Summer’s bounty is starting to arrive at the market. This means corn, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash and melons for most of us. In other words, Picnic Season! This week’s round up of posts is a bit light due to the holiday, so I wanted to share some favorite links to summer recipes as well as our guest posts.

If you want to make something besides corn on the cob, this is an easy and tasty recipe for those fresh ears arriving at the market:

Baked Corn and Basil
Kernels and milk from seven ears of fresh corn
1/2 cup cream
3/4 cup two percent milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup basil
1 tbs. corn meal
3 tbs. flour
1 tbs. sugar
1 tbs. honey
1/2 tsp kosher salt
pepper to taste

Heat oven to 350.

Pulse half the corn in food processor until chopped fine, but not total mush. Add basil and pulse a couple more times until chopped. Put back in bowl with other corn. Add the dry ingredients like flour, sugar, salt, cornmeal and pepper. Mix. Add honey. Add the eggs and cream and milk and fold together. Pour into a two-and-a-half quart shallow baking dish. Bake in oven for about one hour until edges are puffed and brown and center is set. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. You can also use individual ramekins to make this a nice dinner party dish.

Links and posts after the jump.

Jen Carlile presents Dilly Wax Beans posted at Modern Beet.

Great Summer Recipes from Fellow Bloggers:
Food Blogga has some fantastic ideas for picnic staples like watermelon and potato salads. Try Tacos with Watermelon-Mango-Jicama Salsa and Patriotic Potato Salad.

Kalyn Denny posts with several new takes on coleslaw including such intriguing recipes as Lime and Peanut Slaw and Cabbage Slaw with Apples and Cranberries.

Cleaner Plate Club with Watermelonade.

Editor’s Note: This post was provided by one of our paid sponsors, Earth Cinema Circle, the only DVD club dedicated to increasing social & environmental awareness through entertaining films. Written by Ariellie Ford.

Behind America’s 99-cent hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that silently fuels our fast-food nation — Corn. In KING CORN, we meet two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who move from the east coast to the heartland to really learn where their food comes from.  They relocate to northern Iowa, home of their great-grandfathers, with a mission.  They will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what all of us are really made of — Corn. This entertaining and informative film is now available from Earth Cinema Circle.  The following is from an interview with Curt Ellis, co-producer of the film.

AF: How did you get started on this journey?
Curt: Ian Cheney & I were graduating from college and realized we knew next to nothing about the food we were eating every day.  It felt like our education was incomplete. On a whole other level, the obesity and diabetes epidemic caught our attention.  We saw a report that said people of our generation were likely to have a shorter life expectancy than our parents.  We decided to look into this and fill the gap in our education because we wanted to understand where our food was coming from.  In the process of trying to learn more about our diet, we had our hair analyzed and discovered that the actual carbon in our bodies is more than half corn.  Ian found out he was 58% corn and I was 53% corn.  We were pretty shocked.

AF: What inspired you to plant your own acre of corn and “experience” the farming process and why Iowa?
Curt:  We felt like if we didn’t know that we were half corn then others probably didn’t know it as well.  We decided to “tell” this story and we thought the best way to learn about the role of corn was to grow it ourselves and follow it to market. We moved to Iowa and grew one acre of corn in the way a typical farmer would grow 1,000 acres of corn.  We used genetically modified feed, anhydrous ammonia fertilizer and a $400,000 combine.  We grew 10,000 pounds of corn. That’s enough to sweeten 57,000 cans of soda or make 4,000 corn-fed hamburgers.

AF: What was the mission of your film and what can people do to make a real difference?
Curt: Our film developed a mission along the way.  The mission is to help more people understand where their food is coming from and to understand the policies that drive the way we eat.  With some simple changes in farm and food policy, we can make some big strides in helping all Americans get access to healthy, affordable and fresh food.

Interview courtesy of Earth Cinema Circle.  View a trailer of their current films now.

