Wheat is being displaced in the Midwest as the crop of choice in favor of corn. But not corn that you eat, or use as animal feed. The farmers planting corn are doing so because they want to sell it to the oil companies that claim they want to produce ethanol as vehicle fuel. This is being encouraged by the Bush Administration as a step toward energy independence.

My question is, why are they planting CORN for this purpose?

I've no problem with ethanol-gasoline mixes to run vehicles on. Back when I could get it in the 1980s, gasohol was my fuel of choice for my car. Supposedly, E85 (85% ethanol - 15% gasoline) burns almost as well (and cleaner) and gives nearly as good mileage as the 10% alcohol - 90% gasoline we're getting at the gas pump now. What I have a problem with is using corn to make the alcohol.

Home-grown fuel sounds really good when the Bush Administration spins it. But the truth is something different. You have to figure how much oil you are actually saving, how much independence from OPEC the fuel really gives you. That means you need to look at how much oil is required at all stages to make your fuel - how much oil you have to "invest" in your bio-source to get the alcohol. Follow along, please.

The best choice for ethanol production is sugarcane. Invest a barrel of oil in everything from plastics you need to fuel to transport it to the pump, and you get a yield of 8 barrels of ethanol for each barrel of oil you invest.

Next best choice is sugarbeets. The net is 6 barrels for each barrel of oil invested.

After that comes prairie switchgrass. Easy to grow and process, you would get 5 barrels of alcohol per barrel of oil invested. Please note that as yet, no commercial plants to make ethanol from switchgrass exist.

Then you get to corn. For each barrel of oil you invest, you get only 1.3 barrels of ethanol.

Why is the Bush Administration encouraging farmers to grow corn for ethanol when the yield is so poor? This isn't ridiculous, it's downright insane! This is a flim-flam being perpetrated on the American farmer and the American public! Oh yes, you get the byproducts of corn ethanol to use as animal feed, but that does not make up for a poor yield in ethanol, which is the object of the exercise.

Corn sucks nutrients out of the soil, as any corn farmer will tell you. You either have to use massive amounts of fertilizer to replenish (and damage) the soil - and what's used to make that fertilizer? You got it, OIL - or you have to use a serious crop rotation system and plant & plow legumes under and put manure on the fields to rebuild the soil before you can grow another crop of corn in the field. Considering the poor yield, it's not worth planting to use as a fuel source. Corn is a better food or feed than a fuel!

I'm not denying that we need to shift to some other fuel than oil to support our transportation infrastructure and way of life. But what we need to do is build distilleries in places where sugarcane grows and sugarbeets grow and ship the resulting ethanol to the United States for mixing into E85 or gasohol, not destroy our farmlands in pursuit of a chimera designed to make politicians look like they are doing something.