Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

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By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 10-30-07

	Corn Cob Bob of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association

Put a plug on a hybrid car and give it flex-fuel capabilities and you will have David Morris’ dream-solution to our oil woes. This weekend, the Vice President of the Institute for Local Self Reliance spoke at the Alternative Energy Resource Organization’s (AERO) annual meeting, and argued that this kind of car will best utilize the current centralized electric grid system. A larger battery would give it the capacity to go further on less fuel. And flex-fuel would increase efficiency even more because it would allow the car to travel on gas or ethanol.

Ethanol can be derived from corn or other plants such as switchgrass, wood or shrubs, but corn is most common because it is easier and currently cheaper to produce. Regardless of the plant matter, enzymes are used to digest the material and turn it into alcohol – the kind that can fuel an engine but not get you drunk.

The plug-in flex car is just one part of what Morris has termed the, “Carbohydrate Economy,” based on the use of plants for fuel, chemicals, textiles, paper and the materials we live by. According to Morris, this car would tap into the current electrical grid systems at night and during off-peak hours. While there are issues with the way power is gathered, he argues that even coal-fired plants have less pollution than the oil we use to power our cars. Corn ethanol would provide the fuel and a new source of income for struggling farmers.

But farmers would not just produce the ethanol. Most of their new income would come from a shared ownership of ethanol refineries. This local ownership can reinvigorate local economies and provide direct income for farmers, and the idea has garnered support in the west as a means for farmers to diversify, including an operation in Malta Bend, Montana.

But this ownership has been complicated by government policies. While 50 percent of ethanol refineries were owned by farmers in 2003, around 80 percent of new ethanol production comes from absentee owned plants. For Morris, policy changes should be made at the federal and state level to support locally owned refinery development and corn growers.

Morris is not alone in his thinking. Ethanol became a media darling this year when D.C. politicians saw corn as an anathema for energy woes. Recently, candidates have been stumping through Iowa with various plans for a new corn-fed economy that will support farmers and garner votes. Senator John Thane of South Dakota asked NASCAR to “Race on Ethanol,” and “Win for America.” Even the President oil-man from Texas, has committed the United States to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017.

But proponents selling the economic possibilities of ethanol often overlook what critics have long argued are the major, untenable fall-backs of the fuel.

In the July issue of Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell revealed that ethanol production currently provides a mere 3.5 percent of our gas needs, and producing that amount uses 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop. This statistic is even more telling than the energy gain ratios being thrown around in regard to corn based fuel.

When the energy for fertilizers and fuel used to grow corn are taken into account, and compared to the energy ethanol produces, the “energy balance” is as low as 1.3 to 1 or, as Morris argues, can be higher than 2 to 1. In comparison, Brazilian ethanol produced from sugar cane has a ratio of 8:1.

The environmental implications of corn production are even broader. The ecological devastation of industrial-corn production can be seen in the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico where silt and fertilizers from farms upstream collect and deplete the water of oxygen, and kill most marine life. It is also possible that burning ethanol in our cars reduces emissions at the tailpipe by less than 15 percent.

And as farmers commit themselves to grow more corn to fuel our cars there could be less to fuel our bodies. Economists from the University of Minnesota have argued that the increase in corn ethanol will lead to higher food prices with devastating impacts for those who live in poverty. It is also a misuse of food. Filing the tank of one SUV with pure ethanol would take 450 pounds of corn. That much corn would provide enough calories to feed a person for a year.

For farmers around the west who have watched corn prices double in the last two years, David Morris speaks a flex-fuel language that is also fueling some current viability. But economically speaking, ethanol may not be the thing that will sustain farmers…even if they own the ethanol production plant.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon—about half of ethanol’s market price. This is a high price for a fuel that would only replace 12 percent of current gasoline use even if all of the US corn crop were devoted to its production.

Subsequently, the economists from the University of Minnesota argue that U.S. policy should not focus on providing the economic incentives for ethanol production that Morris encourages. Rather, the government must commit to increasing energy efficiency and devote financial resources to cellulose based ethanol rather than corn. 

While the Energy Department has planned to spend $385 million on six biorefineries dedicated to cellulosic ethanol, processing the fuel made from cane sugar, grasses, shrubs or agricultural wastes remains prohibitively expensive. 

Even so, Bush was also hopeful about cellulosic ethanol in his State of the Union address this year. “We’re very close to a breakthrough where we’ll be able to figure out how to make ethanol from other forms, other materials, like grasses, woods…All of a sudden, we may be in the energy business by being able to grow grass on the ranch—and have it harvested and converted into energy…We’re told that if we continue to focus on research, we’ll be able to, within six years, have a competitive fuel to gasoline.”

But before the excited President retires to his ranch in Texas to become a cellulosic ethanol farmer, he will need to realize that the costs of harvesting, transporting,and converting cellulose-based ethanol means that it is also not commercially viable.  He will also need to contend with a powerful corn lobby that wants to see King Corn in our fuel tanks.

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