By Bob Sommer, Midwest Voices columnist 2008

The clerk in the tiny post office in Onaga, Kan., told me I was in for some good food at the 4 Seasons Cafe.

Reasonable, too. The meatloaf special was $5, gooseberry pie $1.50. The waitress offered me her cell phone when mine didn’t get a signal.

Donn Teske, a fifth-generation farmer from nearby Wheaton, was running late. His son had lost a tussle with some machinery, but he’d be OK. Donn called him after lunch as we drove off to see the farm.

I’d met Teske a week earlier, on June 10, when he addressed a Sierra Club meeting on the subject of biofuels. He got everyone’s attention by announcing his opposition to corn ethanol.

Surprising enough for a farmer — but startling when that farmer is the president of the Kansas Farmers Union, which supports corn ethanol.

“A subsidized bridge to nowhere,” Teske called it, echoing a phrase common among its opponents.

But it sounds so good: We’ll grow our fuel, reduce carbon emissions, get off the addictive junk we import.

Teske represents 1,500 dues-paying members who have benefited from corn prices that have been pushed up, in part, by the demand for corn ethanol. Yet here he was voicing his opposition.

“I’ve always been kind of a maverick,” he said as we bounced along one of the unpaved county roads near his farm.

Teske isn’t even close to the stereotype many would like to attach to organic farming, for which he’s certified. He’s no retro-hippie.

He chatted easily with patrons in the cafe and waved to everyone we passed in Onaga. He spends $300 a day to run his diesel tractor, so he’s no fan of high gas prices, either.

My tour included three cemeteries, where he told stories of his family going back to 1869, when they migrated from Germany to Kansas.

Teske’s concern for the environment begins with a generational commitment to the land.

He described the true costs of turning corn into fuel. Producing corn ethanol requires as much or more oil as it replaces, when the energy for labor, machinery, hybrid seed production, processing and fertilizers is calculated, which proponents often fail to do.

A gallon of corn ethanol requires 3 to 4 gallons of water. It diverts livestock feed, driving up meat prices. The runoff from increased corn acreage and faster field rotation damages rivers and enlarges the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

And especially frightening: Food and fuel now become competitors.

“It’s scary knowing that we’re importing 66 percent of our crude oil,” Teske said. “It would be really scary if we had to rely on other societies for our food.”

So why is corn ethanol gaining such traction?
“Because we have a heck of a corn lobby,” he told the Sierra Club.

I asked him to elaborate as we drove by a field first cleared by his grandfather. He stopped in the middle of the empty road and thought before responding.

“So much of our past and present agriculture policy revolves around the politics of corn,” he said.

He was referring to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which mandates that renewable fuels reach 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

According to the USDA, 20 percent of the corn crop produced in 2006 replaced only 1 percent of the oil we consumed. Even if the entire corn crop were processed for ethanol, it would replace only 7 percent of that oil.

Next year, the USDA projects, 30 percent of the corn crop will go to ethanol production.
The legislation also provides a tax credit of 51 cents per gallon to ethanol producers and imposes a tariff of 54 cents per gallon on imported ethanol, which is often produced more efficiently from sugarcane and switchgrass.

Teske is skeptical about whether corn ethanol is behind rising food prices. But he thinks long term, which comes naturally to someone so familiar with the generations of his family.

As he showed me a field of red clover he grows for fertilizer, he said, “You gotta get out of the monoculture concept.”

But that seems unlikely as corn prices hit new highs and corn acreage increases.

Big Oil may have a new partner in King Corn.

Bob Sommer’s novel, “Where the Wind Blew,” has just been published by The Wessex Collective. He lives in Overland Park. To reach Midwest Voices columnists, write to the author c/o Editorial Page, The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108. Or send e-mail to .