Corn

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Corn, also known as maize, provides food in addition to being used as a feedstock for the production of the biofuel ethanol (bioethanol). Corn stover, a potential feedstock for cellulosic ethanol, is the "leftover" portion of the corn plant after harvest, including corn cobs, stalks and leaves.

Contents

Availability

Sustainability

Financial support for the growing of corn, such as through subsidies in the United States, has been linked to various impacts, both locally -- such as soil erosion, changing the overall amount and ratios of crops grown (such as through promoting increased corn production and reduced soy production) and indirect impacts on an international scale (such as through distortions of markets, increases in prices of food and changes in cropping patterns), resulting in social and ecological damage, such as increased poverty and food insecurity and degradation of tropical forests. For more, see the food-versus-fuel debate.

Environmental Sustainability

Greenhouse Gases

See: Life-cycle analysis and indirect land use change.

Biodiversity

See: Biodiversity

Pollution

Pollution and agricultural runoff associated with widespread corn production in the Mississippi River watershed in the United States has led to the development of an hypoxic 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico.

Relative GHG emissions reduction potentials for ethanol by feedstock type. These estimates refer to direct emissions only, and do not include emissions from land use change. Source: Worldwatch Issue Brief: U.S. Biofuels: Climate Change and Policies (PDF file)
  • For Gulf, Biofuels Are Worse Than Oil Spill , 17 June 2010 editorial by Investor's Business Daily: "Our growing addiction to alternative energy was killing aquatic life in the Gulf long before the Deepwater Horizon spill. Abandoning oil will kill more and also release more carbon dioxide into the air."
    • "Before the first gallon gushed from Deepwater Horizon, there existed an 8,500 square mile 'dead zone' below the Mississippi River Delta....Hypoxia, or oxygen depletion, caused by agricultural runoff...has been on an upward trend as acreage for corn destined to become ethanol increases."
    • "[A] 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that 'nitrogen leaching from fertilized cornfields in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer.'"
    • "Ethanol from corn sounds like an energy panacea, but the devil is in the details. It takes 4,000 gallons of fresh water per acre per day to replace evaporation in a cornfield. Each acre requires about 130 pounds of nitrogen and 55 pounds of phosphorous."
    • The OECD "recently stated in a report: 'When acidification, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss and toxicity of agricultural pesticides are taken into account, the overall impact of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel.'"
    • "All of this may not be as visually exciting as a gushing oil well a mile below the Gulf, but it shows no form of energy is pain-free and the benefits and trade-offs of any form of energy must be judged on the basis of science and not ideology."[1]
  • Gulf Oil Spill Spawns Biofuels Industry Opportunism, 6 May 2010 blog post by Dave Levitan on SolveClimate: "[T]he biofuels industry is seizing on the Gulf [of Mexico] oil disaster to highlight the differences between traditional fossil fuels and a safer ethanol alternative. But to some environmentalists, the effort smacks of opportunism that masks many thorny issues swirling around the nation's commitment to corn-based biofuels."
    • "The president of the Renewable Fuels Assocation, or RFA, Bob Dinneen wrote a letter to President Obama on Wednesday calling for approval of increased ethanol blends."
    • "The only problem, according to Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group, is that the corn ethanol industry has contributed substantially to its own version of Gulf [of Mexico] pollution."
    • "'The RFA statement used the tragedy essentially as a marketing tool, which we thought was offensive,' Cox said. A large 'dead zone' exists in the Gulf that has been attributed to runoff of nitrogen-based fertilizers and sediment, largely coming from the Corn Belt region."[2]
    • Related item: Union of Concerned Scientists, RFA call for more biofuel investment in wake of oil spill, 6 May 2010 by Biofuels Digest: "In Washington, the Union of Concerned Scientists [UCS] and the Renewable Fuels Association [RFA] linked increased investment in biofuels to the solution to offshore drilling risks demonstrated by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
      • Brendan Bell of UCS was quoted as saying, "The real ticket to reducing our oil dependence is stronger fuel economy standards, more clean homegrown biofuels, and a 21st century transportation system."
      • Bob Dinneen of the RFA was quoted as saying, "The EPA should immediately move to allow for the blending of 12% ethanol by volume in each gallon of gasoline...EPA should grant a full waiver for the use of 15% ethanol blends as soon as the Department of Energy testing on catalytic converters is completed early this summer."[3]
  • Concern about worsening of the dead zone as a result of expanded corn-based ethanol production is echoed in a December 2007 report by the Environmental Protection Agency, "Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico" (PDF file). The summary reads in part:
    • "Certain aspects of the nation’s current agricultural and energy policies are at odds with the goals of hypoxia reduction and improving water quality....[A]n emerging national strategy on renewable fuels has granted economic incentives to corn-based ethanol production. The projected increase in corn production from this strategy has profound implications for water quality...as well as hypoxia....Recent energy policies, combined with pre-existing crop subsidies, tax policies, global market conditions and trade barriers all provide economic incentives for conversion of retired and other cropland to corn production for use in ethanol production."

