Corn is for People, Not Cars

I have mentioned before that it makes no sense to divert the production of corn to fuel for cars rather than fuel for humans. We aren't adequately feeding our current 7 billion, and we certainly can't feed 9-10 billion without more corn for people, rather than less. An Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times makes the case that this is the right time for the EPA to cut back on earlier US Government mandates that some corn be used for biofuels. The current drought in the midwest is driving up the price of corn, which will naturally be reflected in higher food prices--pushed that much higher if corn continues to be diverted away from the dinner table.

By suspending renewable-fuel standards that were unwise from the start, the Environmental Protection Agency could divert vast amounts of corn from inefficient ethanol production back into the food chain, where market forces and common sense dictate it should go.Previous droughts in the Midwest (most recently in 1988) also resulted in higher food prices, but misguided energy policies are magnifying the effects of the current one. Federal renewable-fuel standards require the blending of 13.2 billion gallons of corn ethanol with gasoline this year. This will require 4.7 billion bushels of corn, 40 percent of this year’s crop.Any defense of the ethanol policy rests on fallacies, primarily these: that ethanol produced from corn makes the United States less dependent on fossil fuels; that ethanol lowers the price of gasoline; that an increase in the percentage of ethanol blended into gasoline increases the overall supply of gasoline; and that ethanol is environmentally friendly and lowers global carbon dioxide emissions.
The ethanol lobby promotes these claims, and many politicians seem intoxicated by them. Corn is indeed a renewable resource, but it has a far lower yield relative to the energy used to produce it than either biodiesel (such as soybean oil) or ethanol from other plants. Ethanol yields about 30 percent less energy per gallon than gasoline, so mileage drops off significantly. Finally, adding ethanol actually raises the price of blended fuel because it is more expensive to transport and handle than gasoline.

We need to get our heads on straight over this issue, and the sooner the better.