A quick check of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) website shows that the ethanol boom continues here. As of the year 2000, four ethanol plants were in operation but by the time I first wrote about ethanol last summer, there were a half-dozen plants in operation and about 20 more proposed for our state; and as of February 1, there are 53 plants and expansions in various stages of the permitting process, half of them applications submitted within the past six months.

Ethanol Producer Magazine notes in its February 2007 publication that the 2006 permit total alone represents 4.3 billion gallons of added capacity if all these projects are approved.

We’ve confronted water usage, mainly, in discussing the downsides of ethanol so far. Just as important is considering the ways this boom might affect how farmers–and others–view and use our land. Hog farmer Gary Asay of Osco, Illinois, had this to say in a Chicago Tribune interview:

Seated at his kitchen table this summer, Asay looked out the window over a fine stand of corn surrounding his farm. He intends to plant corn on every one of his 300 acres from now on, as long as the ethanol factories demand it.

Forget about crop rotation, he says. Asay will be dumping on the fertilizer and giving his new industrial neighbors what they no doubt will need in previously unheard-of quantities. “I’m planning on raising corn year after year,” he says.*

Farmers aren’t the only ones willing to change their game plans. Government at all levels has proven willing to accommodate ethanol by making “allowances” for the industry, some on the basis of national/energy security principles and others for its old-fashioned potential as a cash cow. Read the rest of this entry