From Population Bomb to Ethanol Mandates

Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

When I was in college around 1970, one of the books that shaped how many thought about the future was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The central fear then was stark and urgent: humanity was growing faster than the planet’s ability to feed itself. Mass starvation, we were told, was not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty unless something changed.

Whether Ehrlich’s predictions would prove right or wrong is beside the point. What mattered was the anxiety that framed the era. Food was precious. Arable land was finite. Population growth threatened to overwhelm fragile systems. Feeding people was the overriding concern.   

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture has shifted in ways I never would have imagined back then. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. And yet hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure, many of them acutely so. Hunger has not disappeared; it has simply become chronic, unevenly distributed, and easier to ignore unless it erupts into crisis.

At the same time, something else has happened—something that strikes me as strange. Vast amounts of productive farmland, particularly in the United States, are no longer devoted primarily to feeding people, but to growing corn that is converted into ethanol. This ethanol is then blended into gasoline—not to replace it, but to dilute it. We are using food-producing land, water, fertilizer, and energy to marginally extend a fuel supply, all in the name of energy independence.

This is where the dissonance creeps in.

I’ve written before about the ethanol debate and the political enthusiasm that surrounded it, especially after the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Ethanol was sold as a clean, patriotic solution to foreign oil dependence. And once embraced, it quickly became politically untouchable. Powerful agricultural and industrial interests ensured that mandates stayed in place, even as questions mounted about ethanol’s true energy balance and environmental benefits.

But step back from the technical arguments for a moment and look at the larger picture. We once worried that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now we grow food to burn it. This is weird to me. 

I don’t mean that as a slogan or a condemnation. It’s simply an observation—one that feels increasingly difficult to square with the world as it is. In many parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food insecurity is not theoretical. It shapes daily life. It fuels migration, political instability, and despair. And yet it rarely stays in our media spotlight for long. Hunger that is constant does not make for compelling headlines.

What we see instead are debates about fuel blends, mileage standards, and subsidy structures—important questions, perhaps, but questions that often unfold in isolation from broader human consequences.

None of this suggests that biofuels are inherently evil, or that farmers are villains, or that energy transitions are unnecessary. It does suggest, however, that priorities can drift in subtle ways. Policies designed for one moment can harden into assumptions, even when the conditions that gave rise to them have changed.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not the existence of ethanol mandates, but how little we seem to reflect on their implications.* We live in a world where hunger persists alongside abundance, where farmland feeds engines while people go without, and where the moral weight of those choices is rarely discussed.

Back in 1970, we were taught to fear a future defined by scarcity. Today, the problem looks different. It is not that we lack resources. It's that we struggle to decide what they are for. And that, to my mind, is a far more troubling question.

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When I considered the title for this post I was tempted to replace the word Mandates with Madness. I left it as is because I didn't want to be accused of having a clickbait title. The topic is too important to be trivial about it.

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IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

*Another negative feature of blending ethanol into gasoline has to with how it damages small engines due to "phase separation." Phase separation in ethanol-blended gasoline occurs when the ethanol absorbs moisture from the air or environment, causing the fuel to split into two layers: a water-ethanol mixture at the bottom and pure gasoline on top. This happens more readily in humid conditions or during long storage periods.

            The problem for small engines, like those in lawnmowers, chainsaws, or boats, is that the watery layer can corrode metal parts, clog fuel lines, and cause starting issues or engine failure. The separated gasoline lacks octane, leading to poor performance and premature death. Using ethanol-free fuel or specialized additives helps prevent this damage, but you seldom hear anyone talking about this.

The Ethanol Fallacy: A 2025 Update

The Ethanol Fallacy
January 22, 2008

Public domain

The February 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics features a challenging story by editor James B. Meigs called The Ethanol Fallacy. Unless you’ve been sleeping in a cave for two decades, you’ve undoubtedly been aware of the ongoing debates regarding the best way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A wide range of technologies has been evaluated from solar and wind energy to hydrogen power and fuel cells. Since transportation eats up the lion’s share of our energy use, much of the debate centers on how to power our cars and trucks.

