END THE ETHANOL HYPE

The powerful corn lobby has successfully spread the message that making ethanol from corn will save on fuel costs, reduce American dependence on foreign oil and help save the planet from the effects of climate change.

It will do none of those things, but the federal government keeps subsidizing corn-to-ethanol, protecting the industry through a punitive tariff on competitive sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, and requiring that 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year (15 billion of them from corn) be produced annually by 2022.

This must stop.

Sen. Susan Collins brought a Maine baker, Ron Siegel of When Pigs Fly Bakery, before a Senate committee to testify how his soaring cost of wheat – rising from $7,700 to $22,000 a week in 18 months – had affected his family-owned business.

Corn-ethanol has stirred skepticism and opposition for many years, but the high prices and world famine have triggered mainstream revulsion. Some members of Congress hoped that the new farm bill would cut the federal support, but the final bill contains only a tiny 6-cent reduction in the hefty 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy for the corn-based fuel additive.

Many studies show that the benefits of ethanol have been vastly overstated. Cornell’s David Pimentel and the University of California’s Tad Patzek found that it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of fuel and that corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, counting the pesticides and fertilizer used, the farm machinery, irrigation, grinding and transporting the crop, and fermenting and distilling the ethanol from the water mix.

As for fuel economy, Consumer Reports says that a 10-percent blend, which all cars can use, could not come close to using up the mandated increase in production and has little effect on fuel mileage. It predicts a reduction in fuel economy if the ratio is increased. It found that an 85-percent ethanol mix would reduce fuel economy by 27 percent. Ethanol burns clearer than gasoline but pollutes more by its evaporative emissions.

Some enthusiasts hold hope for substituting waste fiber for corn. But the Pimentel-Patzek study found that switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy, and wood biomass requires 57 percent more.

It is high time to rethink fuel policies that raise food prices and spread world hunger.