Little Plant on the Prairie

Whatever the criticisms of ethanol (and there are many valid ones, to be sure), the idea holds broad appeal in the prairie states, where, as the Times' Timothy Egan reports, "roughly 40 percent of the new biorefineries are locally owned, representing the sweat and capital of farmers, retired schoolteachers and small-town bankers." That runs counter to the idea of corn-based ethanol as the exclusive domain of big ag giants like Archer Daniels Midland. For now, at least, the boom in ethanol has made the industry less centralized and many farm towns see it as a much-needed infusion of industry and hope. As Egan writes:

What is happening here is a vision that many in rural America see as their salvation: high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain, and a “grass station” in every town. It may be a chimera. It may drain precious water from the arid plains and produce less energy that it uses.

But it has the undeniable power of an idea in ascendancy.

Egan's most recent book is the National Book Award-winner, The Worst Hard Time, a history of the Dustbowl, and he invokes the memory of that chapter in American history to sound a cautionary note:

The stampede to the cornfields and beyond is not without plenty of risk. You need look only as far as “synfuels,” the disco-era dream to produce fuel from rock beneath the crust of the Rocky Mountains. That effort left open wounds in the mountains, and little to show for it. Or further back, there was the Dust Bowl, a result of a government call to rip up the native prairie grass and replace it with wheat. When grain prices crashed, the land peeled away and covered the flatlands in haze.

To learn more about ethanol -- what it is and isn't, and why it matters -- be sure to see the Why Files report, Motoring on Moonshine.