Raw numbers on corn fuel misperception

“The Agriculture Department estimates that roughly 42 percent of the corn crop will be used to make ethanol — more than the amount of corn used to feed livestock and poultry.” U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, RVa., in a Nov. 23 statement anol. The standard, he said, has shifted an increasing share of the corn crop into fuel production.

“In 2012 alone, the Agriculture Department estimates that roughly 42 percent of the corn crop will be used to make ethanol — more than the amount of corn used to feed livestock and poultry in the United States,” Goodlatte said in a Nov. 23 news release.

Goodlatte said the standard has contributed to a sharp rise in the price of corn — it went for $6.95 a bushel this October, compared with $4.32 a bushel in October 2010 — and has tightened supplies of livestock feed.

We wondered whether more corn really is being used to manufacture ethanol than to feed livestock.

Beth Breeding, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte, point- ed us to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It estimates a yield of 10.7 billion corn bushels for the market year that runs from Sept. 1, 2012, to Aug. 31, 2013.

The department projects that 4.15 billion bushels — or 38.7 percent of the crop — will go to “feed and residual use.”

The amount of corn going toward ethanol production is projected to be 4.5 billion bushels — or roughly 42 percent of the crop.

Agricultural economists told us there’s no doubt that the percentage of corn for ethanol has been on the rise, driven by renewable fuel standards first adopted in 2005 and expanded in 2007. Under those guidelines, most types of gas are blended with about 10 percent of cornbased ethanol.