Corn famine?

By Jack H. Knowlan Sr.

The first reply I got when I mentioned a corn famine to a friend was, "Well, we don't eat much corn." The problem is that apparently the majority of people do not realize how dependent we are on corn.

Let's take the cattle industry for an example. The cattlemen may be asleep at the switch, but the cattle feeders certainly are not. The first thing they did was lower the price they could pay for calves by about 25 to 30 percent. This was necessary to offset the increase in the price of corn. They really do not want to buy young calves, and the University and Extension people are going to suggest that they have to grass-feed their calves to a heavier weight so they won't have to feed so much corn. The problem here is that nearly all the cow-calf producers I know have their pastures stocked to the hilt with momma cows. The inevitable result will be that we will have fewer calves produced, fewer cattle on feed, poorer quality grass-fed beef, higher prices on all finished beef and it will undoubtedly eliminate any chance of exporting beef that our cattlemen have worked so diligently to exploit.

Now let us look at the pork and poultry industry. They can easily produce all the chicks and piglets they can sell, but can they afford to feed them up to marketing age and, in the case of egg producers, feed them and sell reasonable priced eggs? The answer is, of course, yes -- but at a much higher price. Again this will again practically eliminate any export business, which the producers currently enjoy. Some producers would say, "Yes, but we can feed them milo and wheat." The problem here is that most farmers I have heard are planning to plant at least 20 percent more corn. This will mean less milo, soybeans, peanuts or whatever their alternate crop may be, resulting in less of that feed available and, of course, higher prices. You can bet the milo price will, as it already has, rise in direct proportion to corn. I won't even cover the dairy industry, but you can bet the price of milk will go right along with corn.

In order to understand the seriousness of the problem, you need to look at the cause, the history and the proposed increases of ethanol in the United States.

According to the Feb. 12 issue of the U.S. News & World Report, we have already gobbled up 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop and produced 5 billion gallons of ethanol. The famine potential comes when you consider that the 5 billion gallons was produced by 112 ethanol plants now in production, 76 more are under construction and 200 more have been proposed. Apparently it all started when Congress offered a subsidy to oil companies for every gallon of alternate fuel blended into their gasoline. Then in 2005 when gasoline prices skyrocketed due to the Iraq war, ethanol refineries could receive far more from the oil companies than their production cost.

To make matters worse, in 2005 Congress wrote into its energy bill a mandate to oil refineries to double the amount of ethanol blended gasoline by 2012. The tax break for ethanol blended gasoline is now at 51 cents per gallon. So profitable that even Bill Gates saw fit to invest $140 billion in Pacific Ethanol of Fresno, Calif. Although President Bush proposed a 35 billion-gallon goal in his State of the Union address, the ethanol industry has conceded to a ceiling of about 15 billion a year. Even this would, according to my calculations, amount to about 60 percent of our corn crop, which could be disastrous for our economy, our own food supply and virtually eliminate all exports of grain and meat.

In case the above is not enough to convince you, there are other problems with the production of ethanol. If all the 188 plants now in production or being constructed plus the 200 proposed were to be in production it would be a serious threat to our natural gas supply. Many of the plants are or will be using natural gas for energy and farmers growing the corn will be using a lot more nitrogen to produce more corn, which is also made from natural gas. Coal-burning plants will release more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

Then there is the transportation problem. Most of the ethanol plants are in the Midwest and the refineries are on the Gulf Coast and there are no pipelines.

According to the U.S. News & World Report article, about 25 percent of the ethanol is moved by truck to the refineries, burning lots of unnecessary diesel fuel. It also reports that it takes 1.5 gallons of ethanol to drive as far as one gallon of gasoline.

In my opinion, Congress and the president should put a cap on the amount of corn used for ethanol production and repeal the 51 cent per gallon tax break ($2.5 billion last year) for the production of ethanol. Unfortunately our politicians are more interested in saying they are reducing our dependency on foreign oil and doing the corn farmers a big favor and are not smart enough or refuse to look at the crisis and damage it will eventually cause to our country. the 51 cents per gallon for10 percent ethanol amounts to $5.10 per gallon of 100 percent ethanol produced.

Jack H. Knowlan Sr. is a Jackson resident.