Posts Related to King Corn and the US Corn Crop:

• Weekend Review: King Corn
• What About Your Corn Footprint?
• Corn Aliases: How The King Crop Hides In Everything You Eat
• 2015: 30% of US Corn Harvest Will Be Gasoline
• Seven Eco-friendly Options for Less Junky Junk Food

One theory that has been widely discussed in recent weeks is that the nation’s growing demand for biofuels and the crops needed to produce them is the real culprit behind higher food prices, both at home and abroad. Yet the evidence that we have seen. . .does not support this.

It’s true that higher demand for corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel has led to higher prices for those crops over the past couple of years. But we do not have a one on one relationship between higher prices for those commodities and what consumers are paying for foods at the retail level. There are many factors at work. . .

So just how much is ethanol contributing to global food prices? According to Schafer:

On the international level, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors estimates that only 3 percent of the more than 40 percent increase we have seen in world food prices this year is due to the increased demand on corn for ethanol.

Their reasoning includes things I’ve written about before including oil prices, economic and dietary expansion in India and China, droughts affecting wheat crops, etc.

For more, read the USDA’s biofuel briefing in its entirety or watch the video:

USDA video.

Organic, Vegetarian Corn Chowder

Melt in a medium saucepan:

• 2 Tablespoons butter (use oil for a vegan version)

Add and cook until softened (about five minutes)

• 1 chopped large onion
• 1 chopped bell pepper
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced celery

Add and cook for another five minutes:

• 4 cups fresh or frozen corn
• 1/2 teaspoon basil
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• pepper to taste

Add and cook 10 more minutes:

• 1 cup vegetarian soup stock

Puree half of the vegetables and stock in a blender. Return to saucepan and add:

• 1 cup milk (plain soymilk for vegans!)

This recipe is easy to adapt for vegans, and even though I am not a vegan, I always use soymilk in my recipes. We ate the entire pot of this corn chowder the first time we made it, and I look forward to making it again with corn from the garden in August.

More kid-friendly recipes:

• Mmm…Vegan Chocolate Cake

• Kid Friendly Recipes: Vegetarian Potato Leek Soup

• Beans and Rice, I Could Eat a Plate Twice

Biofuels are increasingly lumped into a single category of environmentally apocalyptic dead-end solutions. As the food vs. fuel debate rages on, it’s no wonder that the general public believes this.

But not all biofuels are created equal, as the chart above illustrates (click the image to see full size). It’s one of the best depictions I’ve seen of how each biofuel feedstock has completely different impacts on overall greenhouse gas emissions, water and pesticide use, and the energy required to produce the fuel. (Click on the chart for the full image)

The chart was created jointly by faculty members from University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy and published in the Seattle P-I (see the article Bio-debatable: Food vs. fuel).

Last week’s topic was why corn ethanol is an environmental loser.

But are all biofuels losers? No. Some can be winners. One of those is called cellulosic ethanol.

What Is Cellulosic Ethanol?

All ethanol — whether it is corn or cellulosic — is the same chemical compound: C2H5OH. You might recall from elementary chemistry courses that the “OH” group at the end of the formula indicates that the compound is an “alcohol.” Alcohols can have varying numbers of carbon atoms. Alcohol with two carbon atoms is called “ethanol.” The other alcohols are generally too toxic to be ingested, and thus ethanol has been the libation of choice down through the ages. (Ethanol used as fuel is rendered nonpotable.)

So corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol don’t signify different types of ethanol, but rather the different material (or feedstocks) used to produce them.

Why Cellulosic Ethanol Can Be an Environmental Winner

Corn ethanol is produced from kernels — actually only a small part of the corn kernels — the sugars and starches. Herein lies one of the limitations of corn ethanol. You see, sugars and starches comprise a tiny fraction of the corn plant’s mass — about 2-15%. Because only a small fraction of a plant is used to make corn ethanol, the amount you can produce is limited.

Cellulosic ethanol is a different story. Most of the dry biomass — as much as 80% — is typically made up of cellulosic material — the stuff that makes the plant sturdy. So you can make a lot of ethanol using a plant’s cellulose instead of its sugars and starches. (By the way, even if the cellulosic material comes from corn, we still call it “cellulosic ethanol.” Corn ethanol is made solely from the sugars and starches of the corn kernel.)

