Biotech-Biofuel Benefactors

The power of big finance and bad ideas

…Dedicating all present U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of our gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Total U.S. cropland reaches 625,000 sq.mi. To replace U.S. oil consumption with biofuels we would need 1.4 million sq.mi. of corn for ethanol and 8.8 million sq. mi. of soybean for biodiesel. Biofuels are expected to turn Iowa and South Dakota into corn-importers by 2008.

The biofuel energy balance – the amount of fossil energy put in to producing crop biomass compared to that coming out – is anything but promising. Researchers Patzek and Pimentel see serious negative energy balances with biofuels. Other researchers see only 1.2 to 1.8 fold returns, for ethanol, at best, with the jury still lukewarm on cellulosic biofuels.

Industrial methods of corn and soybean production depend on large scale monocultures. Industrial corn requires high levels of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (largely responsible for the dead zone in Gulf of Mexico) and the herbicide atrazine, an endocrine disruptor. Soybeans require massive amounts of non selective, Roundup herbicide that upsets soil ecology and produces “superweeds.”

Both monocultures produce massive topsoil erosion and surface and groundwater pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff.

Each gallon of ethanol sucks up 3 – 4 gallons of water in the production of biomass.
The expansion of irrigated “fuel on the cob” into drier areas in the Midwest will draw down the already suffering Ogallala aquifer.

One of the more surreptitious industrial motives of the biofuels agenda – and the reason Monsanto and company are key players – is the opportunity to irreversibly convert agriculture to genetically engineered crops (GMOs). Presently, 52% of corn, 89% of soy, and 50% of canola in the US are GMO. The expansion of biofuels with “designer corn” genetically tailored for special ethanol processing plants will remove all practical barriers to the permanent contamination of all non-GMO crops.

GNN