Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Activism98201" <activism98201@verizon.net>]

The following is an op-ed that I sent off to the Seattle Times that did not get published.  I had promised that I’d post it here, so here it is…

 

-Mark Nagel

Everett, WA

 

 

Are we ready to give up food for ethanol?

 

Scaling up ethanol production will promote fuel-crop production over food-crop production, and eventually will lead to irreparable damage to our cropland's soils.

 

It is said that land is a good investment because “they just ain't making any more of it.”  And this couldn't be truer for cropland.  We have only a fixed amount of land that is suitable for growing widely used crops.

 

Corn is grown on roughly 25% of all cropland (the most of any crop).  The majority of this cropland, 80%, falls within a handful of states comprising what is referred to as the “Corn Belt.”

 

And corn just happens to be the current crop of choice for ethanol production.  Although there are other potentials out there, none are likely to compete with corn for the foreseeable future.  The reason?  Because corn already possess a huge investment base.  It should be no shock that Archer Daniels Midland Corp. (ADM), who controls over 50% of all US corn production, should be on the ethanol bandwagon.

 

Clearly the corn industry is huge, from seed companies to fertilizer and pesticide companies, and from trucking companies to processing companies.  Corn is a highly coddled crop.

 

Because there is only a fixed amount of viable cropland it is a certainty that increased ethanol production will result in a redirection of corn exports toward local ethanol production (causing greater deficits in foreign trade) as well as a reduction in the cropland used to produce food crops.  This, at a time in which Canada's National Farmers Union reported that the world is consuming more food than farmers are producing (deficit is made up from stored foods).

 

Are we ready to give up food for ethanol?

 

Arguments are likely to be made that just as we can shift an existing cropland from a food-crop to an ethanol one that we can just as readily shift it back.  Well, it's not quite so simple.  Corn is as entrenched as it is because of strong government support (subsidies).  The ethanol lobby is likely to attain equally strong support.  Combine the corn and ethanol lobbies and you've got one huge entrenchment...  add in energy and  automotive companies and you've got a heck of an immovable object!

 

But the biggest danger lies with soil depletion.  Any backyard gardener or small crop farmer knows that you must have fertile soil in order to grow crops. This basic equation is not magically suspended for ethanol crops (corn or other).

 

Corn requires huge quantities of nitrogen fertilizers, with requirements increasing year by year as our soils become increasingly devoid of nutrients.  University of Manitoba professor Vaclav Smil is able to calculate that roughly 40% of protein in all of human bodies world-wide wouldn't exist is not for modern synthesized nitrogen.  This nitrogen is synthesized using natural gas.  Natural gas makes up about 70% to 90% of the manufacturing costs of nitrogen: and natural gas prices are increasing.  Remember this connection.

 

Ethanol proponents hold up Brazil as the model of ethanol success.   Now that you've a basic primer on crops and fertilizers let's take a closer look at Brazil's “success” and ask whether it is sustainable.  A recent UN Food Agricultural Organization report (Fertilizer use by crop in Brazil [2004]) contains these concluding remarks:

“In general terms, the fertilizer nutrient balance in Brazilian agriculture is unsatisfactory. The removal of nutrients by the 16 main crops [of which sugar cane, the primary crop used for ethanol, is one] is higher than the quantities applied in the form of mineral fertilizers. The deficit is much greater in the case of nitrogen than in those of phosphorus and potassium. Thus the soil is being seriously depleted of nutrients and this represents a serious threat to long-term agricultural sustainability.” (emphasis added)

 

Brazil's soil heath IS deteriorating.  The report also notes the rapid increase in natural gas imports.  The connections and trends are disturbingly clear.

 

Now that you understand the importance of natural gas in producing ethanol you should probably know that the bulk of the world's natural gas reserves are in Russia and the Middle East and that US natural gas production is in decline.

 

Not only will we not escape energy independence (from Middle East fossil fuels), but by increasing ethanol production we'll be increasing the depletion of the very soil that grows our food.  Many civilizations have collapsed due to infertile soil.

 

Are we ready to give up food for ethanol?

 

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