Land Degradation

Social Sustainability

Technology/Science

Properties

Technology

Economics/Policy

Publications

The cover of the October 2007 National Geographic magazine.
  • Finding Balance: Agricultural Residues, Ethanol, and the Environment by Liz Marshall and Zachary Sugg for the World Resources Institute, December 2008.
    • "This analysis explores the implications of corn stover harvest for soil carbon loss, nutrient (nitrogen) pollution, and erosion, as well as the potential to mitigate those impacts using available agricultural best management practices (BMPs) such as reduced tillage intensity and integration of winter cover crops (WCC) into production rotations."

News

2010

  • Call to ban corn-based ethanol production, 10 August 2010 by Zhang Ming'ai: "Zhao Youshan, chairman of the Oil Flow Commission of the China General Chamber of Commerce, told the Beijing Times that they have submitted a letter to the NDRC in an attempt to ban corn-based ethanol production, because it has pushed up corn prices at home and turned China into a corn-importing country in the first half of this year from previously a corn-exporting country."
    • "In 2004, in order to promote the development of renewable energy and new energy, the NDRC and the Ministry of Finance jointly put forward a policy, under which testing programs were launched in Heilongjiang to produce ethanol fuel from corn. Factories could get a subsidy of 1,880 yuan and be exempted from all taxes by producing one ton of ethanol fuel."[5]
  • Energy Subsidies — Good and Bad, 28 July 2010 editorial by New York Times: "Congress must soon decide whether to extend federal tax subsidies for renewable energy that expire at the end of the year. The subsidies for wind, solar and geothermal energy are necessary to give these energy sources the help they need to compete with oil, coal and natural gas. While it renews those subsidies, Congress should end tax breaks for corn ethanol, which can stand on its own and is of dubious environmental benefit."
    • "Ethanol, which in this country is made almost exclusively from corn, has been subsidized since the early 1970s, partly because it increases octane levels while helping to reduce certain pollutants, most notably carbon monoxide."
    • "According to the Congressional Budget Office, the price tag last year for the ethanol tax break was about $6 billion."
    • "This money mainly benefits refiners and big farmers, and could be better spent elsewhere — perhaps in developing more advanced forms of ethanol from grasses, scrub trees and plant wastes. Corn ethanol can actually increase greenhouse gases if grasslands or forests are ploughed for crop production."[6]
  • New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment (EROI) of Corn Ethanol: Part 1 of 2, 26 July 2010 by The Oil Drum: "The following is the first of two posts based on a recent paper published under the same title in the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability."
    • "Over the past decade there has been considerable debate on corn ethanol, most focused on whether it is a net energy yielder. The argument is generally that if the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of corn ethanol is positive then it should be pursued. On one side are Pimentel (2003) and Patzek (2004) who claim that corn ethanol has an EROI below one energy unit returned per energy unit invested, and on the other side are a number of studies claiming that the EROI is positive, reported variously as between 1.08 and 1.45....Even with numerous publications on this issue, disagreement remains as to whether corn ethanol is a net energy yielder."
    • "[M]ost analyses to date...use optimal (i.e. Iowa) values for corn yield, fertilizer, and irrigation, despite the fact that each of these have large geographical (as well as other) variation. Because of this they fail to represent the variable nature of corn production across space, and by extension the subsequent variability in the EROI of corn ethanol."
    • "The results from our meta-error analysis indicated that the average EROI for corn ethanol was 1.07 with a standard error of 0.1....EROI values calculated in the spatial analysis ranged from 0.36 in less optimal corn-growing areas, for example southern Texas, to 1.18 in optimal areas, for example Nebraska...If we apply the same confidence calculated in the meta-error analysis to the results of the county EROI analysis, we find that none of the counties had an EROI that was high enough (1.20) to conclude that corn ethanol was produced at an energy profit."[7]
  • New CBO Report Examines Biofuels Tax Incentives, 16 July 2010 by Mackinnon Lawrence: "CBO releases report this week assessing biofuel incentives. Study finds that biofuel subsidies, costs associated with reducing petroleum use and GHG emissions vary by fuel."
    • "First, after making adjustments for the different energy contents of the various biofuels and the petroleum fuel used to produce them, the report finds that producers of ethanol made from corn receive 73 cents to provide an amount of biofuel with the energy equivalent to that in one gallon of gasoline. On a similar basis, producers of cellulosic ethanol receive $1.62, and producers of biodiesel receive $1.08."
    • "Second, the report finds reducing petroleum use costs taxpayers anywhere from $1.78 – 3.00 per one gallon of gasoline, again, depending on the type of fuel."
    • "Third, the costs to taxpayers of reducing greenhouse gas emissions varies from $275 per metric ton of CO2e for cellulosic, $300 per metric ton for CO2e for biodiesel, and about $750 per metric ton of CO2e for ethanol . NOTE: the CBO estimates do not reflect any emissions associated with land use change (direct or indirect)."
    • "Domestic Fuel reports this week that the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) asserts the report provides no comparison to other technologies or types of biofuels against the destruction that goes hand in hand with fossil fuel production."[8]
  • Growth Energy proposes shift in fuel policy, 15 July 2010 by Ethanol Producer Magazine: "With the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, set to expire at the end of the year, Growth Energy is calling for a change in the way ethanol tax incentives are used and an eventual phase out of governmental support of ethanol."
