by Angie Mohr

Created on: May 01, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2008

We finally have a consensus on the simple fact that fossil fuels are being depleted and we cannot regenerate them in our lifetimes. One recent estimate says that we have 40 years of oil left. The good news is that scientists and philanthropists are working on the issue of renewable energy with increasing fervor. The major breakthrough in this research is the discovery that fuels can be made from recently-dead plants instead of only long-dead fossilized ones. Thus, biofuels became a reality. One biofuel with promise is ethanol. In the United States, corn became the main focus of the ethanol process. Corn is easy to grow, is well-controlled by pesticides and chemical fertilizers and there seems to be plenty of farmable land. It seemed like the perfect solution. Farm our fuels. It helps out the farmer by propping up the price of corn. The idea seems as green as they come. But is using corn as a biofuel really an earth-friendly solution? Time is proving that it is not.

The problem, according to Clare Oxborrow of Friends of the Earth, is that increasing demand for corn-based biofuels is leading to investments in corn destined for fuel rather than grains destined for food, whether it is food for humans or food for the animals that feed humans. Around the world, this is leading to food shortages and riots. In Africa and South America, wholesale deforestation due to the need for new biofuel cropland is having a detrimental impact on the ecosystem. According to The Economist, filling up your tank with ethanol one time represents enough corn to feed one person for one year. The demand for ethanol is still light compared with fossil fuels. What's clear is that if everyone moved to using biofuels in their cars and to heat their houses, there is not enough cropland on the planet to sustain it. We have just traded one non-sustainable source of fuel for another except this one will make us go hungry.

Another significant problem with using corn to produce ethanol is that it needs energy to create it- mostly fossil fuel energy. It currently takes 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to create 0.9 to 1.3 units of corn-based ethanol, according to research done by National Geographic Magazine. Hardly a solution to the energy problem. Compare that with the 8 units of cane based ethanol derived from one unit of energy in Brazil. The only thing propping up the current ethanol program in the United States is heavy subsidization by the government to the tune of $1.90 per gallon, similar to handouts given to corn-for-food farmers. Corn is clearly not the answer.

The United Nations expects that rapidly rising crop prices and declining grain stocks around the world will leave 100 million people hungry, a human-made disaster of epic proportions. A new solution for biofuel must happen before then.

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