Hello again, faithful readers. The Conservation Currents spinning bottle has pointed to me and there's no getting out of it. (Actually, I'd like to thank my cohorts for covering for me all summer and fall while I took care of a lot of other matters.)
Part of our business as a conservation district is to review and approve federal farm bill allocations to Bennington County applicants. The discussion inevitably leads to who actually benefits the most from the farm bill, corporate agriculture or the small family farm.
The "word" out there is the new farm bill is small farm friendly and as green as we have ever seen. I decided to do my homework and see. After a great deal of time trying to read the actual bill, reading the polls, the blogs, the newspaper articles and talking to people who know more than I do, I'm still not sure I can make heads or tails of it. One thing did jump out at me however and it is fairly controversial: ethanol production and subsidies.
Ethanol is basically grain alcohol (like moonshine or cornmash), and can be distilled from a variety of inputs. But it's refined and blended for an octane that will power an internal combustion engine, not just a Saturday night.
The grain du jour for ethanol production is corn, the crop American agriculture knows best. The new farm bill calls for a ramping up in production from our current 7 billion gallons yearly to 15 billion gallons by 2010, and an additional 21 billion gallons by 2022. This, combined with the new but embarrassingly modest CAFE standard of 35 mpg, is designed to replace gasoline with about 40% biofuels.
Sounds great, so what's the controversy?
First, there's the seemingly simple process of making the proposed 20% blend of ethanol and gasoline. In fact, the fuel blends being discussed are still experimental, and the refining technology and infrastructure are not yet proven.
Second, from my own experience, corn is hard on soil. Almost as important, corn is also labor and energy intensive. In fact, ethanol production requires 2/3 of a BTU input for every BTU of total energy output. (Still, that's an energy "positive.")
Promoters claim that biofuels are American farmer friendly, and will lead us to energy independence. In fact, only the non-farmer friendly corn cartel is capable of organizing the massive agricultural initiative envisioned by the farm bill.
Promoters say that biofuels will help recapitalize the American farmer. As above, not necessarily: the product still moves through the same distribution channels already locked in by commodity brokers.
Another issue is the cost crunch for the foodstock stream as commodity prices go up due to increased distillery demands. Ethanol promoters would say we can just grow more corn to offset the demand. But what about transporting and transforming that corn into food? What about the effects of growing corn on marginal soils, of weather? In fact, things could just as easily get worse. And although corn yields have been steadily going up since the introduction of hybrids and conservation tillage practices, how high can they go? Our present national corn production average is155 bushels/acre. Farmers would have to more than double those yields to meet the goals laid out in the farm bill. Not likely.
I'm a dedicated environmentalist and conservationist, and I think we have to explore the biomass/bioenergy frontier. But I am not convinced that, just because we have a corn culture here in place in this country, ethanol is the best way to go. But I've got more research to do, a great deal more information to sift. And we have numerous viable options, particularly regionally. So stay tuned. There's more to come from me.
Don Wilson is the chair of the Bennington County Conservation. Despite his skepticism about ethanol, he does burn biodiesel in his truck.