The Story About Ethanol
Some quick facts about ethanol…
- One acre of corn can produce enough ethanol to run a car for some 72,000 miles on E-10 Unleaded.
- For every barrel of ethanol produced, 1.2 barrels of petroleum are displaced.
- By 2010, U.S. ethanol production could displace the equivalent of 311,000 barrels of imported crude oil per day—more than one large oil tanker per week.
- E-10 Unleaded (10 percent ethanol/90 percent ordinary unleaded gasoline) is approved for use by every major automaker in the world.
- One bushel of corn yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.
- A typical 40-million-gallon ethanol plant creates 32 full-time jobs and generates an additional $1.2 million in tax revenue for a community.
- Ethanol lowers harmful carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 30 percent.
- Ethanol reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 27 percent.
And now for the other side of the story…
While the benefits of ethanol for a U.S. economy looking to decrease petroleum dependency and for corn growers are well documented, we need to be mindful of all of the potential impacts that increased ethanol production may have on the farm.
As more corn plant residues are removed from the field for use in livestock rations mixed with distillers’ dry grain (DDG) from ethanol plants, there will be consequences for soil quality. A long-term study by Iowa State University found that “corn stover removed vs. stover returned had reduced the total source of carbon (SC) by 20 percent and corn derived soil organic carbon by 35 percent in a 13-year period.”
While the increase in ethanol production is having a tremendously positive impact on the U.S. farm economy, producers thinking about removing corn residue also need to consider using conservation systems to maintain soil quality in the long run.
