Before addressing some of the onerous points in your piece, please take a look at the attached photo. This is not from the BP spill in the Gulf but rather the latest incident in Michigan which has dumped a million gallons of oil into a river and is now 80 miles from polluting Lake Michigan. Oil is and always has been a loaded gun from an environmental perspective.  From leaking tanks at service stations to oil tankers grounded on coral reefs in storms. No more explanation needed on this one.

However, perhaps the biggest point you fail to address is wind, coal, and geothermal don’t make your car go. Natural gas can be used as an automotive fuel but it too is not renewable and has other issues I won’t go into here today. Solar….I’ll race you with my bicycle.

Will ethanol be made from other sources some day?  Undoubtedly. Other biomass sources show real potential and will come with the proper research and development, but corn-based technology and infrastructure is the very launching platform for this effort. Yet opponents would have us build our domestic energy house without a foundation.

Ethanol…dubious environmental benefit? Line up the hundreds of studies regarding ethanol, look at the funding sources and consider what is left. What you will find is a long trail of reputable scientists and institutions public, private and governmental that clearly shows the environmental benefits of ethanol.

When compared to petroleum especially, ethanol is a rock star in regard to cleaning the air, maintaining water quality, and soil management. On the oil side think tar sands.

Your reference to the land use issue is also comical. Incredible productivity on our existing corn acres is easily supplying the growing ethanol industry while also meeting the needs of other markets. And yield growth is accelerating.

And finally, I think we must aggressively pursue all forms of renewable, domestic energy given the finite nature of petroleum and do so in good conscience because of the legacy we stand to leave future generations. To suggest we put our entire energy investment in “maybe someday” sources while ignoring a viable and tested source like ethanol is shortsighted at best.

Many of the recommendations of this report cut into corn ethanol from various angles. First, FOE calls for an end of government subsidies for commodity crops including corn. Next, they call for an end of ethanol subsidies, specifically the ethanol tax credit (VEETC) and the ethanol tariff. They do, however, acknowledge that the subsidies directly go to oil but indirectly help the ethanol and agricultural industry.

They write on their website, “Tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money has already been wasted under the credit [VEETC]. And these funds do little more than to further line the coffers of the oil industry. This coalition is working to prevent an additional 30 billion plus dollars from being lavished on the industry to fulfill a legally mandated requirement to blend an environmentally harmful fuel into another environmentally harmful one.”

They argue that eliminating commodity crop subsidies by 50 percent could save taxpayers more than $26 billion over the next five years. They also argue that eliminating VEETC could save the U.S. Treasury as much as $5.4 billion in 2011.

If attacking the subsidy issue isn’t enough, they also attacked corn and corn ethanol on multiple environmental fronts including water quality (Dead Zone and hypoxia) as well as the ‘major’ amount of land that must be used to grow the crops. They go so far in the report to accuse corn-ethanol as being a bigger environmental offender than petroleum.

Corn ethanol may not be perfect, but I can’t stomach the false accusation that corn ethanol is environmentally worse than petroleum. But maybe the most frustrating thing is that not only is Friends of the Earth uneducated about agriculture and the corn ethanol industry, they don’t want to be. And in a world that is so “concerned” about the environment, FOE’s refusal to be open to non-fossil fuel options is a disservice to the American public.

 He doesn’t have a farming background and isn’t invested in the ethanol industry so he is a neutral and somewhat uninformed observer. He is also one of the busiest guys I know so for him to notice it means the anti-ethanol crowd are now officially pervasive. Apparently, it’s not just me feeling paranoid.

 The conversation came back to me in a hurry this week with the latest “ethanol is evil” Tsunami rolling across the country once again. It started with the Wall Street Journal  (No link here because you have to pay for this tripe) and the Washington Post and worked its way across the country hitting the Chicago Tribune and Des Moines Register yesterday and likely making its way for the West Coast like some cheap traveling circus.

 And like the aforementioned Circus the anti-ethanol gang leave a trail behind much like Barnum and Bailey’s elephants only there is no guy with a shovel and bucket cleaning up in their wake. They leave their load of “misinformation” to fester in the road in full knowledge that most people are also too busy to check the veracity of their propaganda.

 The public lynching of ethanol began with the bogus food vs. fuel charade in 2008 and since then has continued to resurface over and over again in several different guises that get trotted out and recycled whenever opportunity presents itself.

 Several things remain consistent as the attacks continue. The noxious cocktail they serve up is made with equal parts of the best bad science money can buy and poor logic. And the olive on the toothpick seems to be just plain old avarice.

