Dark Tower or Silver Lining?Ethanol and the Midwest

Bob Kommer, the President of Laurel Ethanol, sees ddg as mostly animal feed, but ... said it actually tasted pretty good.

In a poem of some fame, a man travels across an expanse of land, but nothing much happens (reflective doom, perhaps, in life and living). He goes on and on until he comes to a dark tower, which is not good in most interpretations. He has come to the end of his journey: Childe Roland to the dark tower came.

Carl Sandburg wrote about this (about Browning’s poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”) and found beauty in a child’s lack of understanding when he read the poem to her.

In Sandburg’s, “Manitoba Childe Roland,” he found innocence and imprudence:

“And while the January wind was ripping at the singles

and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes

had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful

to her and she could not understand.” 

During the Midwest’s bountiful harvests, ethanol farmers are of a similar mind. They cannot understand or see an expanse where hungry people to the dark tower come, a land of plenty where food is cooked and distilled into fuel for cars and trucks.

Sandburg expanded Browning’s poem to a vast prairie in Manitoba and Minnesota. But Browning’s expanse remains ill-defined, its dark tower stands alone in a truly unknown, futuristic land. When his hero comes to it, there is foreboding. The same kind of foreboding a hungry world sees as farmers in the Midwest waste food. 

There are towers here, too, and a lot of open land. Our towers are grain silos and ethanol plants. They dot the landscape as if standing guard against the hungry hoards. 

In Sandburg’s tale, he sees triumph over adversity in the journey, and he writes of a man sledding across a frozen winter prairie to victory. It is a victory in life and a struggle against long odds. 

But ethanol’s victories have nothing to do with overcoming long odds. Ethanol towers belch steam, and turn grain into inedible fuel. Middle America has become not Sandburg’s triumph over struggle, but Browning’s bane in the expanse.

Across the river from Sioux City, Iowa, there is a tall tower to the northwest, a beacon in the night sky. But it feeds us with its grain. Many of the beacons do not, and further into Nebraska, the Nebraska Ethanol Board tells us there are currently—as of 2007—12 ethanol production plants producing more than 640 million gallons of ethanol a year. To make this much fuel, each plant uses 300 million bushels of grain a year.

And the production plants are in Iowa, too. There are 21 ethanol plants in Iowa, and builders are planning more. A 50-million gallon plant proposed by Plymouth Energy LLC, for example, was being considered when this story was first written in 2007. The Plymouth County Zoning Board approved the zoning. Their website welcomes and tells all at Plymouth Energy LLC.

The plants are ubiquitous. But not to be left behind, Minnesota has 16, and South Dakota 7. And there are many more on drawing boards across the great plains.

“The farmer has to make a buck,” the son of a Minnesota farmer said.

Grain producers own most plants in the Midwest, and getting a good price for a bushel of corn is good for business, plain and simple. Many farmers and their families build and operate the plants themselves.

“The farmer has to make a buck,” the son of a Minnesota farmer said. He asked not to be identified by his last name, but his father worked hard, and Leo (and his brothers and sisters) invested heavily in a new ethanol plant in Heron Lake. Like many from the farming community, he is happy with the latest price of corn. 

In Worthington, Minnesota, a short distance from Heron Lake, a farmer’s wife, when asked about ethanol production at a shopping mall, said it had given them a better price for their corn. They were happy, even though they also raised hogs, and the increased price for corm had raised their production costs. But there is a silver lining. Out of every 300 million bushels of grain used to make ethanol, 100 million bushels are still edible. 

Some producers, unfortunately, such as those in Laurel, Nebraska, have plans to make plastic with their leftover distiller grain (please see the Sioux City Journal, September 2010). There is still hope, however. The message just needs to get out.

 
Yes, jobs and economic development are a high priory for Laurel, as it is for most rural areas. When the Observer first published this article, the plant had expected to produce 320,000 tons of dried distiller grain (ddg), and feeding livestock with the grain was still on the table. Why not food grade ddg?

Shirley Petche, listed as the general manager of ASAlliances Biofuel (who later became the Director of the Boone County Development Agency), said that area farmers were already using distiller grain, the high-quality mash left after distilling corn to feed local livestock.

