Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide

hereisnowhy writes "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel. Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol — whether from corn, beets, wheat, or other crops — requires more energy than can be derived from the product."

Monbiot:"People - and the environment - will lose"

George Monbiot wrote [guardian.co.uk] about this 2 months ago in the UK Guardian:

If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels

Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People - and the environment - will lose

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 27, 2007
The Guardian

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.

In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants - if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.

So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already.

Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat.

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild.

But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel.

There are similar impacts all over the world. Sugarcane producers are moving into rare scrubland habitats (the cerrado) in Brazil, and soya farmers are ripping up the Amazon rainforests. As President Bush has just signed a biofuel agreement with President Lula, it's likely to become a lot worse. Indigenous people in South America, Asia and Africa are starting to complain about incursions onto their land by fuel planters. A petition launched by a group called biofuelwatch, begging western governments to stop, has been signed by campaigners from 250 groups.

The British government is well aware that there's a problem. On his blog last year the environment secretary David Miliband noted that palm oil plantations "are destroying 0.7% of the Malaysian rainforest each year, reducing a vital natural resource (and in the process, destroying the natural habitat of the orang-utan). It is all connected." Unlike government policy.

The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram.

In February the European commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel.

The British government says it "will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply". But it will not require them to do anything. It can't: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules. And even "sustainable" biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a "second generation" of biofuels, made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have been done.

We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane. Even then, the targets should be set low and increased only cautiously. I suggest a five-year freeze.

This would require a huge campaign, tougher than the one which helped to win a five-year freeze on growing genetically modified crops in the UK. That was important - GM crops give big companies unprecedented control over the foodchain. But most of their effects are indirect, while the devastation caused by biofuel is immediate and already visible.

This is why it will be harder to stop: encouraged by government policy, vast investments are now being made by farmers and chemical companies. Stopping them requires one heck of a battle. But it has to be fought.

You can join the campaign at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk, [biofuelwatch.org.uk] www.monbiot.com [monbiot.com]

Corn-based Ethanol is a Tragedy

The main culprit is corn-based ethanol. The energy consumed to produce a barrel of corn-based ethanol consumes exceeds the energy offered by that barrel [sfgate.com].

The motivation for corn-based ethanol is political. While Washington advocates "free markets", American politicians of all political persuasions advocate subsidizing the production of corn-based ethanol because American agribusiness nearly owns the government.

Generally speaking, subsidies cost taxpayers dearly but do not pose a hazard. Corn-based ethanol is an exception. It drives up the price of corn and could lead to severe malnutrition in Mexico and other poor countries which cannot afford higher prices for basic food items. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol could indirectly kill people (via starvation) in the 3rd world.

Do American politicians care? No. They care only about making American agribusiness happy.

It's the Farm Bill

The Farm Bill subsidizes 5 commodity products, one of which is corn. This bill has far-reaching consequences, which include starvation of population in Africa (by subsidizing farmers the US competes with the 3rd world countries, who cannot compete at that level with a super-industrialized nation that only needs 1% of its citizens to work as farmers and even then it produces enough food products to feed a quarter of the planet.) Now, should the US politicians care about this or should they only work to make the US farmers happy, that is a different question. I am not a US politician or a US citizen, but I understand why a US politician would rather make a US citizen-farmer happy than think about far-reaching consequences to other countries. Other countries do not vote for this US politician, that's probably the most important point to remember.

Re:Monbiot:"People - and the environment - will lo

"A permanent moratorium on growing plants in soil as a biofuel feedstock is what we need."

And the alternative is....?

One option is hydroponics. The most promising crop is algae. A study done at Sandia said some years ago that growing algae in foot-deep concrete "raceway" ponds (a circular stream) agitated by paddlewheels suggested that it should be economical before diesel fuel hit $3/gallon.

Another option is to only make the fuel out of waste oils and cellulose. Biodiesel can be made out of waste animal fat, but honestly that can only provide a small portion of the demand. Tyson Foods is currently engaging in a trial in Ireland with ConocoPhilips. Cellulosic biodiesel is rapidly approaching as a viable technology.

You could also ignore the possibilities of biodiesel and go straight to butanol. Butanol is made by bacteria in the "ABE" process, in which a specific organism originally isolated as an aid to making TNT can be used to make fuel. ABE stands for Acetone, Butanol, and Ethanol. All three of these things can be burned in an ordinary gasoline engine, but Butanol is the most interesting compound in this regard as it is a direct one-to-one replacement for gasoline. The ABE process can be used on any organic matter.

