The surging biofuel industry will use 27% of this year's American corn crop, challenging farmers' ability to meet food demands, the US government says.
Even with the projected, record 12.46 billion-bushel crop this year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says national corn stockpiles will run low going into the next crop year, when voracious ethanol demand will rise again.
Some 3.4 billion bushels of corn – enough to make 9.3 billion gallons of ethanol – will be used by distillers in the marketing year that begins on 1 September 2007, says the department, compared with 2.15 billion bushels this marketing year. About 20% of the 2006 US corn crop was used to make ethanol.
US ethanol output is on track to double to more than 12 billion gallons a year by the end of this decade.
2 comments:
I'll call bullshit on that one. We produce so much more corn (and every other food) than we need in this nation that a few hundred million gallons of biofuel won't do anything but make ADM and some commodities brokers rich.
Well, I shouldn't say 'produce more than we need' - I should say 'produce so much that's wasted', to be accurate.
Could we fuel the entire nation, at current consumption levels, with biofuels? That's a different story. But "the sky is falling and people will starve!!" is BS propaganda to de-legitimize and shut down biofuel production. The people who tout this argument usually fall into the 'so let's not do anything, and just keep using petro' category.
But... I like yelling that ethanol will make us all starve....
Good to know, ripley. My chemistry prof husband finds ethanol absolutely stupid as a fuel. We will use more energy to grow and process it than we will save.
And firing up the ol' coal factory in the farm country for processing ethanol kinda defeats the purpose of a cleaner fuel that's supposed to negate our need for foreign oil.
I think the article is just a warning that the farmers are all jumping on the ethanol bandwagon, and who will think of the children, the old folks and the helpless....
Actually.. can we drink ethanol?
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