About time. (Score 1)

I find this "insight" particularly interesting as I think back to my time growing up in the midwest US.

I vividly recall the governement paying farmers to *not* harvest their corn crops in an efford to normalize pricing and to prevent a depression that would have sent many of them to the poor house. This followed on the heels of the massive oil shortages that resulted from the OPEC embargoes of the '70s (I'm barely old enough to remember those days, being born in 1971).

In my teens and early 20's, I remember finding out that ethanol blend gasolines were actually only a midwestern thing, and only a very few US refineries were capable of making it. Being an alchohol not too dissimilar from that which is burned in "top fuel" drag cars (another interest from my teens), it seemed silly to me then, and now, that we as a nation could kill two proverbial birds with one stone by not only giving corn farmers an expanded market, but also diminish our reliance on fossil fuels, be they foriegn or domestic.

I'm glad that "the powers that be" are finally starting to look at this more closely. I guess it took the real emergence of fuel alternatives, such as hydrogen feul cells, and yet more major conflict in the middle east, which threatens our foriegn oil supply, for the nation as a whole to start looking around for real, viable alternatives.

Of course, even if they made IC engines that burned pure ethanol, it will still be a while before they could have it available on enough corners in the country to make it viable. But the same can be said about any gasoline or diesel fuel.