You could go all-electric, which would require building more nuclear plants, and building breeder reactors to supply them with fuel. Using the proper types of reactors prevents the use of the systems to produce weapons-grade materials; all breeders are not the same (no pun intended.) But this would be in many ways a more major undertaking than the other options because the infrastructure to transport and dispense biodiesel or butanol already exists - precisely the same means used to transport diesel and gasoline, respectively.

Ultimately, the answer can only be a combination of these and other ideas. But it's easy to see that topsoil-based fuels are utterly and completely wrongheaded. They deplete soil, techniques used in mass-farming create hardpan and reduce diversity in soil, killing off the majority of organisms found there, and so on. Everything about modern farming techniques is wrong! It's simply not a sustainable activity on its own. Depending on it for fuel will cause a crisis rapidly. Certain parts of the world cannot feed themselves today because of their agricultural activities in the past. The Amazon is approaching a crisis state in which it can no longer support itself and it collapses entirely - eliminating the source of some 25% of the planet's oxygen.

If we don't get a grip on agriculture now, it will all be a moot point soon, because we won't have oxygen to breathe.

Re:Monbiot:"People - and the environment - will lo

Conservation alone isn't a replacement for burning fossil fuels. Sure, it's a good idea for many reasons, but the fact remains that we need a source of energy that can maintain and improve our standard of living.

Environmentalists argue that high standard of living and technological progress is mutually exclusive with good stewardship of the earth. They will never be taken seriously by enough people to make a difference until they abandon their pessimistic ludditism.

Re:Monbiot:"People - and the environment - will lo

The problem isn't that though, the problem is storing the waste, no one wants it in their region.

Waste shouldn't be "stored", it should be recycled. Nuclear plant "waste" is really only about 10% used. Stick it in a breeder reactor and you not only get more fuel you can stick into the first reactor, but you generate power in the process. No, the problem with waste is that a chain of political idiots and their energy department appointees (every president since Carter, inclusive) have prohibited or defunded the construction of waste reprocessing breeder reactors (Carter, Clinton), or displayed a near complete disinterest in promoting nuclear power (Reagan, Bush, Bush). The classic objection to breeders is that they produce plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs. This completely overlooks the fact that unless you build a breeder reactor specifically for the purpose of making pure Pu-239 for nuclear weapons, you get a mix of Pu isotopes which absolutely can not be detonated, and is only suitable for use as reactor fuel.

and corn farmers everywhere

are rejoicing. Not only has the US government mandated the use of corn and corn derived products in just about everything that US consumers use, now their profit margins will soar above whatever they were being subsidized for. Most corn in North America is big business farming, so they are off and running toward all those dollars, no matter how inefficient using corn is for fuels.

All we have to do now is declare corn growers as reducing global warming, and that every stalk of corn planted saves a child to make the headlong rush toward bio-diesel an unrecoverable flop.

Let's not forget...

...that most fertilizers and pesticides applied to corn are derived from petroleum bases. Farming equipment also uses diesel/gasoline during the planting, cultivating and harvesting of corn. Adding to this, natural gas and propane are commonly used to run corn dryers used to reduce the moisture content of the harvested corn. At one point in 2005, the cost of the fuel for these dryers was more than the revenue produced from the corn itself, making it a wash to even bring the corn to market.

Sure, the price of corn is being driven up by its use for ethanol production, but let's not forget that the cost of growing corn has risen sharply as well in recent years, mostly due to the rising price of petroleum based products.

Re:Let's not forget...

I'd like to point out that corn produces 400 gallons of ethanol per acre, while switch grass produces 2300 gallons per acre (and that yield will increase as cellulose production methods are improved.) It's time we stop subsidizing specific crop farming, and look at farming as a whole.

Re:Let's not forget...

While algae would yield 8000 gallons of biodiesel and 5000 gallons of ethanol per acre. . .and it requires less water (closed system) and that water can be salt water (set up algae farms near coast, use seawater). . .

Use Other Foods

They should make ethanol from unhealthy foods instead, like Twinkies, eclairs, or Jolly Ranchers. I find my car runs on the watermelon flavor the best.

Re:Use Other Foods

You're partially correct. Much greater fuel-alcohol production can be realized from Cane Sugar and Sugar Beets than from corn. The only reason why the ethanol crowd is so focused on corn is because America has a lot of it. Hawaii produces a great deal of cane sugar, but it pales in comparison to corn production. And sugar beet production is entirely focused on sugar. Still, both plants are useful for creating butanol [wikipedia.org], an alcohol with properties and energy densities much closer to gasoline than ethanol.

