Touch the Soil Magazine

Welcome to Touch the Soil, a magazine promoting the personal and social benefits from wholesome and nutritious foods that comes to us in a sustainable and responsible manner.

Each Touch the Soil issue is filled with stories, editorials from experts and practical information. Discover how you too can benefit from, participate in, and contribute to "making a difference" in the dynamic and rapidly evolving arenas of Local Food First, Responsible Organics, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security.

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June Picture of the Month

Rail Tankers await first shipments of corn ethanol

Photo Credit: Touch the Soil

Tanker rail cars await their first load of ethanol from Pacific Ethanol's new facility in Burley, Idaho. This 60 million gallon a year ethanol plant is over a thousand miles away from its supply of corn, the raw material for ethanol. The plant will utilize corn from some 150,000 acres of corn.

Pacific Ethanol has three other operating plants in Madera, California, Windsor, Colorado, Boardman, Oregon and one plant under construction in Stockton California. Pacific Ethanol plans to be the largest ethanol supplier in the West Coast, with production capacity of almost 250 million gallons of ethanol a year, the company will need corn from over 600,000 acres of corn

From its recent report on corn plantings, the USDA estimates that 2008 corn plantings will be 86 million acres, some 7.6 million acres less than in 2007. With national ethanol production capacity to expand in 2008 by 4 billion gallons, requiring some 9 million acres more of corn, the question must be posed: How can ethanol production expand at such a rapid rate when corn acres are dropping in favor of going to other much needed crops like soybeans and wheat?

While it is a media sleeper, as final planting numbers come in for corn the 2008 corn crop and demand is sized up between food and fuel consumption, potential competition for corn could underpin further food price increases. Of particular concern is for meat, dairy and poultry products, all of which are heavily dependent upon corn as a basic feedstock. For local and sustainable food advocates, 2008 may be bring intense pressure from farm and civic groups for the government to rethink its artificial subsidies of a corn ethanol.