Ethanol Push Could Threaten Water Supplies

When it comes to solving the fossil fuel crisis, it seems like every silver lining comes accompanied by a dark cloud.

As attention turns more and more toward using corn and other products to produce ethanol for fuel, experts warn that increased production of these crops could pose a threat to the nation's water supplies.

Both water quality and the availability of water could be threatened by sharply increasing crops such as corn, said Jerald Schnoor, professor of environmental engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa.

Mr. Schnoor is chairman of a National Research Council panel that studied the potential impact of increased use of biofuels on water supplies. The committee report was released Wednesday.

A stated goal is to increase biofuel production about six times, 132 billion litres by 2017, Mr. Schnoor said.

“That would mean a lot more fertilizers and pesticides” running into rivers and flowing into the oceans, he said in a telephone interview.

Water available depends on where the crops are grown, he added. If it is an area needing irrigation, it takes 7,570 litres of water for every bushel of corn: “That's a high amount of water.”

And that is in addition to the secondary issue of how much water is needed by the factories that produce the ethanol, he said.

What is needed is a breakthrough in technology so that ethanol can be produced from cellulose such as grass, wood and sawdust, Mr. Schnoor said. “If we could do that it would be much better environmentally.”

While Brazil is having success producing fuels from sugar cane, “we don't have much tropical land in the United States,” Mr. Schnoor observed.

Also, he noted, Brazil uses waste from the cane to fuel its ethanol factories, while the U.S. uses natural gas or other fuels.

The report notes that water “is an increasingly precious resource used for many purposes including drinking and other municipal uses, hydropower, cooling thermoelectric plants, manufacturing, recreation, habitat for fish and wildlife and agriculture.”

Supplies are already stressed in some areas of the country, including a large region where water is drawn from the underground Ogallala aquifer, which extends from western Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming.

Growing biofuel crops requiring additional irrigation in areas with limited water supplies is a major concern, the report says.

It suggests the possibility of irrigating crops for biofuel with wastewater that would not be suitable for food crops.

Other suggestions include developing more water-efficient crops and adopting agriculture practices that reduce the amount of chemical runoff.

The study was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, Energy Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Research Council Day Fund.

The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to provide science, technology and health policy advice.

Prices Force SoyMor to Close

I wonder when this will start with the Corn Ethanol Plants. Look for these guys to go crying to the government for more hand-outs.

It was a decision driven by economics.

"SoyMor board of directors have decided to suspend operations at the current time," says Gary Pestorious.

The 32 employees of the SoyMor bio diesel plant near Glenville were notified yesterday that the plant is closing, at least temporarily.

The plant turns soybean oil into bio-diesel.

And with soybean prices at an all-time high, keeping the plant open doesn't make economic sense

"Today, if you were making bio-diesel SoyMor would be doing it at a dollar a gallon loss," says Pestorious.

Soybean prices have jumped for a couple of reasons, higher demand in China, a weak US dollar and, according to board member Gary Pestorious, one of the largest recipients of government subsidies(welfare)in Minnesota, "Index Fund Money", which is buying American corn, wheat and soybean crops by the billions of dollars.

"They don't raise it,(and recieve no government welfare checks!) they have nothing to do with it, but what they've done is drive the prices up," Pestorious says.

"I view it as a temporary setback, I believe the high grain price right now will moderate and I think it will come back into production," says Dan Dorman.

The SoyMor plant has gotten economic help under the state's JobZ economic stimulus program. Yet more GOVERNMENT WELFARE!!

And it's too early to tell how the suspension might affect that status

"Is this a 60 day, or a forever deal, there are certain requirements for the JobZ program, they have to meet and if they don't they'll lose their JobZ benefits," says Dorman. (Oh My God, DON'T TAKE THE WELFARE CHECK!)

And if the economics of the soybean market change

"As we all know things continue to change and we'll back running here within the year," says Pestorious.

Operations at the plant will be ramped down over the next two weeks, and beyond that what happens here at the Soy-Mor plant near Glenville is very much up in the air.

Since 1999, the SoyMor plant has been processing thirty million gallons of bio-diesel a year.

Ethanol's Affect On Food Prices

The recent rise in corn prices--almost 70 percent in the past six months--caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, "is the main driver behind the price increase for corn."

The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City. It's almost certain that most of the rise in corn prices is due to the U.S. ethanol policy, says David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.

The rising food costs fueled by ethanol demand are also affecting U.S. consumers. "All things that use corn are going to have higher prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed on to consumers," says Wally Tyner, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. The impact of this is being felt first in animal feed, particularly poultry and pork. Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry--both meat and eggs--has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup--used in soft drinks--to get more expensive, he says.