Few Clarifications & Corrections

A study released in May from Iowa State University shows increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American -- an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006.

If I'm not mistaken, that means $47 per year. Which really isn't that bad when you notice the price of gasoline lately.

The move is based in part on wide-spread belief that ethanol-blended fuel produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline.

Ethanol is not really chosen for its environmental friendliness. The environmental models I know of are based on the fact that the increased crop production produces a greater number of carbon sinks. Increases in carbon sinks won't show up in the EPA testing.

The real reason for choosing ethanol is its availability. It's easy to come by and is currently cheaper than gasoline. The US also has a great deal of surplus farming capacity from which to draw greater yields. (Though folks generally argue about how much surplus capacity there is, and how much can be brought online before food production is seriously impacted.)

Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol -- whether from corn, beets, wheat or other crops -- takes more energy than is derived from the product.

Actually, that comes from the US Government's ethanol studies done in the 1970s. Dr. David Pimentel headed up those original studies. Since then, technology has improved and the US Government's studies have shown it to be energy positive. However, Dr. Pimentel has continued to rely on the outdated figures in attempts to discredit the newer findings. So the ethanol community is in a bit of a flux, with Pimentel rallying his forces against the idea that ethanol is a sustainable energy source.

greenhouse gas emissions are not the point

Ethanol is added to gasoline to reduce carbon monoxide emissions and ground-level ozone as an alternative to MTBE. Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) have nothing to do with it.

I call BS!

Corn shortage my eye. The reason corn is a prime target for ethanol production is because, nationally, we grow far more corn than we need. You can thank farm subsidies for that little gem. Because it's all subsidized, corn is dirt cheap compared to a lot of other crops which is a major factor in using corn syrup instead of cane sugar in a lot of foodstuffs. The NY Times recently had an article [nytimes.com] (registration or BugMeNot required) on the egregious farm subsidies and how they make junk food artificially cheap to buy. Some highlights:

• The cost of fresh produce increased in price in terms of real dollars by over 40% between 1985 and 2000 whereas soft drinks using corn syrup declined in cost by 23%.
• A dollar buys you 1200 calories of cookies or chips but just 250 calories worth of carrots.
• The top subsidies are for corn, rice, wheat, soybeans and cotton. There often translate into cheap meats and dairy as most of this gets reused as animal foodstuffs.
• Most estimates are that subsidized US corn has displaced over 2 million Mexican farmers who move north to get jobs.

Blaming ethanol production for these ills is just plain stupid. Follow the money of the farm bills for real answers.

Article is incomplete or misleading

But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel.

No shit. Ethanol releases carbon dioxide while it burns, too. However, its carbon dioxide was already in the atmosphere, absorbed by the plants, then released again when burnt. That makes it carbon neutral*, even though the emissions are the same.

Or, did they mean to take that into account? Who knows, the article is incomplete or misleading.

* I'm talking about the carbon in the plant, not carbon used in production. That's next.

Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol -- whether from corn, beets, wheat or other crops -- takes more energy than is derived from the product.

No shit. Unless it violates certain laws of thermodynamics, of course the energy derived is less than the energy required to produce. But they don't talk about where that energy comes from. Maybe it's all from the sun, or from other renewal resources. Do they mean that the same amount of net fossil-fuel based carbon is released? Who knows, the article is incomplete or misleading.

Re: Food prices

The US subsidizes farmers who grow corn, because corn prices have been historically too low to support production. Now, corn prices are higher, and we're complaining about what it does to food costs? How about we take away the subsidies - clearly no longer needed - and give the money to food programs. Then, we look into the side effects of corn being the majority of all American's diets. See some of the repercussions in the recent documentary King Corn. [kingcorn.net] Maybe we could find something else that could substitute for corn in some foods. Like, say, sugar, if we'd remove our tariffs. (Hey, if folks from other countries could sell their sugar to the US for food, they'd have more money to buy our more-expensive corn.) Then, maybe we could find something better than corn to use for ethanol. Like, say, hemp or switchgrass. I'm sure if corn gets too expensive, some entrepreneur out there will start looking for alternatives.

But all of that would be constructive work toward making our planet a better place. It's far better to rant and rave and use single points of change as excuses to throw up our hands and give up.

This could actually be a very good thing!

