King Corn is Dead, Long Live King Corn
Corn-derived ethanol isn’t dead yet, but it sure smells funny. After decades of intensive scientific research, public financing and commercial promotion, corn as a fuel source has become the most tested of the potential energy alternatives, and it has failed by every measure—economic, environmental, social and moral. Yet, through presidential mandates, billion-dollar subsidies, tax breaks, tariffs, and Department of Energy funding, the United States government has committed itself to greatly expanding its production in the coming years. That is, during this most crucial time—when we’ve finally comprehended the finitude of oil, the absorption capacities of our atmosphere and the demands of an ever growing population, when wisdom is called for in exploring energy alternatives—our tax dollars are enriching the usual big business suspects, not ensuring the security of our nation’s future.
Ethanol cannot even address the two problems it was allegedly intended to alleviate: oil dependency and carbon dioxide emissions. To produce energy requires investment—into research, exploration, exploitation, development, refinement and transportation. At the end of this process, energy output needs to significantly exceed energy input. Today, for example, even as oil becomes more difficult and costly to produce, it still fetches a ten-fold return on energy investment. With corn-derived ethanol, the number is a paltry 1.3—at best. That is, for every calorie of energy invested into it, ethanol yields, at most, 1.3 useable calories. Some analysts, such as David Pimentel at Cornell University, argue that when all the factors are considered, corn-derived ethanol actually comes out in the red. All the tractors and combines, distilleries, pesticides, fertilizers, and transport may actually consume more energy than ethanol returns. Similarly, when all the factors are accounted for in the Green House Gas equation, ethanol production and distribution releases as much or more carbon dioxide than does oil, especially as forests—which are big absorbers of carbon dioxide—are razed for the expanding crops.
This year, American farmers will plant some nine million of our most fertile acres with corn, not for food, but for fuel. This will produce about six billion gallons of ethanol, which will replace about four billion gallons of gasoline—since, gallon for gallon, ethanol delivers only 67% of oil’s power. At first blush, that seems significant—even more so if we visualize the requisite 1,500,000 fuel tank trucks queued up head to tail, three abreast, stretching from New York City to Los Angeles. Yet this colossal fleet would slake only slightly more than 1% of America’s annual 317 billion gallon thirst. Even were we to attempt the preposterous and devote the country’s entire corn crop (forty percent of all American farmland harvested this year), it would offset but a measly 10% of the country’s annual oil consumption.
Already, we’ve witnessed the social and environmental repercussions of subsidizing just the 1% offset: Corn prices rose 70% last year, sparking protests among the Mexican poor who could not afford the most basic staple of their meager diets—the corn tortilla. Fueling our trips to the mall now competes directly with feeding people. For perspective: carpooling, eliminating one car trip a week, or maintaining proper tire pressure would each save more fuel than all nine million of our precious arable acres can provide.
The ripple effect continues. To cash in on the subsidized corn, many American acres usually devoted to soybeans went to growing corn instead. Soy prices therefore shot up, as did beef prices (since soy is a common cattle feed). This, in turn, encouraged Brazilian farmers and ranchers to clear more Amazonian forests to grow these foods.
And, like all high-yield hybrids, corn requires enormous quantities of water, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides. Water scarcity and drawdown from the Ogallala aquifer in many of the corn-growing states is an accelerating problem, and oil and natural gas are crucial to the synthesis and application of fertilizers and various biocides, adding to green house gas emissions. Moreover, the nitrogen-based fertilizers are the principle culprits for the growing hypoxic Dead Zones menacing our nation’s coastal waters. Slightly more subtle, mono-cropping (growing one variety on vast tracts of land) is responsible for decreasing biodiversity, and increasing soil erosion and vulnerability to pest epidemics, such as the 1970 southern corn leaf blight and the black stem rust presently spreading across East Africa.
Of course, these ‘side effects” are not unique to ethanol production, but the realities of feeding a growing American and world population will by themselves strain our resources in the coming decades; clearing land for a dual role will only exacerbate all these already accelerating problems and threaten more natural ecosystems, as well.
For many of the same reasons, Brazilian sugar cane and Malaysian palm oil are proving, ultimately, to be highly questionable energy strategies. The jury is still out on numerous other biofuels, such as algae and several of the perennial rhizomatous grasses. As for hydrogen fusion, tar sands, shale oil and methane hydrates, all have their technological difficulties and environmental shortcomings. The various forms of geothermal and solar power (direct sun, wind and wave) will likely prove themselves as our long-term standards. Even so, across the political spectrum, (among those not directly receiving monies for corn production, that is) it has been unanimously agreed that devoting any more time, land and energy to this hopelessly inferior product is gravely unwise.
