Word: corns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indeed, corn ethanol is no slam dunk. It costs more than gasoline to manufacture. It breaks down in existing pipelines, so it has to be trucked. It gets about 30% fewer miles to the gallon than gas. And ethanol does little, on balance, to reduce greenhouse gases. Nor does it help that corn ethanol's success depends on imponderables like subsidies, commodity prices, the weather, Congress, the geopolitics of oil and a limited distribution network. "Corn ethanol is clearly flawed," says Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, noting the billions...
That leads to two big questions: If ethanol does develop into a major fuel, will there be enough corn to satisfy the demands of distillers, cattle feeders and food manufacturers? If so, at what price? The answer to the first part is "probably," as advances in genetically engineered corn fatten yields. U.S. farmers also are planting 90.5 million acres of corn this season, up 15% from last year...
...price issue is more problematic. Demand has driven corn prices from $2 per bu. to more than $4 in the past 15 months. Those prices have since fallen back to about $3.70. But if they climb again as a result, for example, of a drought that cuts the yield, then ethanol distillers, cattle feeders, hog and dairy farmers will be the first to pay the price. Shelling out more for corn would eventually translate into more expensive ethanol, as well as higher prices for beef, pork, chicken, eggs and milk--movement that the market is already seeing. Hormel Foods...
...what happens to prices in Yuma will be felt in Zambia, because corn is a worldwide commodity. In some ways, it's a very nasty food-or-fuel struggle. "The line that used to separate food grain from the grain being used for energy is being erased," says Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank in Washington. "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles and the world's 2 billion poorest people...
Today 119 U.S. plants produce 6.14 billion gal. of corn ethanol a year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), an industry trade group. An additional 86 plants are being built or are expanding, which could account for 6.4 billion gal. more a year. But William Tierney, a risk-assessment consultant with John Stewart & Associates who specializes in corn ethanol, estimates that an additional 400 projects in various stages of development could add 28 billion gal. to the RFA's conservative figures. Add 5 billion to 10 billion unannounced gal. that Tierney expects to hit the market...