The Major Advantage of Cellulosic Ethanol

Our guts are unable to digest cellulose, so we typically throw away that part of crops. A lot of it is left on the field or disposed of as agricultural waste. For corn, the cellulosic material includes the corn stover — the leaves and stalk — and the cob.

Remember what made corn ethanol such an environmental negative? A main reason is that it requires that land being used to grow food (or left as forests or grassland) be converted to growing an energy crop. And that leads to lots of global warming pollution.

This is not a problem for cellulosic ethanol — we can simply use the agricultural waste from food crops to make the ethanol and thereby avoid all those emissions.

Why We Can’t Fill Our Tanks With the Cellulosic Stuff … Yet

Unfortunately, right now, producing cellulosic ethanol on an industrial scale is too expensive. Unlike converting a plant’s sugars and starches to corn ethanol, making cellulosic ethanol requires that we first break down the cellulosic material. But because this material is what makes a plant sturdy, the atoms in these compounds are strongly bonded together and that makes them hard to break apart. The processes we have available today to do this are too expensive to make cellulosic ethanol commercially competitive.

But that will likely change. Scientists and engineers are working to make a commercially viable form of cellulosic ethanol. Some are developing new chemical processes; others are trying to genetically engineer new microbes that can “ferment” cellulose into ethanol like normal microbes that ferment sugars into ethanol. (The U.S.Department of Energy is helping fund six biorefineries.)

Cellulosic Ethanol Could Help Cut U.S. Global Warming Pollution

By my own estimates, agricultural and forest wastes could supply as much as 35 billion gallons of ethanol per year, saving up to 76 megatons of global warming emissions per year. (These results are somewhat larger than but consistent with other recent estimates (e.g., see Smith et al. 2004).) Such savings would cut a little less than 5% of all our heat-trapping pollution and about 15% of the emissions from the transportation sector.

By mid-century, cellulosic ethanol could supply as much as 86 billion gallons of ethanol, saving a little more than 180 megatons of global warming pollution per year — or almost 12% of America’s total global warming pollution and about 35% of the emissions from the transportation sector.

These are significant numbers. But to reach such levels we would need to grow bioenergy crops such as switch grass. Such cultivation, in turn, would require converting lands for this purpose, and that could raise some of the problems discussed in last week’s post.

The Bottom Line of Biofuels: There Are Winners and Losers

The saying “waste not, want not” applies to biofuels. The best biofuels are made from agricultural or forests wastes or from plants cultivated on degraded or marginal lands. The product from such feedstocks — cellulosic ethanol — is where we should be directing our entrepreneurial energies.

Read more about Dr. Bill Chameides, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

See also:

CleanTechnica: Gene from Cow’s Stomach Engineered to Create More Affordable Biofuel

Gas 2.0: Mascoma Update — Cellulosic Ethanol Company Adds $10 Million From Marathon Oil

CleanTechnica: First Sustainable Ethanol to Mass Market?

About one-fourth of all corn grown in the U.S. is now cultivated for fuel rather than for food. Meanwhile, the growing demand for both food and fuel is driving commodity prices for crops like corn to record highs. That means, even with the federal government’s generous subsidies for ethanol production, today’s biofuel profits aren’t what they used to be.

While the pro-ethanol corporate types aren’t ready to call it quits entirely, some are shifting into lower gear or putting biofuel plants on hold. Which makes for interesting viewing, courtesy of the Biofuel Deathwatch List at Google Earth. The national map features an assortment of those Google Earth, yellow-balloon-like markers, each one indicating the location of a planned biofuel refinery that has been put on ice because of “unfavorable market conditions.”

On-hold plants range from Pacific Ethanol’s proposed facility near Calipatria, California, suspended last December; to Biotown USA’s planned refinery near Reynolds, Indiana; to the most recent, POET Energy’s proposed plant in Glenville, Minnesota, which the company axed last week citing permitting costs and holdups.

And if you think the Biofuel Deathwatch map is interesting, you’ll probably also enjoy another compilation by Earth2Tech: the Google Earth locations of all the recently canceled coal-fired power plants across the U.S.

Who doesn’t want to be green? But beware of automobile ads claiming environmental benefits from home-grown ethanol. Almost all U.S. ethanol comes from corn and, as a fuel, corn just isn’t as “amaizing” as they say.

