Ethanol Pushers

White just took a new job with the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council in Omaha, Nebraska. He's here at Beckman Ford shopping for a flex-fuel Chevy Monte Carlo so that he can return the Tahoe to his former employer.

White sits in the wood-paneled office of the dealer's owner, Raymond Beckman. Sales haven't gone up at the dealership because of the plant, Beckman says. More customers ask about cars that can run on E85, but Beckman acknowledges a problem with ethanol that's discussed even in Garnett: E85 gets about 20 percent less mileage than regular gasoline.

White adds that the price of ethanol will fluctuate substantially over the next few years as more gas stations offer it. And even with increased demand, White says, Garnett's small plant could be made obsolete by better fuels or simply because larger ethanol plants can produce it more cheaply. The future of ethanol, he explains, could be selling the plant's byproduct as feed.

All that uncertainty has kept the value of Garnett farms steady, even as the value of ethanol has spiked.

That's clear at Glenn Caldwell's farm. Caldwell can't pass his farm on to his two sons, the way his father did for him. His sons lent him a hand when they were in high school, but they've left Garnett for Kansas City. One is a pharmacist, and the other is an accountant. So Caldwell will sell his farm one of these days.

Next week, Part 2: Politicians, funded by the agricultural lobby, dump taxpayers' money into a crop that's wasteful to grow and an allegedly clean fuel that's dirty to make. Then we pay more at the pump, even though ethanol yields fewer miles per gallon than regular gasoline. Despite the hype, this corn-based fuel won't help us in the search for energy independence.