The gateway for most countries to get out of the third-world-nation status is agriculture. The problem though is that the US government subsidizes US farmers so heavily that we are keeping the world market prices artificially low. If the ethanol demand increases crop values, the market will demand more crops and more poor farmers out side the US will suddenly have a profitable profession, spreading wealth, profit and MORE FOOD.

Either that, or we're gonna kill a lot of people.

only time will tell.

-Rick

Alarmist reporting? Also, NAFTA...

The change in prices in Canada, according to the article, was 3.8% year-on-year. Inflation, per the Bank of Canada, is 2.0%. That is a world-wide increase in prices? Inflation aside, the impact of transportation fuel prices on bringing food to the grocery store can easily account for that increase.

As for Mexico, how many ethanol plants are there in Mexico, a country that produces 3.5 mm bbl/day of oil and consumes 2.0 mm bbl/day of oil products (source: April IEA OMR)? Not that many. So why the impact in Mexico? It's because the US used to grow so much corn that we couldn't use that we dumped it on the Mexican market, lowering their cost of corn, and taking some of their producers out of the market. The sudden increase in ethanol production due to oil product price increases has sucked up this additional supply, and now those producers will come back into the market.

Yes, it sucks that Mexican consumers were hit with such a swing this year, but it's due more to NAFTA than anything else. So if you want to get your knickers in a twist about something (which I don't advise), blame free trade and the natural delay in the supply/demand feedback loop. But note how there weren't a bunch of articles when the price of tortillas went down after the implementation of NAFTA.

Brazil outside of this world, say indutry experts

. . . at least for the article writer:

The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, and Canada is not immune, say industry experts.

Not all countries extract ethanol from corn. Nobody does that in Brazil. All ethanol here is made from sugar cane, which has a higher production rate than corn. And, here in Brazil, the use of ethanol never made any influence on the cost of food, just a little bit on alcoholic beverages. :)

There are a lot of cars here running on ethanol since the 70s. In 1986, more than 76% of all cars sold ran on ethanol. For a long time already, all gasoline sold here has 25% of ethanol. Many of the cars sold in Brazil now are flexible-fuel [wikipedia.org]: they can run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol. They are a huge selling hit. All all gasoline stations in Brazil sell both gasoline and ethanol

More information about ethanol in Brazil can be found at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

Re:Corn Syrup

remove the sugar tariff and then you will see big changes.

Re:Corn Syrup

farmers have been severely pissed off about the low prices they've been getting. One frind of mine who farms poined out there's more money in hauling garbage per ton than selling corn per ton.

Exactly. Corn prices have been near historic lows, and now we finally have upward change (which apparently is something the under-educated news media doesn't grasp. Guess we know who flunked out of calculus in school).

I live in rural Iowa and work in Nebraska and have many friends who are row crop farmers. Both corn and soybean prices have finally increased past the government subsidy for minimum prices (which unfortunately has detrimental effects itself). Last year, farmers were dumping crops and not even bothering to store them due to the prices being so low. The took the subsizided minimum price and cut their losses. More farmers were squeezed out of the market. The U.S. economy has had a massive shift from farm-oriented rural economies over the past century (from 95% rural agricultural focused to less than 5%) which automation and technologies certainly improves, but the losses we've seen since 1990 has had little to do with any further automation.

Unless you've inherited at least 2,000 acres, you can't make the finances work in today's row crop economy. Those that are doing fine have more than 3,000 acres per family for corn and beans in our parts. At $2,200 to $3,200 an acre, you cannot purchase new land and go into farming and survive, even with considerable governmental support. You have to have a base of inherited land that has nearly zero cost as a base, and even then you're dependent upon subsidized government crop insurance. Consider these numbers: good corn yields around these parts of the Midwest are 140 bushels per acre. At $2.50 a bushel, your gross income per acre is a whopping $350. Less fuel costs, seed costs, fertilizer and other chemical costs, irrigation, crop insurance, tractor & combine machinery costs, contractor costs for spraying, trucking costs to move crops from the field to market, and any storage costs, you're looking at hard costs of $200-$250 per acre. $100 income per acre, before labor and land cost. Remember, I said you had to already own the land, because if you do the net present value math on 1,000 acres at $2500/acre (6% over 10 years), you'll be paying $340 per year per acre - which is almost as much as your gross profit itself. Care to dive into farming?