“What if we could live green by going yellow?” one TV spot asks. “What if we could lower greenhouse gas emissions,” it continues, promisingly, “with a fuel that grew back every year?” Sounds great doesn’t it? Sorry folks, it’s just not so.

With corn ethanol, we are barking up the wrong stalk. This so-called yellow fuel is not green and the rush to it is misguided. The negatives of turning corn into fuel far outweigh the positives. First a little background.

A short history of ethanol

Ethanol has been around for a long time. Some of the earliest forms of life on Earth — anaerobic bacteria — used fermentation to produce ethanol and in the process extracted energy to drive their metabolic functions. In prehistoric times humans fermented grains and other biomass to make ethanol. Most of you have encountered ethanol in your lives — in beer, or wine, or the harder stuff. Ethanol is simply alcohol.

Using ethanol as a fuel dates back to the nineteenth century. It powered some of the earliest automobiles, including Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle. Interest in reviving and expanding the usage of ethanol in cars today has grown, in part, because of its perceived climate benefit.

When we burn fossil fuel, excess carbon dioxide (CO₂), the chief global warming pollutant, is released to the atmosphere. This, at least in principle, should not be the case for ethanol or other biofuels (fuels produced from plants and wastes). When ethanol is burned, its carbon is converted to CO₂, just as in fossil fuels. But because the carbon in biofuels is pulled directly from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, it would seem that burning ethanol does not, in and of itself, represent a net source of new CO₂ to the atmosphere. (See the Department of Energy’s diagram below.)

As it turns out, it’s not that simple.

Why ethanol is not effective at fighting global warming

To get the whole picture you have to consider ethanol’s entire life cycle — the energy inputs and global warming pollution arising from every step in the production process, such as:

• cultivating and harvesting the crop,
• refining the crop to ethanol, and
• its transportation to market.

Corn is a particularly hungry crop — it requires lots of water and nitrogen fertilizers. The application of fertilizers creates nitrous oxide. Though it’s called laughing gas in the dentist’s office, in the atmosphere it is no laughing matter — nitrous oxide is about 120 times more potent than CO₂ at trapping heat.

As you can start to see, corn ethanol is ineffective at fighting global warming. A research team from Princeton University led by Tim Searchinger pointed out an obvious but little appreciated fact about biofuels in a recent study. Growing crops for fuel requires cropland dedicated to that purpose. That can create a market imbalance.

For example, the seemingly simple decision to grow corn instead of soybeans creates a demand for soybeans that can only be met by someone else adding cropland to grow soybeans. Typically this entails destroying important rainforests or grasslands. This transformation of land spews huge reservoirs of carbon stored in that land into the atmosphere in the form of CO₂, leading to further global warming. It is mind-boggling but probably true: U.S. farmers growing more corn drives the destruction of tropical rainforests in Brazil as more land is converted to soybeans. Now that’s a global economy.

The Searchinger team’s results suggest that when land-use changes are factored into the equation any possible climate benefit from corn ethanol is canceled out. Searchinger’s models stunningly show that it would take 167 years of continuous corn ethanol production before it would begin to switch from a climate loser to a climate helper. That’s way too long to wait with global warming bearing down on us.

So, for the huge environmental price of growing corn for ethanol, what do we get? An increase in the very emissions we need to reduce — the precise opposite of what is needed.

The silver lining of biofuels: Degraded or abandoned land and waste

While ads might encourage you to go green by going yellow, I recommend caution. Given the present source of ethanol in the U.S., it is a bad environmental bet. Going yellow isn’t easy either. Sure you can buy an E85 car (one that runs on a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline). The car companies would love you to because they get a break from the federal government on meeting national fuel economy standards. But try filling your new car with ethanol. As of January 2007, there were only about 1,100 E85 pumps in the U.S. My own take on this is that we could accomplish a lot more, a lot faster by zeroing in on fuel economy.

So that’s the bad news about corn ethanol. But there is a bright spot on the biofuels landscape; it involves using biomass waste and growing feedstocks on land that stores very little carbon. We’ll discuss these solutions in our next post. Stay tuned.

