/ .,"/.. ~ ·--(ir! .-c,(i,, 11/, -, ,__. /.,..,.,- . -. ~) The lucrative entry of ADM into fuel production has been closely watched by other major food processing corporations such.as Standard Brands, Heinz, American Maize, and Cargill, all of which are considering constructing distilleries adjacent to their wet corn milling operations. One food processing firm, CPC of Iowa, has already announced a joint-financed venture with Texaco Oil Company to build a major 60 million gallon-a-year distillery in the Midwest. This deal may come under scrutiny by the Justice Department for possible anti-trust violations. Small-scale alcohol advocates, like Scott Sklar of the National Center for Appropriate Technology, have proposed federal legislation to ban the oil industry from any involvement in alcohol fuels production. So far they have not found much support in Congress. • The Case Against Alcohol Fuels In the wake of all the activity in government and financial circles to •promote gasohol, a sharp critique of the emerging large-scale industry is now being formulated by A.T. advocates and concerned members of the farming community. One of alcohol fuels' most strident c.:itics has been Robert Rodale, publisher at Rodale Press, who has used both Organic Gardening and New Farm magazines as platforms to point out the folly of turning to the fossil fuel-dependent U.S. agricultural system to provide feedstocks for a supposedly renewable fuel. Take away the petroleum needed to power farm equipment and the natural gas needed to produce pesticides and fertilizers, he points out, and American agriculture would abruptly grind to a halt. Thus, in many respects, relying on energy crops for fuel fails to ease the nation's dependence on imported oil. At an even more basic level, Rodale is dismayed by the idea of turning to agriculture to meet the nation's energy needs at a time when the soil base is already seriously overburdened. According to U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA) statistics, soil erosion is ravaging prime farmlands at a national average of twice the rate that new soil October 1980 RAIN Page 5 Jill Stapleton is being formed. Since our remaining soil reserves are even more limited than our remaining oil reserves, Rodale argues that it makes little sense to turn to farm-based alcohol energy to meet the na- - tion's long term energy needs. Once a tract of land loses its fertility it is of little use for_either food or energy production. . Some congressional plans which call for taking marginal farmlands out of pasture and putting them into energy crop production could increase this already dangerous rate of soil erosion. Many of these marginal lands are hilly and particularly susceptible to the impact of water erosion while other tracts are-located in dry areas vulnerable to wind erosion. The commercialization of a new process which will enable distilleries to convert cellulosic crop residues (corn stalks, wheat straw, hay, etc.) into ethanol may also have a substantial impact on erosion rates. This technology is now being perfected by several different government- and indu.stry-sponsored research and development projects and involves the use of mutant offsprings of the trichodermaviride enzyme to break down the long carbon chains of cellulosic materials into the simple sugars necessary for successful fermentation. Gulf Chemical, a subsidiary of Gulf Oil, has already successfully tested a small pilot plant for the production of fuel grade ethanol from crop and paper wastes, but dropped plans to build a full-scale "demo" in 1979. Then, in a somewhat surprising move, the company donated the entire project and staff to the University of Arkansas. cont.
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