Senators: take a "timeout" on ethanol

Here's the letter I sent to my Senators (Harry Reid (D) and John Ensign (R)) this morning:

I read with great interest yesterday that a number of Republican Senators are calling for a slowing of the growth of ethanol as a gasoline substitute.

I urge you to support such efforts. In my opinion, the evidence is clear that our rush to use corn ethanol in this manner has led to a variety of unintended consequences.

1) Food prices are soaring. Corn's price has risen as a direct result of the diversion of corn out of the food supply and into ethanol plants. Corn is, for better or worse, a primary ingredient of animal feed as well as a wide range of processed foods. And as farmers replace other crops like wheat with corn because of the latter's rising price, the prices of the supplanted crops are rising, too.

2) I have read that many farmers are considering taking land out of the conservation reserve. Much of this land is of marginal quality, and cultivating it again will likely have negative long term impacts to the Midwest's environment.

3) The data on ethanol's ability to slow climate change is decidely mixed, with many experts providing evidence that the fuel used to grow and transport corn for ethanol negate any CO2 benefits that this biofuel provides.

Given all of this, it's clear that there is no convincing rationale for moving so quickly to ethanol and a lot of evidence that doing so was a hastily conceived idea that is hurting American consumers and, in fact, people around the world.

I grew up farming in Kansas, and I'm very much a supporter of the family farm. Fortunately, it's possible to have smart agricultural policies that benefit both the public in general and family farmers. Promoting corn ethanol as a gasoline substiute is not one of them.

While ethanol's use has already become somewhat entrenched, at least in terms of the Washington lobbying machine, I urge you to look at the data and support a "timeout" on the existing ethanol fuel mandates.

You can write your own Senators here.