Read more about Dr. Bill Chameides, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

See also:

Green Options: The Big Dark Cloud in the Ethanol Silver Lining

CleanTechnica: First Sustainable Ethanol to Mass Market?

Gas 2.0: First Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Goes Online, Makes Fuel from Wood Waste

Currently, the average price for a gallon of E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) is $2.67. That’s amazing if you think about it, since a gallon of ethanol requires about 16 lbs. of corn to produce.

Take a look at this interactive map to see what E85 costs in your area.

Via: gas2.org

As I reported last week, Europe’s EPA advised suspending the EU’s biofuel targets until a comprehensive environmental analysis could be completed. Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, said no way is that going to happen:

“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives,” meaning that changing biofuels targets could lead to questioning the entire climate change package.

European Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann said the EU isn’t really concerned about using food-based biofuels to meet their targets. Instead, they’re betting on increasing crop yields and the availability of more arable land, both from new member states and a decrease in compulsory “set-aside” (fallow cropland).

Mann even went so far as to say the US is primarily at fault for increasing food prices.

Whoever or whatever is at fault (see “Perfect Storm” Inflating Food Prices Worldwide), the increasing cost of food has already sparked violent protests in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania, the Philippines and other countries. Troops have even been deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to guard against food seizure from fields and warehouses.

In the midst of a food crises, it doesn’t take a skeptic to doubt the EU’s ability to meet their biofuel targets without further impacting food prices.

For more information on the role biofuels are playing in increasing food costs, see the following posts:

“Perfect Storm” Inflating Food Prices Worldwide
Biodiesel Myth (Or Fact?) #23: Biodiesel is Raising Food Prices
Europe’s EPA Advises Suspending Biofuel Targets
2015: 30% of US Corn Harvest Will Be Gasoline
Which is Worse: Exporting $1 Billion Per Week or Growing Fuel?

Photo Credit

Zoellick called it a “perfect storm of things coming together…” and listed 7 different issues contributing to the increasing cost of food, which led to rioting in Haiti and Egypt last week, along with a general strike in Burkina Faso:

1. High energy prices (which affects production and shipping costs).
2. Increase in demand from developing countries: “going from 1 meal a day to 2 meals a day” leads to an increase in the amount of food needed.
3. More meat in diets in developing countries.
4. Increased production of biofuels.
5. Droughts in important growing regions, including Australia and Europe.
6. Reduced food stocks.
7. Commodities trading/futures trading: food being used as a financial instrument.

Zoellick underscored that none of these issues was solely responsible for increasing food prices, but NPR’s host Steve Inskeep pressed Zoellick on how much biofuels were contributing.

He noted that a recent report released by the World Bank seemed to indicate that biofuels were the primary issue, but Zoellick maintained that it wasn’t that simple. Rather, the “combinations of events have led to an emergency situation.” But he also said:

“Biofuels is [sic] no doubt a significant contributor. It is clearly the case that programs in Europe and the United States that have increased biofuel production have contributed to the added demand for food.”

Listen to the Morning Addition radio broadcast (only 5 minutes): World Bank Chief: Biofuels Boosting Food Prices, or see last week’s post, Biodiesel Myth (Or Fact?) #23: Biodiesel is Raising Food Prices.

Related Posts:

Europe’s EPA Advises Suspending Biofuel Targets
Biodiesel Mythbuster 2.0: Twenty-Two Biodiesel Myths Dispelled
2015: 30% of US Corn Harvest Will Be Gasoline
Which is Worse: Exporting $1 Billion Per Week or Growing Fuel?

Photo Credit

No, I’m not talking about the demon-possessed hot rods (I think we all saw that coming). I’m talking about America’s zombie-like loyalty to a certain cash crop — one that has turned our entire nation into the children of the corn.

Lately, of course, you can’t watch, read, or listen to the news without someone touting the benefits of corn ethanol and how it’s the key to leading us on a path of energy independence.

There might be a *cough* kernel of truth to that argument, but… (sorry, I suffer from a cousin of Tourette’s that requires me to uncontrollably shout out useless puns)…

Seriously, corn is not the answer. It’s not even a major part of the answer. In fact, it’s a major part of the problem.

