Ethonal news...say good bye to more grass/wet-lands

[Bufflehead]

Corn supply worries analyst
Ethanol growth may spur prices

BY DAVID PITT
Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa — The rapidly growing demand for corn to produce ethanol is greater than the government realizes and could drive up food prices because of livestock feed shortages, an agricultural economist said Thursday.

Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank, warned that nearly twice as much corn as the government has estimated will be needed from the 2008 harvest to feed the ethanol plants that will be online by then. He blamed the lag on the failure of industry trade groups to keep up with development of ethanol plants.

Many industry observers rely on estimates by the Washington-based Renewable Fuels Association for figuring ethanol production capacity and corn demand.

Association President Bob Dineen said the ethanol industry is moving rapidly, but his organization's estimates are as accurate as possible.

He questioned the criteria used by Earth Policy Institute, saying some plants in planning stages included in the group's estimates may never be built.

According to the Earth Policy Institute's data, U.S. ethanol distilleries now online or in the works will pull an estimated 139 million tons — or 5.5 billion bushels — of corn from the 2008 corn harvest to produce fuel for automobiles.

That's based on 116 existing ethanol plants, 79 under construction, 11 undergoing expansion and 200 plants in the planning stages expected to be running by corn harvest time in September 2008.

The government in a February report estimated ethanol plants would use about 60 million tons — or 2.4 billion bushels of corn.

Keith Collins, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, acknowledged that industry estimates of ethanol production have lagged, but he was skeptical of the Earth Policy Institute's estimates.

"That strikes me as high," he said. "The point that they're making is a valid point. The expansion in the industry has been outstripping everybody's expectations. My experience over the last 18 months has been to be continually updating, increasing our own estimates of the production and corn use for ethanol."

In a conference call with reporters, Brown said the demand for corn by ethanol plants will result in higher prices for food staples such as milk, eggs, meat and cheese. That could create a backlash and fuel opposition to ethanol.

Dineen said Brown's estimates fail to consider that as much as 10 million more acres of farmland may be put into production next year.

"It ignores the reality of the marketplace," he said.

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 More ground being tilled under looks to be the future.

  It's going to be pretty hard to pass the clean water wet-lands idea, when big farming see's $$$ in more and more corn

 Wildlife is going to suffer...BIG TIME!! 

[pray for the fish]

That whole ethanol thing is a grand boondoggle once again made to order to enrich the large corporate farms and leave the environment degraded and the citizens with another tax bill.It is a proven scientific fact it takes more than 1 btu of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 btu of ethanol when corn is the raw material. Using native forbs is actually a positive result. I wanted to post the link with these facts but dang it I can,t find it now.

[BDub]

Prairie grass may be the answer.

December 11, 2006
DJ Prairie Grass May Be Alternative To Corn For Ethanol Use
Filed under: Ethanol — info @ 1:43 pm

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)–With world demand for both food and fuel projected to double in the next 50 years, researchers at the University of Minnesota are looking for ways to take the burden off corn as a source of fuel in ethanol, the Star Tribune reported. “Unless we produce food and biofuel in an efficient manner, they will be directly competing with each other,” said David Tilman, regents professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. “We will have high prices for both.” Researchers are examining a solution that would see ethanol plants supplied with a diverse mixture of prairie grasses instead of corn.

The grasses produce more net energy per acre than corn, and researchers say the grasses also act as a sponge for greenhouse gases before they’re harvested by soaking them out of the air and into their roots and surrounding soil. Corn growers are eyeing the research skeptically.

Nearly 100 ethanol plants that consume corn have sprung up across the country, and a director of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association has warned that supplanting corn with grasses would be a complex, costly task that could take years. But Tilman said that prairie grasses could mean a new, cheap-to-produce cash crop that would be more opportunity than threat to farmers, the newspaper said. In a cover story published Friday in Science magazine, the University of Minnesota researchers reported that a field planted with a variety of prairie grasses and flowering plants packed more than three times the energy of single-variety grasses.

The study estimated that mixed prairie grasses grown on marginal farmland would yield 51% more energy per acre than corn cultivated on fertile land. The grasses were grown on depleted land without fertilizers and pesticides commonly used for corn. They required almost no maintenance, so less gasoline and diesel fuel would be burned tending the fields. The study also found that the prairie grasses absorb about 14 times more greenhouse gases than is released in producing grass-based fuel. President Bush has touted research into making ethanol from switchgrass. North Dakota State University’s Central Grasslands Research Extension Center at Streeter is one of 10 sites where the U.S. Energy Department is testing switchgrass production.

The Minnesota researchers found that a single species of grass is less promising than a blend a prairie grasses, of which they studied 16 varieties. “Switchgrass is very productive when it’s grown like corn, in fertile soil with lots of fertilizer, pesticide and energy inputs, but this approach doesn’t yield as much energy gain as mixed species in poor soil, nor does it have the same environmental effects,” Jason Hill, a researcher who worked with Tilman, said in a statement. Ethanol producers and corn growers had mixed reactions. “Ethanol is ethanol,” said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, D.C., according to the newspaper. “We don’t have a bias as to what the feedstock is. The marketplace is going to determine what feedstock will prove to be the most economical.” Ron Obermoller, a corn and soybean grower in the Minnesota town of Brewster, said he believes corn will remain king in ethanol production. Using prairie grasses as an ethanol source would require the government to free up farmland that’s been set aside for conservation, which could face resistance. “I’m not sure we’ve got idle land,” Obermoller said. Conservation land is home to ducks and pheasants and provides hunting grounds and extra revenue for farmers, he said. Still, Obermoller thinks the potential of prairie grasses could bring some changes to the ethanol market. The market prices of prairie grasses would be much lower than corn, making it less justifiable to ship it long distances as is done with corn.

He said that would mean the clustering of ethanol plants near grass fields. “Instead of having big plants, we will have hundreds of smaller plants,” Obermoller said. “That gives the farmers the chance to invest locally.” (END) Dow Jones Newswires