Make Our Ethanol Comodulce!

In the upcoming election season, energy policy will be a major point of debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Legislative support for increased ethanol production, thus reducing our dependence on (foreign) oil and contributing to a healthier environment, will certainly be a key component of both platforms. What matters most, however, is the type of ethanol-production favored by the candidates.

Put simply, supporting corn-based ethanol production, heavily favored and subsidized by the Bush administration ($7 billion for 4.9 billion gallons in 2006), is flat-out irresponsible. Corn (maize) is among the least efficient substances to convert into biofuel. According to National Geographic, the energy balance of corn-based ethanol (i.e. the amount of input-energy needed to create the fuel versus the amount of output-energy the finished fuel releases when burned) is 1:1.3. This is particularly laughable when one considers the energy-balance of sugarcane-based ethanol: 1:8. Furthermore, U.S.-based corn-ethanol production and usage releases far more carbon dioxide (greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere than many other alternative fuel sources.

Encouraging agricultural resources to divert their attention from food to ethanol production poses serious risks to the world’s poor and malnourished. For example, it takes 510 pounds of corn to produce 13 gallons of ethanol (about one tank of gas). That much corn could feed a child in Zambia or Mexico (or even right here in the United States) for a year. Jean Ziegler, a UN food expert, states

The effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people. The world price of wheat doubled in one year and the price of corn quadrupled, leaving poor countries, especially in Africa, unable to pay for the imported food needed to feed their people. And poor people in those countries are unable to pay the soaring prices for the food that does come in.

International Food Policy Research claims that “the diversion of land to the cultivation of crops for ethanol production has contributed about 30 percent of the rise in food prices.”

Sugarcane, imported from an economically reinvigorated Brazil, would certainly be a less harmful and more efficient substance (both in terms of energy-output ratio and its productivity per hectare of planting) for ethanol-production than corn. Unfortunately, America’s corn-business giants, like Archer, Daniels, Midland Company (ADM) have, for years, fiercely resisted the importation of cane sugar, in an effort to simultaneously drive the price of sugar up in the Unites States and induce food and beverage manufacturers (consumers) to use a cheaper, alternative sweetener: high-fructose corn syrup. The industry’s aggressive lobbying strategies have resulted in high tariffs, trade barriers and import quotas on foreign sugar. With the introduction of a potential threat, in sugarcane ethanol, to their burgeoning fuel-empire, there is little doubt that the Corn Lobby will unflinchingly fight to maintain their privileged, protected status. Independent legislative action is required.

Sugarcane-ethanol is not the ultimate solution to our energy woes. Its cultivation does require arable land, which could be used for growing and sustaining edible crops. However, scientists are at work developing new ethanol products based on excess waste and leftover biomass, products which would have no immediate threat on world food production and consumption. Until then, let us hope our next President will review this issue, entertain the idea of cutting corn-ethanol subsidies while lifting the excessive tariffs on more sensible (and sweeter) solutions to our oil problems.