Ethanol is booming, but is it too good to be true?
Alternative fuel dogged by questions about demand, fuel efficiency and its impact on food prices
By Jim Suhr - ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS — Corn-and-soybean farmer John Adams considered the pitch too good to pass up.
The 58-year-old Adams, who works 950 acres in central Illinois, didn’t immediately join the farmer cooperatives pooling together to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant. But when he dropped by an informational meeting a few months ago, he had to have a piece.
“I was impressed,” he recalled. “I had to do a lot of thinking about where the ethanol market was and where I think it’s going.”
Ethanol, for decades largely an afterthought in the global fuels market, is in the midst of a booming renaissance, despite a host of questions.
It is a hot topic from agribusiness boardrooms to Midwestern diners to world capitals including Washington. President Bush says the fuel additive distilled from mashed and fermented grain is a cheap-and-easy alternative to highpriced foreign oil, and some day it’s already been an economic boon for moribund rural stretches.
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By Jim Suhr - ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS — Corn-and-soybean farmer John Adams considered the pitch too good to pass up.
The 58-year-old Adams, who works 950 acres in central Illinois, didn’t immediately join the farmer cooperatives pooling together to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant. But when he dropped by an informational meeting a few months ago, he had to have a piece.
“I was impressed,” he recalled. “I had to do a lot of thinking about where the ethanol market was and where I think it’s going.”
Ethanol, for decades largely an afterthought in the global fuels market, is in the midst of a booming renaissance, despite a host of questions.
It is a hot topic from agribusiness boardrooms to Midwestern diners to world capitals including Washington. President Bush says the fuel additive distilled from mashed and fermented grain is a cheap-and-easy alternative to highpriced foreign oil, and some day it’s already been an economic boon for moribund rural stretches.
story continued
posted by anthony m, at Sunday, May 06, 2007
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