 That’s greed, materialism, or covetousness with a Capital “C.” The people fanning the fires of these attacks have rationale and motivation that are simple if not transparent. They are the folks that want the cheapest corn possible because it boosts their profits; want ethanol to be made from another source; or want ethanol crippled forever because the market share just got too big.

 So, for the next couple of days come back here and you will get a sneak peak each day of some of these players and the Machiavellian games they play and fund all to snuff out the only real competition that imported petroleum faces in the marketplace today…ethanol.

Derrel says that since Nebraska is the state with the most irrigated land this has been a very important subject for his research and work. He says that farmers are being challenged by water limitations and to meet the bottom line while optimizing the use of ground water resources. He says that contrary to what some people may think about the aquifer going dry, it’s not. There’s plenty of water there. But states are looking at water a lot more critically and that’s putting pressure on farmers to make more efficient use of it. He says they’ve been looking at crop water use efficiency for quite a while.

When it comes to irrigation efficiency he says “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Technology today makes that pretty easy to do though. He says about 80 percent of the irrigated land is done with center pivots which can be very efficient but they need to be managed to make sure they’re working properly. He also cautions farmers to be careful about irrigating too early in spring and too late in the fall. Interestingly, Arkansas is the fourth largest irrigated state. He says irrigation is moving east.

You can download (mp3) and listen to my interview with Derrel here:

From a corn grower perspective the GTS info is more than a little interesting because ethanol critics often argue increased ethanol production drives demand for U.S. corn, reduces U.S. soybean acres, and thus opens the door for more soybean acres – and more deforestation – in South America.

The tactic has always been a bit suspect because the vast majority of new corn demand is being filled through burgeoning yields on existing U.S. acres. Even more interesting is this convoluted logic is now being drawn into serious doubt by an effort that uses real-world data rather than speculation and hyperbole.

The industry-led project in the Brazilian Amazon, now in its third years shows land clearing for cattle remains a much bigger contributor to than diversion than expanding soy production.

GTS, a coalition that includes their Ministry of the Environment, NGOs, exporters and civil society organizations, uses a combination of state of the art satellite technology and on-the-ground shoe leather assessment to gauge deforestation and any relationship to crops, specifically soy planting.

A company called Globalsat conducted flyovers and field visits in Brazil’s Mato Grosso, Para, and Rondonia part of the Amazon Biome and the virtual epicenter of Brazilian soybean production.

Ethanol bashers seem to be remarkably mum on this revelation. Hmmm

Ethanol companies and farmers have supported these tax incentives that go to whoever blends the ethanol in with gasoline be it local or regional business or larger big oil wholesalers. The truth is, for an industry that has had your fuel dollars in a choke hold for decades, oil interests have had little reason in the early years for them to blend.

Better for the environment, domestic jobs, energy security are noble reasons to support biofuels but ultimately, profit is the central focal point for big oil.  Profitability is likely a key directive for any business that wants to survive.

However, with increasingly competitive ethanol prices, the oil and gas guys often pad their profits nicely over and above the blender tax credit. Why not eliminate it? Most rational people in the industry think is should be phased out and the amount has been reduced already. The trick will be reducing it again and eventually eliminating subsidies it in a way that makes sense for consumers and will assure we sustain this critical domestic fuel source long term.

And any cuts to tax incentives for renewable should be directed at big oil too, especially considering the years they have been at the public tax trough. The largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production, according to research released by Environmental Law Institute.

The study, which reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008, reveals that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion.

In the interim, one interesting side effect from the BP oil disaster is the growing public awareness of how profitable Fortune 100 companies like BP are and have been for decades. For BP, a $20 billion outlay for oil spill damages is a drop in a very large bucket.

BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined, according to a recent Associated Press story. 

So when the White House arm-twisted BP executives into setting aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil spill, investors weren’t worried it would bankrupt BP. They barely batted an eye. “The U.S. government will become insolvent before BP does,” said Bruce Lanni, a stock analyst with Nollenberg Capital Partners.

I beg to differ. There is nothing green about oil, and contrary to his contention this changes everything. The BP incident may very well be the poster child for the future literally and figuratively. Literally because it will happen again somewhere else in the world because of the inherent risk and figuratively because it reinforces the point that all the easy oil is gone.

From here on out each barrel will carry an increasingly high environmental price whether it comes from the deep ocean or is dug from open pits on the face of mother earth as tar sands.

