Word: yuma
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Most days, main street in the tiny farm community of Yuma, Colo., is slow, save for a few folks meandering from Hardware Hank's to the coffee shop and maybe some pickup trucks poking along, the better to avoid a stray dog or loose child...
...where Colorado's greenest acres gently slope into Kansas and Nebraska, is placing itself smack in the middle of the global energy game. Farmers are plowing their fields, planting corn and feeding cattle while work continues on the first of two multimillion-dollar corn-ethanol plants that could transform Yuma into one of the more vibrant alternative-fuel production centers in the Western U.S. The timing couldn't be better, with gasoline prices well over $3 per gal. as the summer driving season begins. But the choice of corn-based ethanol is one that might not play...
...ethanol-distilling plant owned by the locally backed Yuma Ethanol, whose investors include farmers, ranchers and other businesspeople from the area, is scheduled to open in July. Another plant is scheduled to break ground later this year, according to Dallas-based Panda Energy International. Together, these operations, which represent $250 million in capital investment, plan to chew up at least 55 million bu. of corn each year and pump out 200 million gal. of what President George W. Bush, Corn Belt politicians, A-list investors and farmers hope will cut the U.S.'s reliance on foreign oil, clean...
Little wonder, then, that Yuma is a tad giddy these days. "Bill Gates isn't coming out here to open a Microsoft plant, so we have to use what we have," says Doug Sanderson, Yuma's city manager. "The ethanol operations are a good synergy with our corn, water, waste treatment, hardworking people, our transportation. It's a good...
...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...