Unfortunately, writes Meigs, the best solutions may not be getting the attention they deserve. Washington politicians have bought the “ethanol solution” hook, line and sinker.

Politicians have been falling all over themselves to prove their commitment to energy independence. The bill they have been crafting and carving has as its moniker the title “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.” No longer just an energy bill, it is a security matter, giving it a special reverence. According to Meigs, the 2008 presidential candidates “have outdone each other with vows to flood the nation with ever-increasing rivers of ethanol for at least a generation.”

It’s what our politicians love to do, of course. Take action fast. Look like a leader. Problem is, “shoot first, ask questions later” is a silly way to approach these kinds of issues.

The average person who votes is not really that knowledgeable about these matters, which gives the ethanol lobbyists a leg up. The truth is, it takes energy to make energy. The article points out that growing corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, a product of natural gas, and chemical herbicides, made mostly from oil. The heavy machinery that harvests these 93 million acres of corn all require diesel fuel and lubricants, as do the trucks that transport all this corn. According to one Cornell researcher, it takes more than a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. Now what’s that all about? How does this reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

There’s something corny about this ethanol business. As I have always suspected, and which the author here is not afraid to point out, the big winners are companies like Archer Daniels Midland whose lobbyists labor night and day in those corridors of power inside the beltway. And for who’s benefit? Not yours or mine.

So what can we do about it? Not sure, really. Any suggestions?

The Ethanol Fallacy, Revisited 2025.

Photo: Farm Progress

It's been 17 years since I penned the above piece and, if anything, the ethanol saga has only grown more entrenched—and more problematic. Back in 2008, the Energy Independence and Security Act was the shiny new toy, mandating a ramp-up to 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022, with corn ethanol as the star. Politicians from both parties hailed it as a win for energy security, rural economies, and the environment. But as the Popular Mechanics piece I referenced warned, it was a rushed fix, propped up by lobbying muscle from agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). 

Fast-forward to today, and the "rivers of ethanol" promised by those 2008 presidential candidates have become a flood—one that's drowning common sense in subsidies, environmental strain, and higher grocery bills.

Let's start with the numbers on corn, which is the heart of the original critique. In 2007, about 14% of the U.S. corn crop—roughly 2.05 billion bushels out of 14.5 billion total—went to ethanol production. Fast-forward to the 2023-24 crop year, and that figure has ballooned to a staggering 5.45 billion bushels, or nearly 45% of the total harvest. That's enough corn to fill over 200,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, diverted from food, feed, and exports to chase the biofuel dream. 

Some reports even peg it higher when including co-products like distillers grains used in animal feed, pushing the effective share past 50% for biofuel and alcohol combined. Meanwhile, total U.S. corn production hit a record 15.2 billion bushels in 2023, but the ethanol slice keeps growing—projected to hold steady at 5.45 billion bushels for 2024-25. Farmers love the demand (and the prices it props up), but at what cost to the rest of us?

What's weird to me is how Paul Ehrlich in his bestseller The Popular Bomb (1968) stated the global food supply would not be able to keep up with much more population growth. The world population was 3.5 billion then. Now we're over 8 billion people and instead of using farming to provide food we're using it for fuel. What's with that?

The energy math hasn't improved either. That Cornell researcher I quoted in 2008 nailed it: it still takes roughly a gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of corn ethanol. Recent analyses peg the energy return on investment (EROI) at just 1.04:1 for corn-based ethanol—meaning you get back barely more energy than you put in, and that's being generous. 