Goldberg goes on to compare the hypoxic zone at the mouth of the Mississippi, otherwise known as the “Dead Zone”  by those with a flair for the dramatic, to the oil disaster. Several things make agriculture’s role in these areas of oxygen starved water difficult to understand. Many scientists say hypoxic zones are naturally occurring. Dead zones exist at the mouth of lots of rivers around the world, including many that mysteriously use no commercial fertilizers in their watersheds.

His contention that increased ethanol production will increase the size of the dead zone (he cites a National Academy of Sciences 2008 study)  is clearly off base and displays an ignorance of what the technological revolution taking place in modern agriculture. Corn yields are skyrocketing on the same acreage and at the same time this is occurring while new, innovative fertilization methods mean we are growing 70% more corn per ounce of fertilizer.

Much of the science also seems to be solely focused on agriculture while giving short shrift to other major sources that contribute large quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus etc…such as homeowner and golf course applications. Then there is always the one big documented offender…antiquated, deteriorating or just plain inadequate public sewage treatment plants.

In today’s tight budget environment nobody wants to talk about treatment facilities that need to be replaced or even expanded. This is expensive, so in times of heavy flow it is easier to dump inadequately treated water or let overtaxed systems overflow. The highest spike in these naughty chemicals is below the discharge of plants like this…go figure.

It is also bizarre and hard to explain one other odd fact. If agriculture is a primary contributor to hypoxia then the worst flare-ups should come in the years when there is the heaviest rainfall and runoff. Such is not the case. This one fact alone means critics need to go back to the drawing board if we truly want to understand and fix this problem. In the mean time, agriculture has done yeoman’s work to use fertilizer in a targeted manner, stop soil erosion and assure improved water quality.

Goldberg’s article also discusses the economic contributions of the domestic oil industry and how it is better than relying on imported oil. No arguing with that but he might go deeper. First, we now import more than 60% of our oil, and even with deep water drilling we will continue to do so without other solutions like alternative energy. If we look at the export of jobs and U.S. dollars for this oil and the human and defense costs of our oil addiction and it boggles the mind.

His entire arguments regarding land use and the impacts of ethanol on food prices are also weak and fall far shy of reality and don’t even deserve space here, but feel free the check out the accompanying links.

Fossil fuels have indeed been a great boon to industrialization, economic development, and having a modern-mobile lifestyle, but to say petroleum has been a “boon to the environment” is pure tripe. The cold reality is that we are oil junkies and this dependency has drained our national economy as surely as a vampire at a Red Cross convention.

We are so dependent that we could never move away from oil by going cold turkey. This would crash our economy in a way that makes the banking/investment fiasco seem like a minor annoyance and result in a very discontented populace.

There are no easy answers but to do nothing and ignore this evolving crisis is irresponsible.

The study determined that high-yield agriculture has prevented the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.  The same high-yield production that many criticize while advocating for a return to more primitive methods has actually helped save the planet.  So when some environmentalist wannabe comes down on farmers, let him know the truth.  Well- respected scientists and informed citizens know that the U.S. farmer is a great environmentalist.  Arguing against the best technology, advanced practices and most carefully thought out agricultural model available in pursuit of a romanticized notion of a bygone era does not makes sense.

One good barometer of the success of an advertising campaign is to generate buzz, cultivate conversation and even attract the attention of the occasional rock thrower. Based on this yardstick the new Corn Farmers Coalition campaign in Washington, DC is a raging success.

It has attracted positive attention from the media, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and several key societal thought leaders. On the negative side several environmental bloggers have taken exception to the campaign labeling it “hilarious, calling it “greenwashing” and “pro-corn propaganda. Since when did publicly displaying USDA and EPA facts become a subversive pursuit? Feel free to go to these sites and comment.

CFC  efforts have also surfaced the old traditional tactic used by these detractors to label family corn farmers as “industrial corn” (whatever the heck that is)  or one of my personal favorites….”King Corn.”  Anyone who actually knows one of the 300,000 family farmers in the U.S. already knows the proper term is “industrious” as this is a prerequisite to surviving in the low profit margin world that is modern agriculture. If you want to see what these fourth and fifth generation farmers look like click here.

The basic idea of using terms like industrial and factory farms is to play upon the public misconception that agriculture is some mega-corporation built on the same model as say global petroleum. Hinting that a handful of major agribusinesses are controlling agriculture and today’s corn farms are massive plantation-like operations. Would somebody please take these people for a fieldtrip outside the concrete jungle?

