Democrats, Republicans and Archer Daniels Midland tell us ethanol is all gain and no pain, but the opposite is closer to the truth.
Ethanol’s corn pone politics
By
John Ertl
Corn-based ethanol has faded a bit from the campaign spotlight as we move further and further away from the Iowa caucuses, but ethanol remains an almost unassailable political issue even as grain shortages spur food riots throughout the world.
Ethanol is made in the U.S. as opposed to the Middle East. It’s made from corn, something that we grow a lot of here in the Midwest. And it burns cleaner than gas. What isn’t there to like about ethanol?
That is exactly the rhetorical question Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra, and all the other corporate agri-businesses want us to ask.
First, it takes fossil fuels to make corn ethanol, so any perceived benefits from ethanol are greatly diminished by this revelation. In fact, just 1 acre of corn takes 110 gallons of gas to plant, fertilize, harvest, and transport. Robert Rapier, an oil industry engineer, put it best when he said that "Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas."
Two gallons of water go into making every gallon of corn ethanol. This only exacerbates our increasingly prevalent shortage of water in some areas. When corn ethanol is burned, it releases 150 percent more carcinogenic acetaldehyde fumes than does regular gas.
It gets better. Since making ethanol from corn raises the prices of U.S. crops and takes them out of the price range of most developing nations, farmers all over the world pick up some of the slack with slash-and-burn agriculture, which further depletes our rain forests and further increases climate change.
Corn ethanol proponents claim that ethanol will save us money while reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Sadly, this isn’t true either. Corn ethanol will never save us money over fossil fuels as long as it takes fossil fuels to make the ethanol. Chemical engineers calculated the energy balance of corn ethanol to be 1.3 to 1. That means that for every unit of energy put into making corn ethanol, only 1.3 units of energy are produced. When compared to cellulosic ethanol’s energy balance of 2.6 to 1, gasoline’s energy balance of 5 to 1, sugarcane ethanol’s energy balance of 6 to 1, or hydropower and wind power’s balance of 10 to 1, it doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that corn ethanol is a big energy dud.
It is estimated that if we completely phased out traditional gasoline and replaced it with ethanol-blended fuels, our dependence on foreign oil would only be reduced by 7 percent. Other renewable resources prove to be much more effective in alleviating our energy dilemma.
The Brazilians make sugarcane ethanol for a fraction of the cost that it takes us to make corn ethanol, and yet sugarcane ethanol is five times more efficient than corn ethanol. This should be a no-brainer. The reason Brazilian sugarcane ethanol isn’t imported here is because we levy a 54¢ tariff on every gallon of the stuff, so there is essentially no competition—our burdensome, inefficient corn ethanol wins every time.
We are forced to pay higher prices for fuel because of the monopoly that corn has on the ethanol market. Although alternatives to corn such as saw grass and sugarcane prove to be much more efficient at making ethanol, no other source can break into the ethanol market because of the massive federal subsidies that go to corn ethanol. As long as the corporate agri-businesses get a 51¢ break for every gallon of corn ethanol that is produced, no alternatives to corn will yield a comparable profit.
Originally intended to nurture the infant industry of corn ethanol in the 1970’s, federal subsidies for corn ethanol have remained in place despite the industry’s growth and profitability. Midwestern politicians grew attached to the vast amounts of money that flowed into their home states from the ethanol subsidies. As a result, the laws never changed, and now we have a monster on our hands because of the political satisficing done by our elected officials. $9 billion is spent annually in unnecessary corn ethanol subsidies that are ultimately detrimental to our nation. Just think of how many kids we could send to college with that money, or how many hospital visits that money would pay for. Instead, it’s all going to Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra.
Archer Daniels Midland is leading the pack of corporate agribusinesses when it comes to preserving their political clout. Since 2000, they have dolled out nearly $4 million to politicians of both parties. To them, it’s a small price for what they get in return: total insulation from the free market and billions in guaranteed profits via federal subsidies and tariffs.
Five years ago corn used for ethanol accounted for 7 percent of our total U.S. corn supply. Today it is more than 20 percent. As a result, the price of corn has skyrocketed, more than doubling in the past two years alone.
In fact, the price to feed a hog increased 85 percent last year. Jeff Goodell wrote in Rolling Stone magazine that “In some parts of the country, hog farmers now find it cheaper to fatten their animals on trail mix, french fries and chocolate bars.”
In his State of the Union address, President Bush set some high production goals for corn ethanol by 2017: 35 billion gallons, or about 15 percent of the current gasoline demand. If we are to meet that goal, we will have to put more than 125,000 square miles of extra farmland into corn production. Farmers will switch over from other crops to growing corn for ethanol because of the federal subsidies that make corn growing more lucrative.
Even with all that, the single greatest pitfall of corn ethanol is the effect that it has on the third world.
Because of the U.S.’s comparative advantage in agriculture and the advent of free trade, America exports two-thirds of the world’s corn supply. The main source of calories for many low-income Mexicans is flat corn bread. Since the price of corn rose so substantially last year the price of flat corn bread went up by over 400 percent. Mexicans rioted in the streets and forced their government to subsidize tortillas after people could no longer afford to feed their families.
But this is just one example. Every nation that imports food from the U.S. will be adversely affected from increased corn prices. One study predicts that our ethanol habit will increase the number of chronically hungry people in the world by more than 600 million 20 years from now. Indeed, the amount of corn that goes into a full tank of ethanol for an SUV would feed one person for a year. This is an atrocity beyond description.
April 24, 2008
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John Ertl lives in Park Falls, Wisconsin, and is a student at Cornell University.
