by Dave King

Created on: June 27, 2009   Last Updated: July 09, 2009

It it interesting that most naysayers of ethanol use commonly state that using ethanol uses food stock. That's not true and hasn't been for several years.

First is that food corn is not the same as corn used for ethanol. If you are like most people (myself included) a few years ago if you mentioned corn people think of popcorn and corn on the cob and not much else, but here have always been several types. Even popcorn and good ole corn on the cob are not quite the same corn. It is used everywhere and in everything. If you ever get really bored read some labels at the grocery store and you will be amazed at what it is in. So it is a major crop and North America supplies about 80% of the worlds corn.

Corn or maize are grown world wide but since it is a species originating here it is not as wide spread outside of North America.. That would change if there was demand for fuel grade corn. As an example ginger is a Chinese root and 30 years ago everything came from China or Asia. About 15 years ago people started growing it in Canada and the US. Now they export back to China. Don't you think that if the demand is there the farmers wherever they can will grow a suitable crop? As a commodity item in demand you might even see a lot of non productive farms growing corn as cash crop. It is a crop that doesn't require irrigation, just the right conditions to grow. And those can be found world wide.

Second problem with the anti corn is that again the naysayers are outdated on information. Within the last 5 years there have been drastic and eyeopening improvements on what and how they use to make ethanol. Traditionally ethanol is a combination of sugar, water yeast and time. Ask anyone who has ever tried to make beer or wine and they will tell you how it is basically the same process as used since the beginning. In other words the process is a few thousand years old. It's been tweaked, its close to being perfected but it isn't the the only way anymore.

When a crop of corn is harvested most of the corn plant is left in the field in the form of leaves stalks roots. Depending on the farmer this is either cleaned off or plowed under and used to be burnt much like sugar cane fields. This wastes a lot of material that can now be used to make ethanol. About 4 years ago a pair of scientists on the east coast discovered a naturally occurring bacteria that digested cellulose. As well other found different variants of this that also digested cellulose. They found that by treating

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