(And for the record CFC is completely funded by dollars directly from the aforementioned family farmers. There is no funding from Agribusiness).

It is exactly these kinds of tactics that have made it necessary for the hundreds of thousands of family farmers who produce most of this nation’s food, fiber and even a growing amount of fuel to invest in this campaign. The goal is simply to reflect a true picture of who is farming, how they farm, and how technology and innovation are making farmers environmental leaders.

Focus group research clearly shows that much of the Washington community from lobbyists to agency employees to Congressional staffers to environmental groups clearly don’t understand the wonderful mixture of family business and technological marvel that is modern farming.

This is not about any specific issue as some would have you think. The goals of the CFC campaign started in 2008 long before the current issues were before Congress and will likely still be relevant years from now when we move on to other policy debates. Keeping the campaign purely educational and keeping a degree of separation is part of the reason the Coalition was formed initially.

For farmers and other supporters of this campaign, please take the critics comments for what they are worth….feedback that shows the campaign is getting traction and for every negative comments there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in the nation’s capitol who are learning and beginning to understand this critical business of farming.

 The Illinois Corn Marketing Board is part of the Corn Farmers Coalition  along with other state corn grower groups and the National Corn Growers Association.  Earlier this week, we launched a new phase of our educational campaign that started last year. The goal is to let policy makers – and those who influence them – from think tanks to environmental groups in Washington, DC  – know corn farmers really are environmental stewards, conscious about food safety, and enjoying every minute of life on the farm with their family at their side.

 We covered the launch on our website if you’d like to read more.

 The thing is, the Environmental Working Group is calling our campaign “Greenwashing,” meaning that we’re trying to paint our industry as a green industry even though it’s not.  Well, call me old fashioned, but when someone I love is attacked, it ruffles my feathers a bit and this blatant disregard for facts just doesn’t sit well with me.

 The FACT is farmers are green. 

 CFC ads report data like “Thanks to new, innovative fertilization methods, today’s American corn farmers are producing 70% more corn per pound of fertilizer.”  That data comes straight from the USDA and that data reflects an industry that is conscious of what they are using and placing on the land in their care.  Show me another industry that is so environmentally conscious or has such a great story to tell.

 The FACT is farmers are operating family (not corporate) farms.

 I’ll speak from experience here; I know a lot of farmers.  Every single one of them is just a regular, down home guy – the sort that would wave at a stranger from the cab of their pick-up truck, the sort that would stop and help you if you had car trouble, the sort that jumps from the tractor to the shower and speeds into town to watch their son’s t-ball game or their daughter’s dance recital. 

 EWG says that “There are thousands of large, plantation-scale corn factories dotting the American landscape, family-owned or not.  And family ownership does not necessarily equal small.  Agricultural supply giant Cargill is family-owned.  So are the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Twins.”

 To compare the family farm I grew up on to the Minnesota Twins is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.  My dad farms a lot of acres – some his own, some his brothers, and some his neighbors that retired from farming.  To the local farmer’s market consumer, I know he looks like a plantation owner.  But he’s the one driving the tractor.  He’s the one stressing over marketing decisions.  He’s the one dealing with environmental regulations that EPA bureaucrats decide are relevant.  He’s the one trying to make his small business work with only the help of wife at home to support him and his dad at the end of the row to bring him a drink.  I doubt Cargill and the Minnesota Twins are operated in the same manner.

 And he’s not unique.

 The FACT is farmers are using less land, not more.

 EWG says that “According to a National Wildlife Federation report this year, the corn ethanol gold rush has been responsible for plowing up thousands of acres of pristine wildlife habitat (and prime carbon sequestration vegetation) and converting it to corn production.”

 Well, I suppose that depends on who you feel is the authority.

 Our federal government (the USDA), who runs the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) indicated that from 1982 to 2007, cropland acreage declined from about 420 million acres to 357 million acres.  CRP, or acres returned their natural state, reflects more than half of that diverted acreage. 

 There are multiple other facts that EWG has gotten wrong, but you can read those for yourself.

 At the end of the day, I’d say the only “greenwashing” we’re trying to accomplish is to make every other industry in the country green with envy at the wholesome, slow-paced, family environment in which we get to work and the fabulous story we have to tell about corn farmers that are conscious stewards of the land.

 Eat your heart out, EWG.

You can read more from Lindsay at the CornCorps blog  – http://corncorps.blogspot.com/