San Francisco – The ethanol craze is putting the squeeze on corn supplies and causing food prices to rise.
Mexicans took to the streets last year to protest increased tortilla prices. The cost of chicken and beef in the United States ticked up because feed is more expensive.
That’s where biotechnology comes in.
Scientists are engineering microscopic bugs to extract fuel from a variety of non-corn sources, including the human urinary tract, a Russian fungus and the plant responsible for tequila.
The quest for alternative energy is more complicated than just finding a replacement for petroleum. Scientists and a growing number of biotechnology companies are attempting to remove corn from the ethanol equation because it has created huge demand for the global food staple.
“There is enormous growth potential” for alternative fuels, said McKinsey & Co. analyst Jens Riese.
“But we need to be smarter than just building the next corn ethanol plant.”
Researchers are racing against time. Already, 114 U.S. ethanol bio-refineries are in operation, and 80 more are under construction.
Producers made nearly 5 billion gallons of ethanol last year, a 25 percent increase from the previous year.
And nearly all of it was made from edible corn kernels.
That’s good news for U.S. farmers, but consumers are suffering at the checkout stand because corn prices have nearly doubled over the past two years and will continue to climb.
And with farmers planting corn at unprecedented rates, often instead of other crops, prices for other products may soon rise as well.
Backers of alternative production methods argue that a technological change is needed soon, before corn-based ethanol grows so large that other manufacturing methods will be squeezed out of the market.