The situation will only get worse, says David Pimentel, a professor in the department of entomology at Cornell University. "We have over a hundred different ethanol plants under construction now, so the situation is going to get desperate," he says. Adding to the worries about corn-related food prices is President Bush's ambitious goal, announced in his last State of the Union address, that the United States will produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017.

Still, some suggest that the overheated ethanol market could soon cool down. "Politicians will see that, first of all, it is not helping our oil independence," says Pimentel. "It is increasing the price of food for people in the U.S., it is costing an enormous sum of money for everyone, and it is contributing to environmental problems. But I can imagine it is going to take another year or more before politicians realize they have a major disaster on their hands."

More Ethanol Will Expand Gulf of Mexico 'Dead Zone'

Ramping up ethanol production for alternative fuels will worsen the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, a stretch of water unable to support aquatic life, according to a report co-written by the University of British Columbia.

The U.S. Senate's recently announced plan to triple production of ethanol made from corn starch by 2022 will increase the zone by 10 to 19 per cent from the 20,000-square-kilometres — an area roughly the size of New Jersey — it has recently occupied, the report said.

The U.S. Senate wants to ramp up ethanol made from corn starch in order to alleviate the country's dependence on oil.The U.S. Senate wants to ramp up ethanol made from corn starch in order to alleviate the country's dependence on oil.


"This rush to expand corn production is a disaster for the Gulf of Mexico," said Simon Donner, an assistant professor in UBC's geography department, in a statement. "The U.S. energy policy will make it virtually impossible to solve the problem of the dead zone."

The problem stems from the nitrogen and phosphorus found in agricultural fertilizer, which can cause excess growth of algae in bodies of water, the researchers said. When that algae decomposes, it can consume much of the oxygen in the water.

Fertilizer being used in much of the U.S. agricultural heartland, such as Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin, is the primary source of pollution in the Mississippi River system, which drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Every summer, that nitrogen is deposited in the Gulf, where the dead zone forms.

Donner and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin came to their conclusions by combining agricultural land-use scenarios with models of terrestrial and aquatic nitrogen cycling. Their work appears in Monday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Journal of Sciences.

"The nitrogen levels in the Mississippi will be more than twice the recommendation for the Gulf," Donner said.

Boosting ethanol production without increasing the amount of nitrogen in the Mississippi will require "radical shifts in feed production, diet and agricultural land management," the report said.

Corn planting may have to be moved into other states or less of the crop would have to be used to feed cattle, which would also mean less meat consumption by people.

Cattle Fed Byproducts Of Ethanol Production Harbor Dangerous E. Coli Bacteria

Researchers have found that cattle fed distiller's grain have an increased prevalence of E. coli 0157 in their hindgut. (Credit: Web Doodle, LLC)
Researchers have found that cattle fed distiller's grain have an increased prevalence of E. coli 0157 in their hindgut. (Credit: Web Doodle, LLC)
Ethanol plants and livestock producers have created a symbiotic relationship. Cattle producers feed their livestock distiller's grains, a byproduct of the ethanol distilling process, giving ethanol producers have an added source of income.

But recent research at Kansas State University has found that cattle fed distiller's grain have an increased prevalence of E. coli 0157 in their hindgut. This particular type of E. coli is present in healthy cattle but poses a health risk to humans, who can acquire it through undercooked meat, raw dairy products and produce contaminated with cattle manure.

"Distiller's grain is a good animal feed. That's why ethanol plants are often built next to feedlots," said T.G. Nagaraja, a professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine.

The growth in ethanol plants means more cattle are likely to be fed distiller's grain, therefore harboring 0157 and potentially a source of health risks to humans, Nagaraja said. That's why he and Jim Drouillard, K-State professor of animal sciences, have been collaborating on testing distiller's grain-fed cattle for 0157. Nagaraja and Drouillard, who studied the carcass quality of cattle fed distiller's grain, are joined by Megan Jacob, a K-State doctoral student in pathobiology. Through three rounds of testing, Nagaraja said the prevalence of 0157 was about twice as high in cattle fed distiller's grain compared with those cattle that were on a diet lacking the ethanol byproduct.

"This is a very interesting observation and is likely to have profound implications in food safety," Nagaraja said.

Food safety and animal health are research priorities at K-State, which since 1999 has dedicated more than $70 million on research related to animal health and food safety. More than 150 K-Staters are actively involved in these areas.

Nagaraja said research in the next few years will focus on finding out why 0157 is more prevalent in cattle fed a distiller's grain diet. He said it could be something that changes in the animals' hindgut as a result of feeding distiller's grains, or maybe the byproduct provides a nutrient for the bacteria.

"Feeding cattle distiller's grain is a big economic advantage for ethanol plants," Nagaraja said. "We realize we can't tell cattle producers, 'Don't feed distiller's grain.' What we want to do is not only understand the reasons why 0157 increases, but also find a way to prevent that from happening."