    • Growth Energy’s "Fueling Freedom Plan calls for, ideally, a five-year extension to VEETC. However, rather than provide the all incentive money to blenders, the oil industry, Growth Energy is advocating that some of that tax money go to installing 200,000 blender pumps and ethanol pipelines."
    • "Another part of the plan would require that all automobiles sold in the U.S. be flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs)."
    • "Currently, the ethanol industry is supplying about 10 percent of the U.S. fuel needs."
    • "Ethanol tax incentives cost the U.S. about $5 to $7 billion a year, said Growth Energy co-chair Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark."
    • "On the same day as Growth Energy’s announcement, RFA [the Renewable Fuels Association] joined with the American Coalition for Ethanol, the National Corn Growers Association and the National Sorghum Producers to lend its support to the current tax incentive legislation" that would "extend ethanol tax incentives through 2015."[10]
  • Klobuchar bill: trojan horse for bad biofuels, 14 July 2010, Nathanael Greene’s Blog/NRDC: "It should come as no surprise that the first copy of the full text of Sen Klobuchar's energy bill was found on a corn ethanol industry association website; the bill reads like the industry's wish list."
    • "Today's corn ethanol is mature and mainstream and, unfortunately, generally causes more global warming pollution than gasoline. Klobuchar's bill would lavish over $30 billion on the ethanol and oil industries, it would pull the rug out from under entreprenours trying to develop cleaner, advanced biofuels, and it would threaten forests across our country..."
    • "Here are some of laundry list of bad biofuel provisions:
  • "5 year extension of the corn ethanol tax credit (which mostly enriches oil companies such as BP)."
  • "Legislating away the science of lifecycle GHG accounting for ethanol. Using lots of land to make ethanol instead of food means that food production moves to new land and that leads to deforestation."
  • "Defining mature and mainstream corn ethanol, which has been commercially produced for well over 30 years as an 'advanced biofuel' under the RFS2."
  • "Huge give aways for building corn ethanol pipes to the coast so that we can ship our 'home grown energy' overseas."[11]
  • Ethanol Credits Have A Major Beneficiary In Big Oil Firms, 2 July 2010 by National Journal/Congress Daily: "BP could stand to reap [U.S.] federal tax credits approaching $600 million this year for blending gasoline with corn-based ethanol, making the British oil and gas giant one of the largest beneficiaries of the 45 cents-per-gallon ethanol incentive."
    • "The credit expires Dec. 31, and the House Ways and Means Committee is preparing as early as next month to debate a 'green jobs' bill eyed as a vehicle for an extension."
    • "'Generally, we feel that after 30 years, it's finally time for ethanol to stand on its own,' said Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel at the Environmental Working Group. 'These massive handouts flow to oil companies like BP and only cement our dependence on environmentally damaging sources of energy'."[14]
  • New Federal Policies Needed to Jump-Start Clean Advanced Biofuels Industry, 14 June 2010 by The Union of Concerned Scientists: "The federal government needs to adopt a suite of new policies to spur production in the stalled advanced biofuels industry, according to a report, The Billion Gallon Challenge, released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
    • "Advanced cellulosic biofuels – made from grasses, woodchips, wastes and other non-food sources – release dramatically less pollution than gasoline or corn ethanol. Reforming production tax credits for biofuels and providing new loan guarantees, investment tax credits and other financial incentives would spark investment in cellulosic biofuels, cut oil consumption, reduce global warming pollution, and ultimately save taxpayers money, the report found."
    • "Currently, cellulosic biofuels are falling far short of the mandated levels. In 2010, the standard requires fuel suppliers, largely oil companies, to purchase 100 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to lower this target to just 6.5 million gallons due to a lack of supply."[15]
  • Surging costs hit food security in poorer nations, 6 June 2010 by Associated Press: "With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorest countries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen malnutrition....Compounding the problem in many countries: prices hardly fell from their peaks in 2008, when global food prices jumped in part due to a smaller U.S. wheat harvest and demand for crops to use in biofuels."
    • "In Argentina, soy production has taken over more than 32 million acres (13 million hectares) of grassland once used to raise cattle and replaced less profitable wheat and corn as well, driving up prices in supermarkets."[16]
  • Cars and People Compete for Grain, 1 June 2010 by Earth Policy Institute: "At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars — one that threatens world food security."
    • "Historically the food and energy economies were separate, but now with the massive U.S. capacity to convert grain into ethanol, that is changing....If the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will simply move the commodity into the energy economy."
    • "The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year."
    • "Suddenly the world is facing an epic moral and political issue: Should grain be used to fuel cars or feed people?"
    • "For every additional acre planted to corn to produce fuel, an acre of land must be cleared for cropping elsewhere. But there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado."[17]
  • DOE, USDA Announce Funding for Biomass Research and Development Initiative, 6 May 2010, press release by the Department of Energy: "The U.S. Departments of Energy (DOE) and Agriculture (USDA) today jointly announced up to $33 million in funding for research and development of technologies and processes to produce biofuels, bioenergy and high-value biobased products, subject to annual appropriations."
