Little Ethanol Producers on the Prairie

Writers on the Range contributor John Krist, also a columnist for the Ventura (Calif.) Star, wrote recently about a new study that shows traditional prairie grasslands may be the best source for ethanol fuel.

Krist quotes a University of Minnesota study that "biofuels derived from a mixture of native grassland perennials...yield up to twice as much usable energy per unit of land as corn-based ethanol."Grassland plants, of course, don't need the watering, tilling, fertilizing, and pest spraying that corn requires. These are all, Krist notes, "energy-intensive activities that offset much or all of the energy produced when grain is converted to fuel."

Krist advocates returning the prairie to the plants that used to grow there before farmers and their crops moved in. We then mow it every couple weeks and distill it into fuel.

I guess we should blame those aggie eggheads at Gopher U for muddying the waters about ethanol. This comes just as the prairie booms with farmers planting huge corn crops and ethanol distilleries rising like prairie grass in small towns. Even Pres. Bush -- an oil tycoon and friend to oil tycoons -- thinks it's a great idea. Now he'll have to get his mind around the concept of digging up all the corn and replacing it with stuff that the buffalo used to eat (and fertilize).

That could take awhile. But it's O.K. because farmers aren't ready to give up their subsidies and a chance for big energy-boom bucks. The buffalo may be able to eat grassland plants but we aren't. The technology to produce ethanol from these plants is not available on the scale needed to replace corn-based ethanol producers.

Meanwhile, I'll keep filling my minivan with ethanol from Nebraska cornhusks and corncobs. I cuts down on pollutants, and nobody in Cheyenne has to go to war against Scottsbluff to ensure a steady supply.