Alumni Association Home > Minnesota Magazine > Past Issues > 2007 > May-June 2007

In early spring, the winter-whitened stubble of cornstalks litters the wet, black fields in southwest Minnesota. In a couple of months, farmers will fertilize and plant,

much of it with corn. The highway curves, and into view comes one of the newest skyscrapers on the prairie: an ethanol plant. Plumes of white rise from the structure and drift over a tree break. Inside, a distillery turns the fruits of the fields into an additive to the fuel propelling both our vehicle down the highway and the economy of this region. In seconds, the scene is behind us, replaced by acres more of stubbled, sleeping fields. When we come this way again, for a family reunion in late June, these fields will be verdant with rows of corn.

I imagine that the opinions surrounding our recent story “Five Reasons Corn Ethanol Won’t Save the Planet” (January– February) would outnumber the kernels on a single ear. After the issue hit the mail, letters, e-mails, and phone calls began coming in. I didn’t anticipate the passionate response but was thrilled the story was getting attention.

One person called the story disrespectful, someone else courageous. Another said it was needlessly negative, another that it was much-needed. The story was taken up by a Star Tribune blogger and discussed on the Minnesota Environmental Partnership Web site. It became the catalyst for an apparent write-in campaign to support further scrutiny of bio-fuels and prompted letters and calls to University of Minnesota administrators from corn ethanol interests.

The story was based on the work of University researchers on the various impacts and aspects—including environmental, economic, and practical—of relying on a monocrop that competes as a food source as a replacement for fossil fuels. And the story pointed to studies by U researchers on alternative bio-fuels, namely from bio-diverse prairie grass, as potentially more viable. But it admittedly wasn’t the entire, or final, word on corn ethanol and alternative bio-fuels. (The conversation continues in Letters, page 8.)

Our story didn’t mention that, while everyone seeks a fix for our foreign oil dependence, corn ethanol was never intended to be a wholesale replacement for gasoline. Our planet couldn’t sustain such a plan. According to Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and a recent guest speaker on campus, the amount of corn ethanol required for our round trip from the Twin Cities to southwest Minnesota would be enough to feed one person for an entire year.

But as an additive to gasoline, corn ethanol works—and its production could become more environmentally friendly with further development of biomass energy sources. What’s more, the corn ethanol industry has demonstrated that governments, corporations, and private individuals have the ingenuity to offer a solution to one of the world’s most vexing problems: finding a sustainable energy source.

Not every U authority is convinced of the promise of prairie grass as an alternative bio-fuel. It hasn’t been widely tested, is decades behind corn ethanol, and faces some of the same challenges as corn, such as overcoming the need for fossil fuels in its harvest and transportation. But that is part of the beauty of academic freedom, in which University researchers study problems, test solutions, discuss and disagree, and fail and succeed unobstructed.

Farther down the highway, a row of wind turbines towers over the corn and soybean fields. One point that perhaps all could agree on is that the answers to our energy problems lie here, in rural America. We should also be able to find consensus regarding energy conservation—a practice we all can lead.

Shelly Fling can be reached at fl ing003@umn.edu.