From the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN and the “don’t burn your food” department.
Corn is grown not only for food, it is also an important renewable energy source. Renewable biofuels can come with hidden economic and environmental issues, and the question of whether corn is better utilized as food or as a biofuel has persisted since ethanol came into use. For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois have quantified and compared these issues in terms of economics of the entire production system to determine if the benefits of biofuel corn outweigh the costs.
Civil and environmental engineering professor Praveen Kumar and graduate student Meredith Richardson published their findings in the journal Earth’s Future.
As part of a National Science Foundation project that is studying the environmental impact of agriculture in the U.S., the Illinois group introduced a comprehensive view of the agricultural system, called critical zone services, to analyze crops’ impacts on the environment in monetary terms.
“The critical zone is the permeable layer of the landscape near the surface that stretches from the top of the vegetation down to the groundwater,” Kumar said. “The human energy and resource input involved in agriculture production alters the composition of the critical zone, which we are able to convert into a social cost.”
To compare the energy efficiency and environmental impacts of corn production and processing for food and for biofuel, the researchers inventoried the resources required for corn production and processing, then determined the economic and environmental impact of using these resources – all defined in terms of energy available and expended, and normalized to cost in U.S. dollars.
“There are a lot of abstract concepts to contend with when discussing human-induced effects in the critical zone in agricultural areas,” Richardson said. “We want to present it in a way that will show the equivalent dollar value of the human energy expended in agricultural production and how much we gain when corn is used as food versus biofuel.”
Kumar and Richardson accounted for numerous factors in their analysis, including assessing the energy required to prepare and maintain the landscape for agricultural production for corn and its conversion to biofuel. Then, they quantified the environmental benefits and impacts in terms of critical zone services, representing the effects on the atmosphere, water quality and corn’s societal value, both as food and fuel.
In monetary terms, their results show that the net social and economic worth of food corn production in the U.S. is $1,492 per hectare, versus a $10 per hectare loss for biofuel corn production.
“One of the key factors lies in the soil,” Richardson said. The assessment considered both short-term and long-term effects, such as nutrients and carbon storage in the soil.
“We found that most of the environmental impacts came from soil nutrient fluxes. Soil’s role is often overlooked in this type of assessment, and viewing the landscape as a critical zone forces us to include that,” Richardson said.
“Using corn as a fuel source seems to be an easy path to renewable energy,” said Richard Yuretich, the NSF program director for Critical Zone Observatories. “However, this research shows that the environmental costs are much greater, and the benefits fewer, than using corn for food.”
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The National Science Foundation supported this research through the Grants for Intensively Managed Landscapes Critical Zone Observatory.
The paper “Critical zone services as environmental assessment criteria in intensively managed landscapes” is available online
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000517/full
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OK. Said it before and apparently it has to be said yet again, still. Ethanol is a piss poor internal combustion engine fuel. Period.
Fidel Castro commented that when the USA embarked on using corn to produce Ethanol it would starve 500,000 people the first year. He was right, as a result of using corn to produce Ethanol, millions have been starved 🙁
Jeezus Gawd I hope we dint fork out millyons to find out wut it iz that we already knows.
Although the report does not comment directly on this, it does inadvertently illustrate the point that farmers selling corn for ethanol production and the primary ethanol producers as well are ‘farming’ the government mandated and subsidized ethanol-for-fuel market. Without the government mandates and subsidies, there is unlikely to be a viable business model for corn conversion to ethanol-as-fuel.
This is very much akin to producers and consumers alike ‘reaping the harvest’ from the government mandated and subsidized EV and Hybrid vehicle market. Yes, the US tax payers can choose to buy or not buy these products ….but they have no choice but forced participation in paying for all of the subsidies and government bureaucrats that support and enforce these government mandated markets and products.
Is this ‘legal’? Yes, markets and products created by government mandates and subsidies are legal.
Is it ethical? Each consumer demonstrates their personal ethics by their market choices.
The best and fastest path to starvation is to take agricultural control out of the hands of free enterprise and free markets and put it under the control of economic and environmental planners who haven’t a clue about any practical agricultural application. The impact would be catastrophic and devastating for millions of people.
Either way, Corn is good.
I just finished a long bike ride, plopped down in front of my computer with a HUGE bowl of popcorn, and came across this. Too funny.
Just curious … does anyone else here eat 2 gallons of popcorn in one sitting? 🙂
No, all of our corn was converted to Ethanol 😳
Max,
I’m good for about a half gallon to a gallon of fresh popcorn, with garlic butter and salt (of course!), when the mood and munch strike me…. Cold water or beer to wash it down!
I’ll give garlic butter a try next time. I just tried popping the corn using coconut oil for the first time, which turned out really well. I’m starting to think that the water in butter contributes to the popcorn getting a big soggy.
Use LouAna Coconut Oil, widely available and one that is non-hydrogenated. I use it for all manner of cooking and recipe substitutes.
At the Armstrong clan reunion around Elmira Illinois last week , I learned our old neighbor contracted their entire 3000 acre corn crop to a nearby distillery altho they didn’t argue that it was all stupid .
We were appalled by the vista of turbines we east of Wyoming Il around 41.09058 -89.63981 which turn out to be the Camp Grove wind farm . You have to be a fan of 1950s “Amazing Stories” sci-fi landscapes to like what these monsters do to the landscape . About 10% were not turning . The old tenant who farmed our acreage before we sold it to a 22,000 acreage operation backed by UBS was all for them — as long as the rental for the transmission lines that cross some of his property keep coming . He commented that those concrete bases are never coming back out having seen and been startled how deep they were excavated .
In Michael Pollan’s excellent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he write about the corn cycle. If I remember correctly, it goes like this:
* Farmers use ammonium nitrate fertilizer and get huge corn yield increases.
* Some of the corn is converted to ethanol.
* Production of ammonium nitrate consumes lots of energy
* Ethanol is used to fuel the production of ammonium nitrate.
My irrigated corn growing friends realize how absurd the ethanol program is, but take advantage of it anyway.
The very thought of irrigating corn makes me cringe. What a vast amount of water to move.
I am not sure what the author’s point is. I would like to see him eat an ear of corn that is used to make ethanol. The corn used to make ethanol is called dent corn or field corn; it is nothing like the sweet corn we eat from the can or off the cob. Next, the corn used to make ethanol is not entirely consumed in the process. The leftovers are called “distillers grains.” These leftovers are much better animal feed than the original dent corn was in the first place. The weight gain off of it more than makes up for the loss of carbs that went into the making of the ethanol. The merits of the value of the fuel value of ethanol I will leave to others.
And yet all the things you list are true for corn used as food/alcohol. Government mandating that ethanol WILL be produced and used, then giving out millions upon millions of tax dollars in subsidies to entice people into this stupidity is the problem, not what corn is or may be used for. And yes, ethanol is a piss poor internal combustion engine fuel. THAT is the primary point. Ponder why anyone in government would force Americans to use, and subsidize the manufacture of, a poor and destructive fuel? What do they personally gain from this action?