For context, gasoline clocks in at 8:1 or better; even tar sands beat ethanol at 4:1. No wonder critics call ethanol a "net energy sink" for society—it's like running on a treadmill to power your house. And the environmental toll? Corn ethanol's full lifecycle emissions (including fertilizer runoff, soil erosion, and methane from processing) often make it as dirty as—or dirtier than—regular gasoline, especially when indirect land-use changes like deforestation abroad are factored in. It's led to toxic algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, higher water bills for Midwest communities, and a "food vs. fuel" dilemma that's jacked up global prices for everything from tortillas to turkey.

So why is nobody talking about this!!!!

Policy-wise, the machine keeps humming. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), that 2007 mandate, is still law, with EPA-set volumes ticking up: 21.87 billion gallons of total renewable fuel in 2024 and 22.68 billion in 2025, much of it corn ethanol. Direct blender's tax credits may have expired in 2011, but they've been replaced by a subsidy buffet. The new Clean Fuel Production Credit (Section 45Z), kicking in fully in 2025, dangles up to $1 per gallon for low-emission biofuels—potentially costing taxpayers $8.5 billion in FY2031 alone. Add in $3.2 billion in direct farm subsidies for corn in 2024 (30% of all commodity crop aid), and it's clear the lobbyists are still earning their keep. ADM and peers aren't complaining: the industry pumped out a record 16 billion gallons of ethanol in 2024, supporting 370,000 jobs and $30 billion in inputs—but mostly in rural pockets, while urban families foot the bill through higher feed costs and pump prices.

So, has anything changed for the better? Some might say there are a few positive glimmers in the data. Exports hit 1.91 billion gallons in 2024, easing some domestic pressure, and there's buzz around "second-generation" ethanol from waste or algae, which could sidestep the food fight, though it's years from scaling, and I'll believe i when I see it. (I suspect I will be dead before then.) Electric vehicles are finally denting the transportation pie—EVs made up 7.6% of new car sales in 2023, up from zilch in 2008—and wind/solar now outpace ethanol in renewable energy growth. But corn ethanol clings on, a relic of that "shoot first" era.

What can we do? Demand better. Will Congress be open to reforming the RFS toward truly sustainable biofuels. Better yet, vote with your wallet—seek out E0 (ethanol-free) gas if your state allows. The fallacy isn't just corny anymore; it's costly. Time to harvest smarter solutions before we ethanol-ize our way into a bigger mess. 

What do you think—still buying the hype? 

Fresh-picked Corn. Yummm.

Last night we picked our first ears of corn from the garden, and yumm, they were good. There's nothing quite like garden fresh vegetables, and double so for fresh-picked corn.

I remember when we were kids growing up in New Jersey, which incidentally is called The Garden State, my dad would stop at a place called Joe's Fruit Farm near Martinsville to pick fresh corn on the way home from work during the harvest season. As far as he was concerned, corn was best when put on the stove within five minutes of picking. That's a good rule in my book. And last night we abided by it.

My dad's dad liked to grow corn, too. But the corn in our garden has nothing to do with my own green thumb. The only time my thumbs are green are when I have been painting using green paint.

Corn is the most widely grown crop in the Americas and it comes in range of varieties. Called "maize" in Mexico (not to be confused with baseball great Willy Mays, though pronounced the same) corn is a staple of the diet there, as opposed to the wheat bread in our country. I once tried to calculate how many corn tortillas were eaten per year in Mexico and it left my head swimming. In most places in Mexico every meal used to be accompanied by tortillas, which served as eating utensil, hot pads, and even napkins.

Today, however, an estimated 40% of the corn grown is used for ethanol, a controversial decision though helpful in keeping the large corn growers' pockets lined with green.

Modern sweet corn can hardly be beat for good eating. The local farmer's markets sell out quickly so you'd best get there early if you want it fresh.

While we're on the topic of corn, I do have one question. Why do they call corny jokes corn? That is, where does that usage of the word corn come from? I understand why they call corns on your feet corns. But how did low caliber humor get called corn? Maybe something to do with corn whiskey causing people to act silly and lose their ability to discern witty humor from stupid stuff? Just trying to work that one out in my head.

Meantime, have a wonderful day and a great weekend.