So understand that corn prices have been historically low, and now they are finally changing due to demand for the product. Any economist worth his salt can tell you the crops being produced aren't priced right when the total profit from the sale of those crops barely covers the cost of dormant land, let alone all the other expenses (using pragmatic numbers assuming 10% margins bearing full costs, we should expect to see $7 to $8 dollar corn per bushel, or must see a dramatic devaluation in farmland prices). Foreign subsidization of corn crop production has also kept prices unnaturally low, as well as import barriers on U.S. product. Just like global warming, you cannot have a rational perspective if you accept only the extreme outliers at one tail and call that a central tendency. Prices will change, and in this case, regression to the mean [wikipedia.org] is going to occur (meaning that things tend to want to go back to the normal medium, rather than staying at the extremes).

If you're looking for things to panic about, this isn't one of them. Be thankful that we won't lose even more U.S. crop production human capital, or the natural correction of this unnatural trend will be even more dramatic. Be encouraged that poor foreign farmers in Mexico, South America and elsewhere are being paid more for their crops, instead of throwing a couple more billion dollars at the oil elites. If you hate big business, hate the multi-billionaire clubs, hate corrupt oil cartels, then spend your gas money on ethanol fuel and biodiesel.

Re:Food is too cheap

Anything that raises the price of food means portions will need to be reduced, and farmers will be more likely to be able to support themselves by growing crops.

In the US, sure, this could possibly lead to smaller portions, but what about people in other countries that don't have enough to eat to begin with? The price of torilla's rising 50% in Mexico doesn't mean "smaller portions" it means NO portions.

Re:Wakeup call

Energy payback of biomass ethanol [cornell.edu] is negative meaning more energy from fossil fuels are consumed in the production of biomass ethanol than energy provided by the ethanol.

Cornell, Cornell. That sounds familiar. Oh yeah! Isn't that where Pimentel works? i.e. The same guy who's been trying to discredit ethanol for the past 30 years?

Studies that have been done independent of Pimentel's research have shown the exact opposite to be true:

List of studies [journeytoforever.org]

* "Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol" - "We show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24."

* "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update" - "For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain."

* "How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?" - "Using the best farming and production methods, the amount of energy contained in a gallon of ethanol is more than twice the energy used to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol."

* "New study confronts old thinking on ethanol's net energy value" - "Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce, according to a recent study by Argonne National Laboratory conducted by Michael Wang."

Why is it that every study that shows ethanol as net negative has Pimentel's name on it somewhere, while independent studies are quickly showing the exact opposite to be true?

Pimentel's numbers were probably correct in the 1970s. It's not the 1970s anymore, and that guy is becoming a serious pain in the posterior.

Re:Don't worry, capitalism to the rescue

If corn prices doubled, then more farmers will plant corn, and it will cause the price of corn to drop. I'm sure at some point there will be a crisis where too much corn is produced, which will cause a plummet of corn prices and another "corn crisis", and less farmers will plant corn, cycle repeats, etc. It will all work itself out.

First, capitalism needs to come into play. Right now, farmers grow as much corn as physically possible knowing that the government will buy it at a set rate, regardless of what the commodity price is.

The government needs to remove it's hand from this one and let the real market forces go to work.

Re:What's really scary

#1 - It rots fuel lines.

Well, it's not compatible with buna-n based rubbers, but it's not like gasoline is all sunshine and fresh breezes. It's quite possible to buy fuel lines (and other fuel handling components) appropriate for ethanol. Most newer US-made vehicles already come with fuel systems that can handle 85% ethanol.

#2 - It clogs injectors.

False. Ethanol is a single chemical (it doesn't leave a residue) and burns 100% so it's not a likely cause of injector clogging. If you're using the wrong fuel lines... well, yes. That will cause a problem.

#3 - it takes 1.8 units of energy to produce and distribute 1 energy-unit of Ethanol to the consumer.

False. Pimintel certainly is loud, but he's just about the only researcher saying this, and he's basing his numbers on 70's era technology. Currently, you get 1.35 units of highly purified ethanol for 1 unit of fuel put into the effort (and that fuel can be ethanol or biodiesel, closing out fossil fuels entirely).

[ethanol] reduces your gas mileage, causing you to buy more gas.

This is true, ethanol has less energy per unit volume, so you'll get fewer miles per fill up. In terms of energy efficiency, however, ethanol is pretty much a wash. Now, people absolutely should know that they'll only get 75% of the range from E85 that they do from gasoline, and E85 will need to be priced accordingly, but I suspect that the difference is substantial enough that people will notice and demand energy-equivalent pricing.

Regards,
Ross