'That U.S. farm and energy policy is abetting this artificial famine is unconscionable'

The facts of corn ethanol are otherwise. In exchange for what amounts to a whopping $0.51 per gallon subsidy for ethanol blenders (reduced to $0.45 per gallon in the recent Farm Bill), American farmers have produced record amounts of corn. This has resulted in making a fuel that takes more energy to produce than we get out of it, increased food prices around the world, increased use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

How did this happen? To grow more corn, farmers reduced soy bean production, much of which shifted to Brazil. To grow more soy beans, Brazilians cut down rain forest – this, of course, has ruinous implications for greenhouse gas emissions, one of the supposed benefits of turning corn into vehicle fuel.

In addition to being bad environmental policy, corn ethanol subsidies have added misery to the world's poor. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, about one-fifth of the big run-up in world food prices has been caused by U.S. corn-ethanol subsidies. International organizations peg food price increases due to corn ethanol much higher, at 40 percent. With food riots in Mexico, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Haiti, our corn ethanol subsidies are dangerously immoral as well as foolish.

Less than a month ago, I had the chance to summarize my opposition to corn ethanol subsidies at an educational symposium. "Energy Alternatives: America's Challenge in the Global Economy" was sponsored by the University of California, Irvine, the Milken Institute, and the New Majority California Energy Task Force on May 13. Speaking on a panel immediately after former governor, and current California State Attorney General Jerry Brown spoke – surprisingly, Brown had favorable words for nuclear power – I boosted modern nuclear power as a way to reduce greenhouse gases and reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels.

During my talk I warned that not every renewable energy source is helpful in the effort to address global warming, specifically singling out corn ethanol because it is, "…destroying Brazilian rainforest as soybean production has shifted from the U.S., it is also starving people in the third world and causing unrest."

My remarks caused a bit of a stir, causing another panelist, Anne Korin, an energy policy analyst and co-chair of the Set America Free coalition and a director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS), to strongly defend corn ethanol at the conclusion of the conference. Ms. Korin passionately stated that corn ethanol is not causing a rise in world food prices since American farmers are exporting more grain than ever. She also emphatically disputed the notion that corn ethanol was causing any destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, pointing out that sugar cane is grown outside of the rainforest region in Brazil.

As I previously cited, Anne Korin's first statement regarding food prices is flat wrong according to government officials who track such things. Further, to someone in the third world spending 80 percent of their income on food, any increase in the cost of food is devastating and can push their family into starvation. That U.S. farm and energy policy is abetting this artificial famine is unconscionable.

Ms. Korin's second assertion completely misses the mark. I never linked the destruction of the rainforest in Brazil to sugar cane; rather, I linked it to the U.S. appetite for corn ethanol which has displaced domestic soybean production to nations such as Brazil where they have cut down rainforest to put more land into production. According to a study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy published in Science in February, 2008, increased demand for corn ethanol is contributing to the conversion of the Brazilian Amazon into farmland as Brazilian farmers grow the soybeans U.S. farmers used to grow.

If we want more affordable ethanol, the best U.S. policy would be to drop our $0.54 per gallon tariff on ethanol imported from nations such as Brazil where they make ethanol from sugar cane. Sugar cane, by the way, is eight times more efficient at making fuel than corn and it is grown in the southern U.S.

~ From: Corn, Imported Oil, Nukes, and Global Warming ~