    • "DOE also released today a new video which showcases how cellulosic biofuel technologies can help decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil, spur growth in the domestic biofuels industry, and provide new revenue opportunities to farmers in many rural areas of the country."
    • "The video, shot at a harvesting equipment demonstration in Emmetsburg, Iowa, highlights a new way of producing ethanol from the cellulose fibers in corn cobs, not from the corn kernels. The technology generates a new opportunity for farmers to harvest and sell the cobs that they’d normally leave in the field."[18]
  • Meat Producers Oppose Ethanol Tax Incentives, 29 April 2010 by Cindy Zimmerman, DomesticFuel: "Major livestock and poultry trade associations sent a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee this week asking that they allow the blenders’ tax credit and associated tariff for ethanol to expire at the end of this year."
    • "'The blender’s tax credit, coupled with the import tariff on foreign ethanol, has distorted the corn market, increased the cost of feeding animals, and squeezed production margins — resulting in job losses and bankruptcies in rural communities across America,' the groups wrote."
    • "The ethanol industry begs to disagree and contends that the livestock industry just wants cheap feed."
    • The Renewable Fuels Association in a statement responded with, "Ethanol is not the major driving force behind corn prices, whether they are rising or falling. Oil prices, speculation, weather, and a host of other factors have far more to do with the price of corn than ethanol production."[19]
  • Will Extending the Ethanol Tax Credit Slow Progress Toward Advanced Biofuels?, 25 April 2010 by Solve Climate: "The federal tax credit for ethanol is among the most controversial energy- or environment-related policies in the country. The volume on all sides of the issue is increasing, with some shouting down ethanol’s claim to lower greenhouse gas emissions, others touting the tax credit’s job-creation capabilities and still others lamenting the diversion of farmland for fuel."
    • Autumn Hanna of Taxpayers for Common Sense was quoted in the article as saying, the tax credit "does little more than pad the pockets of big oil companies like Shell. The ethanol tax credit has already cost taxpayers more than $20 billion in the last five years and, if extended, taxpayers stand to lose billions more. Since the 1970's, taxpayers have heavily subsidized corn ethanol. It’s time this mature energy industry stand on its own two feet."
    • "Legislators from agricultural states claim that ethanol won’t prosper on its own yet, and that more than 100,000 jobs would be lost if the credit were allowed to lapse."
    • Craig Cox, the senior vice president for agricultural and natural resources at the Environmental Working Group "argues that extending the ethanol tax credits now will only divert resources from much-needed research into those second-generation fuels."[20]
  • EDITORIAL: Stop 'Big Corn', 5 April 2010 by the Washington Times: "The Environmental Protection Agency wants to dump more corn into your fuel tank this summer, and it's going to cost more than you think."
    • "The agency is expected to approve a request from 52 ethanol producers known collectively as "Growth Energy" to boost existing requirements that gasoline contain 10 percent ethanol to 15 percent. The change means billions more in government subsidies for companies in the business of growing corn and converting it into ethanol. For the rest of us, it means significantly higher gasoline and food prices."
    • "It's time that this shameless corporate welfare gets plowed under....Big Corn's advocates claim that forcing Americans to use this renewable fuel would reduce dependency on Mideast oil and lead to cleaner air. It's just as likely, however, that they want to get their hands on the $16 billion a year from the 45-cent-per-gallon "blender's tax credit" - in addition to the various state and federal mandates giving us no choice but to pump their pricey product into our fuel tanks."
    • "According to the University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, the ethanol tax credit increases corn prices by 18 cents a bushel, wheat by 15 cents and soybeans by 28 cents. That means higher prices for most food items at the grocery store and restaurants."[22]
  • The Case Against Biofuels: Probing Ethanol’s Hidden Costs, 11 March 2010 opinion piece by C. Ford Runge in Yale environment360: "Despite strong evidence that growing food crops to produce ethanol is harmful to the environment and the world’s poor, the Obama administration is backing subsidies and programs that will ensure that half of the U.S.’s corn crop will soon go to biofuel production. It’s time to recognize that biofuels are anything but green."
    • President Obama "and his administration have wholeheartedly embraced corn ethanol and the tangle of government subsidies, price supports, and tariffs that underpin the entire dubious enterprise of using corn to power our cars. In early February, the president threw his weight behind new and existing initiatives to boost ethanol production from both food and nonfood sources, including supporting Congressional mandates that would triple biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022."
    • "Yet a close look at their impact on food security and the environment — with profound effects on water, the eutrophication of our coastal zones from fertilizers, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions — suggests that the biofuel bandwagon is anything but green."
    • Due to fertilizer usage, "loadings of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico encourage algae growth, starving water bodies of oxygen needed by aquatic life and enlarging the hypoxic 'dead zone' in the gulf."[23]
Change in Corn Plantings as Percent of County Area, 2004-2007 in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region.

