Ever since President George W. Bush slipped the word ‘ethanol’ into his 2006 State of the Union address, the search for alternatives to gasoline has come to define the times.

Indeed, in his 2007 State of the Union address on January 23 this year, President Bush announced a proposed mandate for 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017 – with 12 billion gallons being produced from 4.3 billion bushels of corn. That’s one third of today’s overall corn production.

As a point of reference, the US livestock and poultry industries consume about 5 billion bushels of corn annually.

For now, ethanol is the most readily-available of the biofuels. As the mass production of cellulosic ethanol (i) remains in its infancy, it is widely expected that increasing corn acreage will be diverted from feed use into biofuel production.

Corn and biomass as competing raw materials? Not necessarily. The two methods, in all

probability, will exist side by side, says Professor Jeff Firmin, a poultry nutrition expert at the University of Missouri.

Over time, as cellulosic techniques mature, some corn-based ethanol plants could convert’, Professor Firmin told Feedinfo News Service.

‘But in all probability the two methods will co-exist, as together they still won’t meet US fuel needs alone.’

For diverting corn into ethanol is a long-term proposition.

According to the Renewable Fuels Association, there are currently 113 ethanol plants in the United States, with capacity to produce more than 5.5 billion gallons annually. Another 78 plants are under construction, adding a further 6.2 billion gallons of capacity.