Ethanol today is the homemade alcohol, or moonshine, of yesterday. It can come from corn. It helps decrease our dependency on foreign oil. And the politicians love to take credit for it. That is all I have known about this substance since oil prices started going up and the idea was introduced.

But here and there I have heard that ethanol isn’t the gas miracle we have been waiting for. So I decided to try and find out some other truths on this hot topic.

Our Food Prices

We eat corn. So the idea that ethanol can decrease our gas prices is just putting our mark up on something else. Many of the groceries I buy every week for my family are higher priced than before. I never realized how much corn contributes to our food system---until it started attacking my wallet. High fructose corn syrup is in a ton of products. Corn feed is fed to the meats and poultry I buy. And then there is corn chips, corn flakes, and corn tortillas, just to name a few.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the first quarter had a 7.1 percent increase in food prices. When the prices for corn goes up, it trickles down to the consumer.

Our Ocean

Corn takes a lot of fresh water, fertilizers, and land to grow. So not only does the pocket book shrink as the corn grows, but our environment is already feeling its pull.

Dead zones, which are oxygen-depleted ocean waters, are growing in the Gulf of Mexico. These zones obviously hurt sea life and the ecology of the water.

A large dead zone is usually found at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where it empties out into the Gulf of Mexico. This has been considered the norm since 1985. But recent tests for this year have found another large dead zone off the Texas coast as well. These two oxygen-depleted areas equal 9,650 square miles, which is the largest area found in the Gulf of Mexico since it began being monitored in 1970.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in March predicted a 15 percent increase in corn productivity for the year. Corn requires a lot of fertilizer to grown. And nitrogen based fertilizers wash down the Mississippi River, creating these dead zones by increasing algae growth. This in turn uses up the oxygen that the other sea creatures need to survive.

To be fair, the new dead zone off the Texas coast has been blamed on rain waters that form a layer on top of the salt water, which prevents oxygen from entering. But it shows what can happen with such an increase in production of corn.

Our Land

Since corn takes a lot of land to be grown, tax dollars are being doled out in the United States to encourage anyone who has land to grow crops of corn for ethanol. And corn is being bought up in other countries as well.

Mexico’s prices of corn tortillas has increased three fold in the last year. Protesting has taken place in the streets of Mexico City as consumers are outraged at the prices of their staple food. The president put a price cap on corn to appease the public. But as economics unfold, it will be seen in the future how this effects the Mexican people in other ways.

Columbia is pushing people off their lands to claim it for growing corn. Brazil, the largest producer of ethanol, is expected to increase production by possibly 40 percent in the next four years. This ethanol is sugar cane based, so entire forests will be planted and then cut down to meet demands.

Our Invention

This new way of using corn does create less carbon monoxide. And this can help with smog issues. But when you factor in all the gasoline burning farming equipment it takes to grow and harvest corn, it does make you wonder if that just cancels some of the benefits out. Corn ethanol is also more corrosive, so it cannot be piped to different places like gasoline. It must be taken by gasoline burning tanker trucks or railroads to its destinations.

The Solution

Solutions are out there waiting to be discovered. Maybe ethanol could be perfected in coming years. Maybe another substance would be better. Or maybe there is another option altogether.

As society seeks to find a new way, we can always trust that “necessity is the mother of invention”. Corn ethanol may not be the answer, but at least we are starting to try and push past our old ways of gasoline and bring a better answer to the future.