Focus on ethanol fuel is folly

To the editor:

What do you call a product that:

* Costs more to make than it's worth?

* Is heavily subsidized by taxpayer money?

* Is manufactured in plants you would not want in your neighborhood?

* Does little or anything to improve the environment?

* Contributes to higher food prices worldwide?

* Cannot be transported by traditional lower-cost methods?

* Causes the end product (gasoline) it goes into to be less effective (less mileage)?

* Makes it more difficult to maintain the quality of this end product?

* Does little to relieve U.S. energy problems?

* Requires high U.S. import tariffs to keep less expensive competing products out of the market?

* Is so overbuilt that many of the above-mentioned points could exist for some time?

What do you call this product? If you guessed "fuel ethanol," you would be correct.

Fortunately, the U.S. public is beginning to realize the folly of using corn to make fuel ethanol.

Many ethanol plants in the U.S. are not profitable even with heavy government support. Many planned plants cannot get financing. Savvy investors have better prospects.

I hope our government will also see the folly of this subsidized and mandated ethanol program that has had such drastic, unforeseen consequences and find better solutions to our energy problems.

WILLIAM I. LUDLOW, Cape Girardeau