Peoria Journal Star, IL
11-11-07
Growing controversy
By Steve Tarter of the Journal Star
PEORIA - It's been a record year for both corn and corn-based ethanol, yet Rick
Tolman, CEO of St. Louis-based National Corn Growers Association, just keeps putting out fires.
"It's definitely been open season on corn," said Tolman, referring to "King Corn," a recently released film critical of the nation's reliance on corn plus accusations that expanded ethanol production means less corn for food.
Along with the food-versus-fuel controversy, corn-based sweeteners have been linked to America's obesity problem, and environmentalists decry fertilizer runoff into water supplies from corn fields. "Negative stories have definitely tarnished corn's image. Corn growers don't have the resources to fight back," Tolman said.
It's been a wild ride for corn in 2007. Rising prices - up from $2 a bushel two years ago to $3.60 at present - combined with a rapid acceleration in ethanol production led to a record 93 million acres of corn planted in the United States.
An estimated 13 billion bushels of corn will be harvested this year, with more than 3 billion of that expected to go into ethanol production, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
But corn-based ethanol has gained naysayers along with market share. The fuel of the future has taken a lot of heat in the present, a fact not lost on U.S. Rep. Bill
Delahunt, D-Mass., a proponent of increased support for ethanol in a new energy bill. "Opponents of the Renewable Fuels Standard have decided the best way to avoid (a new standard) is to smear corn ethanol," he said in the congressional newspaper, the Hill.
"This clever campaign is loaded with half-truths and red herrings. Along with misleading claims that ethanol contributes to global warming or relies too heavily on public subsidies - subsidies which are a rounding error compared to government subsidization of the oil industry - it is often said that ethanol is not produced in a renewable manner or that it increases food prices," said Delahunt, who sees corn as the homegrown answer to the nation's energy problem.
"No U.S. soldier will ever die defending a corn field," he said.
But the ethanol industry has suffered more than just criticism in 2007. As production has soared - 131 U.S. ethanol plants are now in operation, up from 82

three years ago - an ethanol glut has developed, dropping prices to as low as
$1.50 a gallon in some parts of the country.
Despite selling for more than $1 less than unleaded gasoline, much of the ethanol is not reaching motorists because of supply problems. Too corrosive for pipeline delivery, ethanol must be transported by truck or rail.
There's also the matter of resistance to ethanol by the oil industry.
"Blenders have a real incentive to use ethanol and are moving rapidly to deploy the fuel, but there are significant infrastructure impediments that the oil companies could change," said Tolman.
"There's only one major oil company station that sells E-85 in St. Louis, a Mobil station near the airport," he said.
While the station owner has permission to sell the blend of 85-percent ethanol and 15-percent unleaded gas, the price can't be posted on the marquee, said
Tolman. "On the (E-85) pump are two notices - one stating Mobil doesn't authorize this fuel and the another stating you can't use your Mobil credit card to purchase it," he said.
Ethanol's problems may also be due to some miscalculations, said Neil Harl, agriculture professor at Iowa State University.
"The policy process essentially insulated ethanol production from the full range of market forces with the result, not unexpected, that supply lost touch with demand," he said. "Now there's not only overproduction on a static basis, there is the potential for a huge increase in ethanol producing capacity from the 85 or so projects on the drawing boards and under construction."
Illinois has embraced ethanol in a big way. But of the 38 permits for ethanol plants issued since 2006, only five are under construction, according to Crain's
Chicago Business.
Ethanol supporters call the problems growing pains. "We knew there would be some bumps in the roads," said Leon Corzine, former NCGA president who farms with his son in Assumption, south of Decatur. "You'll see some ethanol plants being planned slow down their development."
But the ethanol industry has come to "a tipping point," said the CEO of a company that develops biofuel refineries.
"We are on the brink of the next industrial revolution, on the verge of transforming our economy from a carbon-based society to a carbohydrate-based program with next generation bio-refineries," said Stephen Gatto, head of BioEnergy

International LLC, a Milford, Mass., firm that plans to build ethanol plants in
Pennsylvania and Louisiana.
"If it is not ethanol today, it is oil and if we fail to create a robust market for our
(ethanol) production then all attempts to move to the next generation of cellulosic ethanol will fail," Gatto told a congressional committee last month.
Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, woodchips and other plant material produces four to six times the energy it consumes compared with about one-anda-half times for corn-based ethanol.
Corn-based ethanol, while not perfect, has numerous benefits, said Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, D.C.
"No one is saying ethanol is the silver bullet. But we recognize ethanol to become an even more important part of this country's fuel mix," he said.
"What skyrocketing oil prices do is underline the need for an alternative," said
Hartwig, who expects E-85 to become more common after Underwriters
Laboratory approves equipment to dispense the fuel.
The push to develop a homegrown alternative to Mideast oil may be obscuring some realities of industrial farming, say critics. "Corn is our single biggest crop and uses vast amounts of water, pesticide and fertilizer. Erosion and toxic runoff from the fields pollute waterways and kill fish in the Gulf of Mexico," said Kelpie
Wilson, an Oregon environmental writer and author of "Primal Tears."
"Corn ethanol is not a good energy deal. The farmer's inputs in natural gas feedstock fertilizer, and the processing inputs to make ethanol leave corn ethanol as a possible net energy loss," she said.
But at the Peoria Ag Lab, where ethanol research has been done since the
1970s, Mike Cotta, research leader in the Ag Lab's fermentation/biotech unit, said more efficient processing and increasing corn yields put ethanol on the positive side of the energy equation.
Some would like to see the Corn Belt try another crop. "Basically we've replaced the short grass prairie with a big, tall luscious green plant (corn) that's far from its natural environment," said Ken Warren, managing director of the Salina, Kan.based Land Institute, an organization that seeks to restore the natural prairie with perennial grain crops.
While acknowledging that coming up with enough seed for perennials such as wheat, sorghum and sunflowers "is decades away," Warren calls the research effort "the best of both worlds," referring to agriculture and the environment.

Corn also is part of trade issues. America's huge corn crop could be a big problem for Mexico, said Keith Bolin, the Manlius farmer who is president of
Washington, D.C.-based American Corn Growers Association. "When the tariffs come off U.S. corn in January, Mexican farmers won't be able to compete," he said.
"This is a food sovereignty issue. Corn is who these Mexican farmers are. We'll be driving them out of the corn business. Trade agreements need to take that into account. We'll drive corn farmers off the land and we'll wind up with more people coming across the border."
All the talk about corn may just be a sign of success, say supporters. "We're sensing an anti-corn push because corn is no longer a boutique fuel. Corn is big enough to be a threat," said Corinne Young, governmental affairs director for
BioEnergy International.
Mark Lambert, communications director for the Bloomington-based Illinois Corn
Growers Association, has some advice for his fellow advocates. "I tell them you need to get a thicker hide," he said.
Steve Tarter can be reached at 686-3260 or starter@pjstar.com.