It ain't just chicken feed

"It's very easy to give speeches about how we're doing corn-based ethanol to help our fuel production, but a lot of politicians forget about the cost to produce that gallon of ethanol," Tanner said. "When you give someone a subsidy and upset a market, you'll see the effect all the way down the line."

One remedy, Tanner said, would be for the government to offer a subsidy to livestock and poultry producers when the market doesn't allow them to make a profit. "A number of commodities (including corn) have safety-net subsidies, but there's never been one for the protein sector."

But some groups have applauded corn's price hike. "For years corn has been ridiculously cheap. So cheap that the market price paid to farmers has routinely been well below the cost of production," wrote Jim Harkness, president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in his Web site commentary, "Who's Afraid of the High Price of Corn?" "Taxpayers now pay farmers between $15 billion to $20 billion a year to make up for low market prices."

Since corn prices have gone up, Harkness noted, the government subsidies have dropped. And, he added, there may be public health benefits if soft drink prices rise due to corn sweetener costs, or if the market shifts to lower-fat, grass-fed beef.

Corn alone may not end up being America's ultimate biofuel solution. The Utah Department of Transportation is testing the idea of planting oil-producing crops such as canola along highway right-of-ways, which would be used to make biodiesel. Two University of Minnesota professors wrote in the Washington Post in March about their successful 10-year experiment to grow native prairie grasses for ethanol. They concluded that these grasses could be harvested along the road right-of-ways all across America.

Other companies, such as Culinary Crafts of Orem, are recycling used cooking oil into biodiesel fuel. And there's also been interest in turning manure into methane gas, which can be used for fuel. (Utah State University professors, brothers Carl and Conly Hansen, discussed their "manure power" technology in a 2006 Deseret Morning News article.)

If the manure idea catches on, livestock and poultry producers will have a ready-made supply to fill that demand.

---

E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com