See the archive of past corn-related news

Events

See the archive of past corn-related events.

Organizations

  • American Corn Grower's Association "The American Corn Growers Association is America’s leading progressive commodity association, representing the interests of corn producers in 35 states"

Tools


Corn edit
corn-based bioethanol | corn surge
Corn archive
Temperate feedstocks for bioenergy edit
Corn (Bioethanol) | Jojoba (biodiesel) | Prairie grasses (Bioethanol) | Rapeseed (Biodiesel) | Soy beans (Biodiesel) | Sugar beet (Bioethanol) | Sweet potato (Bioethanol) | Sweet sorghum (Bioethanol) | Switchgrass (Bioethanol) | Wheat (Bioethanol)
Bioethanol edit
Bioethanol feedstocks: Corn
Bioethanol conversion technologies:
Bioenergy feedstocks edit

Biodiesel feedstocks:
Currently in use: Animal fat | Castor beans | Coconut oil | Jatropha | Jojoba | Karanj | Palm oil | Rapeseed | Soybeans | Sunflower seed | Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO)
Currently in research and development: Algae | Halophytes (Salt-tolerant plants)

Ethanol feedstocks:
First-generation: Cassava | Corn | Milo | Nypa palm | Sorghum | Sugar beets | Sugar cane | Sugar palm |Sweet potato | Waste citrus peels | Wheat | Whey
Second-generation: For cellulosic technology - Grasses: Miscanthus, Prairie grasses, Switchgrass | Trees: Hybrid poplar, Mesquite, Willow

Charcoal feedstocks: Bamboo | Wood
Waste-to-energy (MSW)


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