'Big Corn' takes on 'Big Oil' over ethanol

By Steve Tarter

GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

After corn was singled out earlier this year for contributing to rapid price increases in food and fuel, the Bloomington-based Illinois Corn Growers Association decided to fight back.

Corn and corn-based ethanol  came under attack earlier this year in a public-relations campaign spearheaded by the Washington, D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association.

The GMA questioned federal policy that diverted food crops for fuel while forming Food Before Fuel, a coalition of food, consumer and environmental groups, association spokesman Scott Openshaw said.

It isn't corn or the nation's farmers the campaign opposes but federal subsidies for ethanol "that have had an unintended consequence on our economy," he said.

The multimillion-dollar antiethanol campaign put corn on the defensive, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Corn Growers. "It was the largest and most organized effort ever to spread misinformation about ethanol. We took a pounding in the East Coast media," he said.

Illinois corn farmers launched their own informational program in response. "It's been a summer-long campaign that started in June and will wrap up on Labor Day," Lambert said.

"It's forced us to spend a lot of money," he said. Lambert said advertising in Chicago and St. Louis markets alone cost $300,000.

"We've been pushing ethanol for 25 to 30 years so we're used to misinformation campaigns, but (opponents) had a battle plan this time," he said.

"(Our) message is simple. Energy costs are the real culprit behind higher food prices," said Lambert, saying the oil industry is a major partner in the recent campaign against ethanol.

The opposition isn't hard to understand, said Steve Ruh, an Illinois corn farmer who chairs the ethanol committee for the St. Louis-based National Corn Growers Association. "Oil has a lot to gain by defusing ethanol," he said. "(For) every gallon of ethanol we use, we can leave a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia," Ruh, of Sugar Grove, said.

The campaign to educate the public on corn's role in the national economy could be beneficial, he said. "Now that people understand that making ethanol won't take Del Monte sweet corn off the shelf, we want to show the real cost of corn in food products," said Ruh.

In a public relations campaign of its own, Illinois Corn Growers has shipped out boxes of corn products to legislators and nutritional experts. Attached to those boxes are coins that reflect the value of the corn inside, Lambert said.

A box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes contains 6 cents worth of corn, he said.

The next phase of the corngrowers' campaign will focus on E-85, fuel that's 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent unleaded gas, said Lambert. "We're putting in dozens of (E-85) pumps when we should be putting in hundreds (across the country)," he said.

Lambert said large national chains that sell fuel like Wal-Mart and Kroger are still waiting on test results from Underwriters Laboratories, the firm researching the safety of pumps that dispense E-85, before offering ethanol fuel to customers.

"They say that we'll get results by the end of the year but UL has already missed two other deadlines," he said.

Steve Tarter can be reached at 309-686-3260 or starter@pjstar.com.