What do I mean? Well, lend me your *cough* ear (jeez, the medication is wearing off quicker)…

Corn ethanol was meant to be a supplement for crude oil. As such, logic would have you believe that as demand for oil went down, so too would its price. But, if anything, prices of the two have escalated hand in hand:

Crude oil has more than tripled in price from the $30-per-barrel figure of March 2004. Corn prices this month have averaged slightly less than double the $2.75-per- bushel average of March 2004.

The bigger problem with this scenario is that higher corn prices mean higher overall food prices. Corn, after all, is a staple of the diet fed to livestock, and so any sharp rise in the price of corn will have a dramatic effect on meat and poultry prices; add to that the fact that practically every mainstream commercial food product contains some amount of high-fructose corn syrup — and that corn is quickly gaining popularity as a replacement for petroleum-based plastics, and it’s easy to see why everyone’s grocery bills are going through the roof.

People like us, fortunate enough to be able to *cough* stomach these higher grocery prices, will find a way to adapt — we’ll cut back on the amount we buy, we’ll look for cheaper solutions. In the U.S., food prices account for only about 10 percent of the average family’s budget. It’ll make things tougher, but that’s not the problem.

The problem is that food prices are so high now that developing and poorer countries are having a much harder time feeding their people. In many developing countries, for example, food prices take up roughly 70 percent of that average family budget.

Is there a direct link between our current corn craze and global hunger? Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram thinks so:

Citing the US as an example, he said nearly 20% of corn goes to making bio fuels.

Mr Chidambaram said there was now a climate of food insecurity

“It is a sign of the lopsided priorities of certain countries that they will resort to measures that will produce fuel at a cheaper cost in order to meet the transport requirements of a section of their population,” Mr Chidambaram said.

He said the pursuit of such policies at a time when many in the world could barely afford to eat was “outrageous and… must be condemned”.

Granted, the rising price of corn is not the only culprit for rising food costs and I’m not saying we should do away with all corn ethanol.

But let’s be reasonable, you don’t replace one dictator (oil) with another (corn). There is no monolithic solution to our energy needs, in fact it’s the exact opposite: we need a variety of smaller-scale alternatives. Moreover, we need to emphasize biofuels that are native to a particular area, so switchgrass and algae should be just as much at the center of this discussion. Finally, it means we need to cut back on government subsidies for corn — how about directing those incentives toward encouraging other less-damaging alternative fuels?

So the next time some local politician spouts a *cough* corn pone notion that ethanol is our eco-savior, just remember that the argument isn’t so cut-and-dry, and that how we decide to pursue our energy needs here can have dramatic consequences all over the globe.

Now, imagine that, I managed to get through this entire post without one reference to being *cough* corny! (uh-oh, time for more medication…)

Photo courtesy of 0595

You practically can’t read a newspaper or news magazine without someone condemning the use of corn as an alternative fuel source these days. And who wouldn’t. The ethanol boom has driven the price of corn up, which in turn makes everything that uses corn go up in price. Corn is in a lot of products.

Why are we investing so much in corn-based fuel?

I think the answer is fear. Fear of rising oil prices. Fear of global warming. Fear of our dependency on foreign oil.

Fear is driving energy companies to move ahead on any number of crude oil alternatives in hopes that we can find a sustainable balance. I don’t think anyone is looking for a quick money making solution. It wouldn’t make sense to invest so much into the infrastructure of an alternative fuel source if those behind it didn’t believe that is was a sustainable business model. In today’s eco-savvy public opinion, a new business can’t survive if it isn’t sustainable.

Part of the problem we are in today is that we put all of our transportation energy eggs into the crude oil basket. Now that that basket seems to be killing us, we are scrambling to put our eggs into other baskets. Some of those baskets (like hydrogen fuel cells) are still being woven together.

The good news is that it seems as if we are diversifying our energy portfolio through research into a number of alternative fuel technologies, and some in conjunction with each other like the bio-fuel, plug-in, hybrid.

To me anything that can move us away from crude oil is a step in the right direction. But we don’t know how trying to grow our fuel might affect agriculture and commodities prices.

