CORN-BURNING BENEFITS HINGE ON HOW IT'S GROWN
from The Washington Post

It's the cynic's Golden Rule that no good deed goes unpunished, and no
group knows it better than those well-intentioned, ecologically oriented
citizens who heat their homes with special corn-burning stoves instead
of
natural gas or oil. Their goal is to reduce emissions of greenhouse
gases
that contribute to global warming. But their approach has critics
fuming.

"This is an example of how stupid society is," one irate energy analyst
wrote recently on a Web site, echoing comments from many others after
articles about corn burners appeared in several U.S. newspapers,
including
The Washington Post. "More gasoline was spent to grow the corn than the
[energy] delivered to heat the houses," wrote Ken Bosley, of Sparks, Md.

In fact, corn cultivation in this country is, for the most part, an
energy-
consuming environmental disaster, said David Pimentel, a professor of
ecology and agricultural science at Cornell University. "Corn is the
number
one cause of erosion or total soil loss in the United States," he said.
"It
uses more fertilizer than any other crop. It's the largest user of
insecticides. And it's the largest user of herbicides."
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40821-2003Jan24.html>

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