The operative word is "could." Biofuels as currently rendered in the U.S. are doing great things for some farmers and for agricultural giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, but little for the environment. Corn requires large doses of herbicide and nitrogen fertilizer and can cause more soil erosion than any other crop. And producing corn ethanol consumes just as much fossil fuel as the ethanol itself replaces. Biodiesel from soybeans fares only slightly better. Environmentalists also fear that rising prices for both crops will push farmers to plow up some 35 million acres of marginal farmland now set aside for soil and wildlife conservation, potentially releasing even more carbon bound in the fallow fields.
...Yet such is the thirst for gasoline among SUV-loving Americans that even if we turned our entire corn and soybean crops into biofuels, they would replace just 12 percent of our gasoline and a paltry 6 percent of our diesel, while squeezing supplies of corn- and soy-fattened beef, pork, and poultry. Not to mention Corn Flakes."
-Green Dreams, Joel K. Bourne, Jr.
National Geographic
October 2007
Thank you, Mr. Bourne, for saying what corn advocates are never going to say, and what the public will most likely brush aside in the misguided rush to finally be environmentally friendly.
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