Maybe it’s fear of that unknown that keeps us from embracing ethanol.

There isn’t going to be a clean, neat little answer wrapped in a pretty bow to solve our transportation energy problems. As research and development progresses, there are going to be set backs. Whether they are spurred from changes in economic models, changes in government regulations and subsidy structures, or changes in the public’s energy usage, setbacks will happen. Those all seem like problems that can be tackled — unlike our current dependency on crude oil without investing in alternative fuels.

So I will gladly pay a higher premium at the liquor store pump for my bourbon if it means a cleaner more sustainable future. I just might savor it a little more.
Corn photo courtesy of just_a_name_thingie via flickr

Car photo courtesy of usaautoparts.net

Two soybean growers’ groups have suspended $1.5 million in funding from the University of Minnesota, due to research showing that biofuels could worsen global warming:

The study, by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman and others, said that dedicating huge amounts of land to grow corn, soybeans, sugarcane and other food crops for fuel could drastically change the landscape and worsen global warming. Farmers in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and other countries will need to clear forests, grasslands and peat lands on a massive scale to grow more of those crops, according to the research, unleashing far more carbon dioxide from natural vegetation than is saved by the lower emissions of the biofuels.

Is anyone really surprised about this finding? Suspension of the funds appears to be only temporary, until the groups have a chance to meet with the Dean of agricultural science. Jim Palmer, the executive director of the two soybean groups, summed up the situation: “The university hurt the farmers’ feelings, OK? That’s probably the best way to say it.”

Ethanol industry officials also had their say in the matter:

Ethanol industry officials criticized the study as a simplistic analysis that doesn’t include the economic benefits for those who grow biofuel crops or the environmental cost of continuing to rely on petroleum.

“The study was over the top by implying that biofuels were bad,” Palmer said. “Farmers were extremely surprised that it came out, why it came out, and that it came from the University of Minnesota.”

This would certainly be an issue if the University of Minnesota was in the business of promoting biofuels, and not interested in the usual process of scientific review.

The Tilman study was reviewed by independent scientists, a standard procedure, before being published in the journal Science. The report is not “anti-ethanol,” said Tilman in an interview when it was published. It recommends that biofuels be produced in the future from crop waste products such as corn stalks or from perennials such as switchgrass and native prairie plants.

The two soybean groups have a right to fund anything they want, but threatening to pull grant funding for “undesirable” research results may be a bit extreme.

Want to evaluate it for yourself? The study can be found here.

Related Posts:
Ethanol Industry: Jobs Are Better Than Food?
Study: Buying Biodiesel May Be A Gamble
Ethanol Industry Pays Off Subsidies, Boosts U.S. Economy (Bigtime)

Source: Startribune (Feb. 25, 08): U biofuels study has farmers upset

Photo Credit

Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, had this to say at this year’s National Ethanol Conference (via Autopia):

He calls the food-vs-fuel debate a “fallacy” that assumes “farmers are incapable of supplying the growing needs for food, fiber and fuel.” Besides, he said, biorefiners only need the starch in feedstocks; the protein provided 14 million metric tons of livestock feed last year.

Dinneen says a study by Informa Economics found ethanol production caused less than 5 percent of the increase in food prices last year. (The study was funded by the Renewable Fuels Foundation, which is linked to the Renewable Fuels Association.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fallacy since, as Autopia highlights, US grain subsidies are still implicated in world-wide food price increases.

A report this morning from NPR also weighed in on the value of protein byproducts and local economic stimulus produced by the ethanol industry (Listen Here: Ethanol Demand, Prices Boost Farm Communities). In Northwestern Iowa, local farmer Brian Friedrichsen describes:

“We are able to utilize the co-products from the ethanol plant, and so we’ve expanded our cattle operation a little bit every year for the last four years,” Friedrichsen says.

He says the feed from the ethanol plant cuts his costs by $40 to $50 per steer each year, saving him at least $200,000 annually. Friedrichsen estimates that the number of cattle being raised in the area has tripled as a direct result of the ethanol facility.

