Growing corn for ethanol will require 10 million more acres
The USDA has said that American farmers will need to plant ten million more acres of corn if they want to provide enough biomass for domestic ethanol production. Keith Collins, the U.S. Agriculture Department's chief economist, said there will need to be 90 million acres of corn by 2010 if demand for ethanol reaches the expected levels and markets for exports and animal feed are to be maintained. Currently, less than 80 million acres of corn are planted each year. Collins also said corn prices should increase as demand for ethanol grows. Collins said there are about seven million acres idled in the Conservation Reserve Program that could be planted with corn or soybeans.
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[Source: Des Moines Register]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jimmy 10:47AM (9/07/2006)
A key advantage of ethanol (and biodiesel) is the ability to be made from multiple agricultural sources. The singular focus on corn for ethanol is not a good growth plan.
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Howard Lee Harkness 11:49AM (9/07/2006)
Thank you, Jimmy. Corn is not the only feedstock available for ethanol. It isn't even close to being the best.
However, even the best available ethanol feedstock would not have the energy return of biodiesel, because of the tremendous amount of energy required to separate hydrophilic ethanol from water.
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1985 Gripen 2:41PM (9/07/2006)
Mr. Harkness:
Biodiesel (in B100 form) would be ideal, but with the current small percentage of diesel passenger cars, it'd take a long time to get enough diesel cars on the road for biodiesel to be an advantage.
Also, how do you keep the owners of these cars from running the more available petro-diesel? With the new '07 federal emissions regulations petro-diesels don't comply, as you know.
Maybe a program to try and convert all current diesel fuelling stations to B100 so that heavy trucks and trains run off biodiesel while passenger cars run off a variety of different alternative fuels (as no single fuel can supply all the cars on the road). Even if all the corn grown in the country were diverted to be used solely for ethanol production, that would only supply enough to power 12% of the cars on the road (or about the number of "flex-fuel" vehicles currently on the road).
So I can see a future where tractor trailers and trains run B100 and passenger cars run a mix (not in the same car, obviously) of ethanol, bio-butanol, and maybe some petro-chemical like CNG, LPG, etc. If these vehicles are also hybrid electric they can reduce the amount of fuel they use as well. So maybe there's a bio-butanol plug-in electric hybrid somewhere in the future!
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Marc 1:11AM (9/09/2006)
Meanwhile, billions starve while we decide to pump food into our cars. You could feed a person for a year on the amount of corn it taks to fill an SUV's tank once. Just 10,000,000 more acres? I highly doubt it.
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Brad 8:44PM (2/22/2007)
quit complaining about how much corn it would take to feed the hungry vs how much corn it would take to make ethanol, the world is over crowded as it is. If the world's population would put more stock into creating sustainable food stores and large scale renewable energy sources rather than producing a surplus of babies we would have far less need of extra ethanol.
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