Colorado Corn

Ethanol debate

Rod Lenz pulled into the brightly lit Yuma County fairgrounds on a balmy night earlier this month. Squeals from the children's amusement rides drowned out distant thunder as he locked his worn pickup and strode toward one of the exhibition barns.

He may have anticipated what was inside.

Judges at the Yuma County Fair obviously thought highly of the entry by his children, awarding blue ribbons to their 11-foot-tall cornstalks.

"This really is no big deal," Lenz said, looking around the barn, noting that there were no corn competitors.

His parents, George and Betty Lenz, began a dryland farm in Wray, east of Yuma, more than 30 years ago. Lenz and his three brothers kept the farm going and helped it expand and diversify.

Today, as the family has grown to include two sons-in-law as partners, they sell 600,000 bushels of corn and 25 million pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes each year. The family sold $1.62 million worth of corn last year. Soaring corn prices mean the crop could fetch more than $2 million this year, although rising costs will eat into profits.

Electricity that powers sprinklers is a big expense. The Lenzes have 35 motorized, wheel-mounted sprinklers that irrigate half their 8,500-acre farm. In past years, they have reduced water use by changing soil till methods and setting sprinklers to run at optimum times. They know they may have to do more.

Lenz is acutely aware of the brewing storm over water, as well as the background debate over ethanol itself.

"I don't feel guilty about us using water to grow crop for food or fuel, as opposed to people using water for lawns or recreation," Lenz said. "I do feel a sense of responsibility to use it wisely."

The Lenzes have invested in a half-dozen ethanol plants - including the new one in Yuma and another in Sterling, 40 miles north. Potential earnings are hefty, but the family so far has seen few dividends.

In the meantime, the devout Catholic family has become more concerned about the controversy surrounding ethanol's benefits.

Wall Street investors, politicians on both sides of the aisle, agricultural companies and farmers alike extol the alternative fuel for its low emission of pollutants and its contribution toward weaning the nation off oil.

President Bush has urged the nation to replace 20 percent of its gasoline consumption with ethanol and biofuels during the next decade. Today, ethanol blended with gasoline accounts for less than 5 percent of U.S. fuel sales, up from 2 percent in 2004.

Ethanol blenders enjoy a 51 cents-a-gallon tax credit, in addition to a 54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

But detractors say ethanol takes more energy to produce than the energy derived from it. They also argue that using corn to make fuel instead of food is wrong, given world hunger.

David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell University known for his research in alternative fuels, denounces corn-based ethanol. He is among the critics who say production of one gallon of ethanol uses more than a thousand gallons of water.

"I want to know the truth about ethanol," said Lenz, walking briskly in a light drizzle toward the fair's food court, where some members of his family were selling hamburgers and sodas.

Over by a cattle pen where a crowd of teenagers congregated, he spotted the youngest two of his seven children - son Oneal, 12, and daughter Peyton, 10. Four other daughters have made him a grandfather of eight at age 52.

His faith asks him to do "the right thing" by all human lives, even unborn children, he said. And that includes making the world a better place for future generations.

"I am an honorable Christian man; I can't live a lie," he added. "I want to know if (ethanol) is bad for the society."

Caring for kin

Brett Rutledge shielded himself from the blazing afternoon sun with a hat and sunglasses.

But he couldn't avoid the overpowering stench emanating from the gooey pond just yards away.

Steeling himself, the 39-year-old farmer walked to a rusty generator on a truck parked close to the pond and cranked it to life. He wanted to do the job right. His brother, Roc, 35, had given him detailed demonstrations only a week earlier.

"I had never done this before yesterday," Rutledge said.

Before, in a long-established division of labor, he took care of the crops while his kid brother dealt with cattle, hogs and compost. But Roc Rutledge was critically injured in a traffic accident just hours after he showed his older brother how to use hog manure collecting in the pond for fertilizer.

Roc Rutledge was released this week from a Denver hospital after recovering from multiple surgeries.

The two-lane U.S. 34, where the wreck occurred, is Yuma's main artery, linking it to Interstate 76 and Fort Morgan to the west, which buys a lot of Yuma County milk and beef, and Nebraska, a corn seller, to the east.

Yuma County's robust corn production, among the best in the nation during this summer of prosperity, attracts buyers from feedlots and ethanol plants from other parts of Colorado. Semis roar constantly down the highway.

Rutledge stepped back as the noisy generator triggered a chain reaction in the smelly pond. A pump with floating rollers began churning the fetid gunk, stirring up pig manure from the bottom. The sludge goes by pipeline into a fertilizer tank, or a honey wagon, in the wry parlance of the farm.

A tractor will pull the manure-spraying tank across the fields in the coming weeks to prepare them for the fall wheat planting.

The Rutledges use their own farm wastes to fertilize 7,500 acres of farmland.

Since his brother's accident, Rutledge has hired two additional hands. Corn will be harvested in October, and he needs all the help he can afford.

He has contracted 40 percent of the crop with silage harvesters who take everything ground up, for about $4 per bushel, a premium rate.

Rutledge is optimistic this will be a record corn year and he'll make enough profit to pay down 20 percent of the farm's outstanding debt.

But don't ask him about the state's threat to shut off irrigation wells.

"I hate listening to that stuff," he said. "They are coming after our water. It makes me so depressed."

Farming families

The Rocky Mountain News began following a pair of families in May. The Rutledges, of Yuma, and the Lenzes, of Wray, plant corn in Yuma County. They have found that the ethanol boom has had a big impact on their livelihoods.

BRETT RUTLEDGE, OF YUMA

Who: Brett Rutledge, born and raised in Yuma, and his wife, Kristy, a track and field and cross country coach at Yuma High School. Two boys, Forest, 2, and Miles, 1.

What: 7,500 acres, with 1,200 planted in corn

History: Rutledge graduated from Colorado State University in 1992 and came back to the family farm. He manages crop cultivation with the help of his father, Don, and hired hands, while his brother, Roc, before he was injured, ran cattle operations. His mother, Judy, usually makes lunch for the men, and his wife visits him at work with the boys.

THE LENZ FAMILY, OF WRAY

Who: George and Betty Lenz, four adult sons - Mike, Jim, Rod and George - and Mike's son-in-law, Marty Buoy, and Rod's son-in-law, Brian Meisner.

What: 8,500-acre Lenz Farms, half of it irrigated, with 3,200 planted in corn

History: George and Betty first bought 640 acres of grassland in Yuma County in 1973 and later developed it into irrigated farmland. Four years later, three sons joined them to form Lenz Farms. Youngest son George came aboard in 1982. Buoy is the youngest partner. The men work the field, while the women run the farm office.

The Republican River Compact

1942

Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska sign the compact. Colorado gets 11 percent of the river water, Nebraska 49 percent and Kansas 40 percent.

2002

Supreme Court approves a settlement in which compact accounting will be based on five-year averages.

2003-2006

Colorado fails to deliver, on average, 11,000 acre-feet of water a year to Kansas. Farmers pay a fee of $5.50 per acre to partially fund a federal program, CREP, that has paid farmers to retire 29,430 irrigated acres.

October 2007

Colorado will announce new measures that could shut more wells and retire an additional 30,000 irrigated acres.