...Food and Fuel Compete for Land and Water

pipes, and the refining process. In some cases, the use of coal-fired refineries offsets any significant reduction in carbon emissions.
     The heavy reliance on pesticides in commercial agriculture also poses the possibility of water or soil pollution from runoff. Moreover, the national demand for fuel is so great that replacing gasoline with ethanol would require much more agricultural land than is currently under cultivation.
     While corn-based ethanol may not provide the solution to our energy crisis, other crops may have more potential, such as switch grass or cellulosic material, that is, crop waste or wood chips. While there are technical problems to overcome in processing these materials, it is anticipated that they would provide more energy per gallon than corn-ethanol, with less environmental impacts.
     No matter what the crop is, growing our way out of energy dependency currently requires the use of fossil fuels and potentially affects other crops when farmers switch to a more profitable fuel crop. The search for a nonfood plant that requires less fossil fuel to produce or refine, therefore, should have a high priority, with obvious economic and environmental benefits.

On the other hand, designing cars and trucks that are 25% more efficient would produce more savings and benefits than increasing ethanol production. Combined with conservation and the development of rapid transit systems, more efficient vehicles would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy independence.
     Even in Brazil, which relies on ethanol from sugarcane, a much more efficient fuel than corn-ethanol, environmentalists claim that it takes 4 liters of water to produce a liter of ethanol, and increased sugarcane cultivation could lead to further destruction of tropical forests, releasing tons of carbon which they currently store.
     Likewise, land planted in sugarcane is not feeding Brazil’s starving millions, and a focus on ethanol production in other poor countries, because of its profitability, might lead to a decline in local food production. Because of the miserable conditions under which sugar cane cutters work, the production of ethanol in Brazil also comes at a great human cost. Hopefully, sharing ethanol technology with Brazil does not mean sharing working conditions, but decent wages and improved working conditions would also increase the cost of ethanol in Brazil.