What a strangely constructed story this is. Roughly the bottom two-thirds hints around at the truth about ethanol, which is that it is a "solution" that will make things far worse:
A paper published by Science magazine in February said corn-based ethanol production would almost double greenhouse gases worldwide over a 30-year period because of the carbon that would be released by ploughing forests and grassland. And the U.S. Geological Survey says fertilizer runoff from corn and soybean crops in Indiana contributes to a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.
In economic terms, ethanol production has far-reaching consequences. Purdue agricultural economists Corinne Alexander and Chris Hurt estimate that U.S. consumers paid $15 billion more for food, based on 2007 farm level crop prices, than they did in 2005 because of the increased demand for crops grown for fuel.
But the story opens with a rosy outlook from, you guessed it, a corn farmer: "For Greene County farmer Steve White, the nationwide ethanol boom is a win-win situation. 'It's clean on the environment, clean on motors and good for farmers,' said White, who grows 2,500 acres of corn near Switz City." Balanced reporting, the newspaper would probably say, but talk about burying the lede.
