnesota's hunting, fishing and environmental community, which desperately wants large-scale improvements to the state's natural resources, is arming itself to fight Big Corn and Big Ethanol.

Groups like Pheasants Forever and DU are pressing Congress to pass a Farm Bill that gives farmers extra incentives to grow grass, not corn. They're also pressing politicians to set aside money for experiments to convert grass - a wiser energy alternative than corn - into ethanol on an industrial scale.

But as the conservation community is quickly realizing, it could be years, maybe even decades, before mass-produced, grass-based ethanol - called cellulosic ethanol - can replace corn-based ethanol.

"We have to do a lot to figure this out - how to grow (grass), harvest it and store it," said Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., last weekend at Pheasant Fest. "The people who are pushing to build (grass-based) ethanol plants have no idea how hard this will be."

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

While the conservation community sees a bright future for energy from grass, they see the current rush for corn-ethanol plants as a potential disaster.

Last year, I attended a seminar by Michael Osterholm, the former Minnesota state epidemiologist and an avid trout angler, on the threats to southeast trout streams from proposed corn-based ethanol plants.

The seminar, the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in Bloomington, was packed with anglers who listened raptly as Osterholm spelled out how plants would need large quantities of water from aquifers that feed trout streams.

The state and federal government's role in promoting corn-based ethanol is decidedly one-sided. Few politicians like to talk about the problems of returning idled grasslands to corn production; the impacts of water-sucking ethanol plants on groundwater supplies; or the fallacy that corn-based ethanol is a large gain in energy outputs. (It is very modest given the inputs of petroleum necessary to grow, harvest and ship corn and turn it into ethanol.)

The government's current rush to ramp up corn-based ethanol production is reminiscent of the years when the government paid to drain wetlands. The arguments used back then to publicly subsidize the draining of wetlands sound vaguely familiar today - it's good for the farmer, it's good for the economy, it is good for you and me.

Hunters and anglers are usually on the front edge of conservation and environmental movements. They're usually the first to point out the misuse of natural resources - especially when it involves the government. That's why trout anglers, pheasant and duck hunters are arguing for wise corn-ethanol policies.

The government doesn't want to listen to them, but the rest of us should. Since we're paying for corn ethanol with our taxes, we should demand a better return on our environmental investment.

Chris Niskanen can be reached at [email protected] or 651-228-5524.


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## G.P. (Jun 17, 2007)

I completly agree with the negative affects that cron based ethanol will have on the environment. Ethanol is not any better than fossil fuels are for the environment. It is taxing on land , water and still needs a signifacant amount of fossil fuels to produce. From fertilizers and pesticides to tractor desiel and processing plants the ethanol craze is simply not the best solution to out ever growing problem of dependency on foreign oil. Whatever the solution is it needs to be less strenous on the environment than what we currently rely on.


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## rcnut143 (Jun 21, 2007)

Field and Stream did an article on this a few issues back. I'll have to dig it up.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

It's about time they start to wake up. How many years have I been trying to tell people that corn ethanol is a flop? It's not an environmental program, it's a government dependence program.


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## G.P. (Jun 17, 2007)

I totally agree. It is all about subsidies and governmental control. It leads to wetland destruction and deforastation, not to mention it still heavily relies on fossil fuels. Some people that call themselves environmentalists are really just misinformed people trying to do good but really are just hurting what could be the best options. Corn ethanol is definatly not the answer.


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## blhunter3 (May 5, 2007)

Finally some people have wisend up to see getting ethanol for corn is a horrible idea. I have hated it since the start. It burns so much fossil fuel growing and transporting the corn, and it also wastes so much water


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## rcnut143 (Jun 21, 2007)

not to mention the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides (most made from fossil fuels) used to grow the corn. This leeches into the water table and screws everything up. The price for a bushel of corn has also sky rocketed in the past couple of months which leads to a price increase in many corn based products and livestock feed, raising wholesale prices, inevitably increasing the grocery store bill. And I won't even begin the whole food vs. fuel debate.


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## morel_greg (Apr 16, 2007)

I havnt seen this posted before but had found it while looking up some info for a report. It is a few years old but is from David Pimental of Cornell University.

An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel's analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline.

Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU. "Put another way", Pimentel says, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a *net energy loss of 54,000 BTU*".

Ethanol from corn costs about *$1.74 per gallon *to produce, compared with about *95 cents *to produce a gallon of gasoline. "That helps explain why fossil fuels-not ethanol-are used to produce ethanol", Pimentel says. "The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn't afford it, either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially lower the price".

The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take *11 acres *to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.

If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about *97 percent *of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.


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## rcnut143 (Jun 21, 2007)

Interesting


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## verg (Aug 21, 2006)

I read today in a Time magazine that ethanol plants are partly to blame for the high grocery prices we now see. Farmers are taking crops to ethanol plants instead of elevators. Hence, less "food" being able to be made because half is being turned into fuel.


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Corn alcohol has been around a long time, good ol moonshine, corn liquor I'm sure if grass was a better source the moonshiners would have used it instead. Some common sense required these days I guess.

There are better producers such as hybred popular trees but you can't harvest them every year.

If wheat prices stay up this story will change accordingly.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

buckseye said:


> Corn alcohol has been around a long time, good ol moonshine, corn liquor I'm sure if grass was a better source the moonshiners would have used it instead. Some common sense required these days I guess.
> 
> There are better producers such as hybred popular trees but you can't harvest them every year.
> 
> If wheat prices stay up this story will change accordingly.


Per pound I suppose corn is better, but for efficiency grass beats it by about seven times. I doubt swithgrass whiskey would tast the same. Also, when moonshine was around they didn't know of the chemical process to make ethanol from cellulose. All they got from it then was methanol. Drink that and your worries are over.


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

haha drink any shine and your worries are over 

I just think doing something is better than doing nothing in the long run. Surely the bad ideas will be weeded out through time. Discussion will hopefully breed new thinking and new procedures to build on. Keep on keepin on!! :lol:


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

> haha drink any shine and your worries are over


No I meant methanol. That stuff will put you six feet under.


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## G.P. (Jun 17, 2007)

They have also come up with a process to make fuel out of native grasses. the grasses would be planted according to what was native vegetation of the area. Then to harvest the grass would be cut like hay and bundled up. the grass would regrow naturally year after year with no need for pesticides or fertilizers because they are natural to the area. The natural grasses would return nitrogen back to the soil through plants known as legumes and would help with erosion, habitat loss and breeding ground for upland birds and waterfowl. All in all it seems like the best way to go. It still relies on fossil fuels to run a tractor to do the cutting but it eliminates the need for a lot of other harmful chemicals. A step in the right direction i guess.


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

Plain and simple, the country needs a comphresive energy plan. All energy. Politicians side stepped the concept for 40 years. Now is the time. How we build, where we live, how we travel, tax credits, recycling, etc. It could be as big as the industrial revolution. We stand like fat people at the Sunday buffet demanding more fried shrimp when more is not the answer.


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## G.P. (Jun 17, 2007)

I agree we need to look at all energy and come up with plan that encompasses all the ways to make America more efficient. it is not going to be one thing. It will not be a quick fix either. It will take time and money but it needs to be addressed before we are so deep in the problem we cant find the solutions.


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## ShineRunner (Sep 11, 2002)

We don't need to be burning our food supply. The old timers around here could have told the dummy's in Washington that it cost to much to produce. :eyeroll:

:beer:


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