Farmland is also shooting up in value. A nearby farm sold last year for almost $7,000 an acre. Before the ethanol boom, an acre of farmland here would often go for less than $2,000.

There’s no question that ethanol is here to stay, but with major increases in food-based ethanol are we putting short-term economic gain at the expense of everything else?

Related Posts:
Popular Mechanics: Ethanol Bill Bad News
ADM to Pump Ethanol Plant’s CO2 Under Illinois
The Growing Need for Fuel Substitution, Efficiency, and Conservation

NPR (Mar. 4, 08), Morning Edition: Ethanol Demand, Prices Boost Farm Communities, by Jason Beaubien

Autopia (Feb. 27, 08): Ethanol Industry, Bigger Than Ever, Says Its Critics Are Wrong

An economic analysis released February 25th shows major gains for the U.S. job market and GDP from 2007’s ethanol industry boom (emphasis added):

The analysis, conducted by John Urbanchuk of LECG, LLC, determined that the increase in economic activity resulting from ongoing production and construction of new capacity supported the creation of 238,541 jobs in all sectors of the economy during 2007. These include more than 46,000 jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The goods and services required to produce the estimated 6.5 billion gallons in 2007 added $47.6 billion to the Gross Domestic Product and raised household incomes by $12.3 billion.

While the gains themselves aren’t all that surprising, they may turn the conventional wisdom that “ethanol subsidies are bad” on its head since increased tax revenue actually paid them off:

The resulting economic activity from the domestic production of ethanol also paid dividends in the form of lower government expenditures and higher tax revenues. In 2007, the tax incentives provided for the production and use of ethanol totaled $3.4 billion. However, the increased tax revenue collected by the Federal Treasury totaled $4.6 billion. Moreover, state and local governments saw tax revenues increase by $3.6 billion.

Here’s to an industry that can’t be outsourced, and it points to a bright future for the renewable fuels industry in the United States. Subsidies arent always just hand-outs — they can be good investments, too. And as we’ve seen lately, new non-food based ethanol and biodiesel technologies may be ready for prime-time soon.

Related Posts:
Europe Faces Biodiesel Feedstock Crunch; Subsidies Play A Role
Popular Mechanics: Ethanol Subsidy Bill Bad News

World-Grain.com (Feb. 25, 2008): Analysis: Ethanol industry was economic bright spot in 2007
See the full report here.

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Admittedly, when I think of the hearty, diverse vegetable we know as corn (maize to the Native Americans who received the seeds from tribes in what is now Mexico), I don’t usually think of making sweaters and purses.

Alabama-based Kollage Yarns is looking to change that food-focused perception with not one, but two 100% corn yarns.

The first of their two corn-based yarns is called Corntastic (my kinda word!): Our new Plied 100% corn yarn is an eco-friendly alternative to traditional cotton and wool yarns. Smooth and round, it shows stitch detail beautifully and has a light, soft hand. Corntastic makes great sweaters, skirts and even socks for both children and adults. Vibrant colors make Corntastic a staple yarn that you can depend on for superior results. Titled Cornucopia, the second corn yarn is one of Kollage’s all-time best sellers. Perfect for summer or winter, both Corntastic and Cornucopia can be both machine washed and dried.

Venturing into other natural fibers, Kollage also makes Creamy - an 80% milk/20% cotton yarn in seven unmatchably smooth colors, perfect for detailed or lace pieces. Made from 100% soybean fiber, Delicious comes in nearly 30 vibrant colors, as well as two stripped versions.

Looking to make even more of a difference in the crafty world, Kollage has created the U.S.A. Yarns Project, “a program whose yarns are produced entirely in the USA, helping to keep jobs here. From the field to you, the yarn is grown, processed and dyed in the USA.”

The first yarn from the USA project is Hope - 100% cotton available in Lace, DK, Chunky and Bulky dyed in 18 beautiful colors or undyed. Recently, they also introduced a DK weight 100% organic cotton undyed yarn.

Who makes your favorite sustainable yarns?

Which natural fiber is your favorite to work with? (i.e. cotton, wool, bamboo, hemp … etc.)

Let us know what you love to create with and we might feature them in the next installment of Yearn-Worthy Yarns!