Agriculture, energy more closely linked

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Feb. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists said the recent boom in ethanol production from corn has tightly linked the agriculture and energy sectors in unprecedented fashion.

"We are living through a revolution in American agriculture," said Purdue University Professor Wally Tyner, who noted the prices of corn and crude oil, which prior to 2007 fluctuated nearly independently, have become more closely linked due to the use of massive quantities of corn to make ethanol.

Tyner said one of the most dramatic aspects of the ethanol "revolution" is a ballooning percentage of corn crops being made into ethanol, which prior to 2004 had been lower than 10 percent. Now, for the first time, ethanol has replaced exports to become the second largest use of the grain behind that of domestic animal feed, Tyner said.

Tyner's paper, co-written by Purdue researcher Farzad Taheripour, was presented last week in Boston during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The paper -- available at http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/papers/ -- is to be published in the Review of Agricultural Economics.