As you may know, EPA at one time was promoting the use of blended
ethanol/gasoline mixture as an energy saving and environmentally
improved fuel. My question is if there were a big move to such a
formulation, would this stimulate a large increase in corn production, and
what environmental effects would we expect from more acres of corn
(assuming that this corn would be grown "conventionally"? Has anyone
done a study specifically on this? I know there is much information
available on the environmental effects of corn production in general, but
has anyone studied the link with ethanol-based fuel production? What
are the tradeoffs between cleaner burning fuel and increased corn
production (both on the energy side and on the environmental side)?