The federal government is pushing the production of ethanol to help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Charlie Schlenker reports the expected boom in ethanol production may have a mixed environmental effect:
Transcript
The federal government is pushing the production of ethanol to help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Charlie Schlenker reports the expected boom in ethanol production may have a mixed environmental effect:
As the demand to produce more ethanol takes up more corn, agriculture experts predict prices will rise. Illinois State University Ecology Professor Roger Anderson says that will create an incentive for farmers to abandon the Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP pays farmers to keep environmentally fragile land out of production.
“They’re talking about expanding corn production for example, for ethanol by eight to ten million acres, and the only place they’re going to get it is to take this land out of CRP. And there will be a lot of pressure to do this.”
Anderson says planting corn on CRP acreage could increase erosion and reduce habitat diversity for wildlife, but an Agriculture Department Economist doubts there will be much pressure on CRP acreage.
For the Environment Report, I’m Charlie Schlenker.