Tampa, Florida
January 31, 2006

Knight-Ridder Tribune
Will Rodgers, Tampa Tribune via Agnet January 31/06 II

Soaring energy costs and flagging profitability are, according to this story, driving Florida's agriculture industry to think about switching gears and planting crops that could produce fuel rather than food.

The story adds that the move adds steam to momentum building in Tallahassee to turn Florida into an energy-producing state by creating ethanol, a fuel made from plants that can be blended with gasoline to power automobiles while cutting emissions and burning less oil-based fuel.

A loosely coordinated group of politicians, farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs are pushing ethanol as a fuel that can deliver consumers what the group is calling the four E's: economic benefits through high-paying jobs, environmental benefits through cleaner-burning fuel, energy security by lessening dependence on foreign oil, and engine performance.

Bradley M. Krohn, president and managing member of U.S. EnviroFuels LLC, which plans to build ethanol-producing plants at ports in Tampa and Manatee County, was quoted as saying, "Ethanol is a viable alternative that is here today, that people have to importing oil from the Middle East. It's a homegrown American fuel."
Ethanol has been produced in the United States, mostly in the Midwest, for more than 30 years. About 94 ethanol plants produce about 4 billion gallons of the fuel, mostly from corn, each year.

But ethanol production still represents just a fraction of what the U.S. needs because the country uses more than 180 billion gallons of gasoline every year. That's expected to change. President Bush, who is expected to talk about alternative fuels in tonight's annual State of the Union speech to Congress, has called for the agriculture industry to produce 25 percent of the nation's energy by 2025.