State Senator Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) represents parts of four counties: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, and Walworth. Her Senate District 28 includes New Berlin, Franklin, Greendale, Hales Corners, Muskego, Waterford, Big Bend and parts of Greenfield, East Troy, and Mukwonago. Senator Lazich has been in the Legislature for more than a decade. She considers herself a tireless crusader for lower taxes, reduced spending and smaller government.
Corn farmer David Kurtz of Urbana, Illinois is enthusiastic about ethanol. Kurtz, who owns about 800 acres of farmland, told the Associated Press, “I happen to be more encouraged by what I see going on in agriculture now than anytime from the time I got involved in it in 1977. More demand for corn, it’s very simple, it leads to higher prices.”
Contrast Kurtz’s optimism with the skepticism of cattle rancher Kerby Barker of Wyoming who knows it’s more expensive to feed cows, chickens and pigs due to the rising cost of feed corn. Barker told NewsMax.com, “It’s hard to see where the future is, if corn keeps going up. Anytime you jack up the price of fuel, anytime you jack up the price of corn, it just drives up your bottom line.”
Ethanol, and the corn craze to produce it, is causing a wide rift between farmers. Some rejoice over skyrocketing corn prices. Others aren’t so happy because they’re battling for the very same corn to feed their livestock, and have to pay more.
Being a farmer is difficult, so the ethanol buzz can be welcome news to a rural community. A new ethanol plant can generate new investment, create new jobs, and open new real estate markets. The ethanol boom can also lead farmers to grow corn instead of other crops. That creates shortages and higher prices for other commodities, and higher costs to produce food will mean higher food prices at grocery stores.
There are other reasons not every farmer has jumped on the ethanol bandwagon. Corn requires a great deal of water to grow, more water than many other crops. Some farmers and other concerned residents near ethanol plants can’t compromise losing the water the ethanol plants require.
“That’s what’s really going to kill the water situation here, the amount of water it will take to irrigate all that corn,” said Lowell Brakey of Dodge City, Kansas to the Lawrence Journal-World. Harry Coambes of southwest Missouri told the newspaper, “What would you do to protect your home, your livelihood and your net worth? If they have to empty our aquifer, I am financially ruined, me and about 100 some other families.” Coambes’ solution was to go to court to fight a proposed ethanol plant.
Opposition to an outbreak of ethanol plants includes concern over pollution and the danger of overextending water supplies. Worries abound over polluted water being discharged onto other property or underground.
Many new ethanol plants popping up are farmer-owned cooperatives. Financially-troubled farmers thought corn was their light at the end of the tunnel. However, some grapple with the dilemma of the ethanol craze driving up the cost of feed that drives up the cost of food. Their sudden fortune can deplete a community’s water supply, fueling a fight over who gets to use it. Some plants divide a community to the point of court litigation.
There’s no sign of America’s intoxication with ethanol wearing off. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual prospective plantings report says demand from the ethanol industry is expected to result in the biggest U.S. corn planting since 1944. Corn planting will be up 15% this year to 90.5 million acres, 12.1 million more acres than in 2006. The Renewable Fuels Association says our ethanol output was about five billion gallons last year and is expected to double to nearly 11 billion gallons by 2009. That could intensify the public backlash against the production of corn for fuel, and widen the chasm between today’s farmers.