“We have quite a lot of feedlots in the area,” Petche said in a phone interview, “and producers are use to using it. Right now, they go to Central City or Columbus.”

The fuel for ethanol plants comes from the starch in a kernel of grain, and according to the Ethanol Producers And Consumers web page, contains nutrients, such as protein, fiber, germ, vitamins, and minerals remain in the mash leftover from the process. In fact, there is already talk of this high-quality food, similar to whey protein, being sent to countries in need of food.

Sowmya Arra, for example, worked on the idea at South Dakota State University, and many studied have confirmed its potential as a high-protein flour when processed properly.

(Read the abstract here.)

Distiller grain from wheat has a protein content of 42 percent.

Bob Kommer, the President of Laurel Ethanol, sees ddg as mostly animal feed. Still, in a phone interview from his office in Seattle, Kommer said he believed humans could sample it, and when asked, confided that it tasted pretty good.

According to Kommer, corn ddg looks and tastes a lot like golden Grape Nut Flakes. But despite his reservations about its use as human food, laboratory testing has already been done on distiller grain in plants maintaining food quality standards. According to the EPAC, the distiller grain from wheat has recorded a protein content of 42 percent. Simply put, it is superior to raw grain, which must be cooked as gruel to feed hungry people.

“A solution,” the EPAC said on its website (since removed), “is to process grain to ethanol and distiller grain and then ship the processed ddg to other countries where it could be incorporated into traditional native foods, thereby enhancing their diet.”

It’s even a good protein source in food bars, said the optimists on the defunct EPAC website.

Ethanol production cannot solve world hunger, but there is hope. And, as ethanol production expands, Kommer does see progress.

“In the short term,” Kommer said, “there is going to be disruption like there is with tortillas in Mexico (due to the high cost of corn). But in the long run, it is going to be healthy for the world because third world farmers will be able to compete.”

Hence, according to Kommer, the new cash crop will create high demand. Kommer believes large agricultural processors, such as ADM, Cargill, and others, keep the price of grain low by holding huge surpluses. Ethanol levels the field and will bring a fair market price to American farmers and others, who will now compete in world markets.

Fold in raisins and nuts. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Frost while still slightly warm.

Of course, the worry is that such a comment is little more than a profiteer’s public relations spin in the name of anonymous investors. But with stockpiles of distiller grains growing, it becomes a potential bonanza in a starving world. 

Perhaps Shirley Petche said it best. While acknowledging there is some concern about the rising price of corn in her community, she sees ethanol production as a means to an end. And in the end, there is a bright future:

“We are a farm community,” she said. “It is a good use of corn.”

Hopefully, it will be if producers find productive uses, other than making more meat, which many in our poorer nations cannot afford. If only Sandburg’s tale of triumph over adversity reigns. Only then will factories that turn corn and other grains into fuel display their silver lining, a victory in life against long odds.

 

The Silver Lining: The recipes seen below from EPAC's original website are high protein.  And an article about cookies from South Dakota State University also explores some of the benefits of ddgs as well.


COFFEE RAISIN BAR

Here is a coffee bar recipe with raisins that is good.

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup ddg
5/8 tsp baking soda
5/8 tsp bake powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tblsp instant coffee powder
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped nuts

Heat over to 350. Then grease and flour a 15 x 10 pan. Combine dry ingredients (cream the butter and sugar together), add eggs and vanilla. dissolve instant coffee in water and add to creamed mixture alternately with dry ingredients. Fold in raisins and nuts. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Frost while still slightly warm. For frosting: mix together 1 1/2 tsp coffee powder, 1 1/2 tbsp milk, and 1 cup powdered sugar. Cool and cut into bars.

BREAD

Dissolve: 2 tablespoons yeast and 2 tablespoons sugar in 1 cup hot water. Mix together:
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups hot water
1/2 cup sugar
3 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups ddg

When yeast is dissolved and has started to work, add to above mixture. Stir in flour and knead. Approximately 6 1/2 cups white flour. Flour may vary. Dough should be soft but not sticky. Let raise until double, punch down and let raise again. Make into 6 small loaves and let raise until double. Bake 350 degree oven about 25-30 minutes.This recipe can be used to make raisin bread or buns.