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Does it REALLY make sense to use food products for alternative fuels?

A year or two ago, everyone where I live was excited about the prospects of a plant opening nearby to produce ethanol fuel from corn. Ethanol, as I'm sure you know, is a type of alcohol created from "biomass" products (currently, most often corn and corn byproducts) then blended with gasoline. The theory is that such fuel will reduce consumption of crude oil by reducing the amount of actual gasoline in the fuel we use in our cars, mopeds, motorcycles, or whatever.

The theory, at least in the case of our still-not-started production plant, was a bad one. Builders trying to start the ethanol plant quickly ran into opposition. I don't know all the details, but it had to do with the enormous drain on local communities' water table and water supplies to run the plant.

It also had to do with cattle farmers, chicken farmers, and other animal farmers who didn't like the way feed prices would skyrocket if corn and corn byproducts were diverted to the ethanol plant. Turns out there are lots of cattle supplies needed to raise a calf and bring it to market -- and corn and other feed grains are high up on the list.

After all that fuss over the nearby ethanol plant, I had a couple of conversations with my son the engineer. (NOT a specialist in environmental sciences specifically, but very well informed nonetheless.) He explained that ethanol not only is very hard to produce in quantity, and hence expensive, but it really is a very poor-mileage fuel when used to power a gasoline engine in a car.

Having said all that, I would ask this: Does it REALLY make sense to use food products for alternative fuels? I would think finding ways to turn various weeds that flourish nationwide and threaten food crops makes more sense.

Or, better yet, maybe we could take practical steps to combat gasoline consumption like 1) driving less and walking more, 2) mass transit, and, 3) reviving our once glorious nationwide rail transport and passenger systems.

As I mentioned in a post last week, ultimately oil-based energy is doomed because ultimately oil will run out. We'd best be taking conservation AND research steps to deal with it. But corn??
[tags]biofuels, ethanol, corn based fuel, cattle raising, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]