That number comes from David Pimmental, and is widely and thoroughly discredited. He stacked his energy balance spreadsheet by considering the energy put into casting the iron and steel for ag equipment to be part of the energy input, and he considered the food that the farmer and farm workers ate to be part of the input energy for ethanol.
Here’s a big clue how wrong this is: If the farmer isn’t farming corn for ethanol, he still buys and uses farm equipment. Until the farmer dies, he’s still gonna eat, regardless of whether he’s growing corn for ethanol.
There are lies, damned lies and stats (when abused) and Pimmental abused them like a red-headed stepchild.
Ethanol’s energy balance is positive. It isn’t hugely positive, but it is positive. That’s been held up in many USDA and independent studies now. The #1 place where ethanol production can be made more energy positive is in how they dry out the distilllers’ grains at the end of the cycle.
Even if that is the case, I would also point out this:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/09/07/ethanolnow/
Only if he makes a profit producing and marketing a product other than ethanol corn.
If he fails and goes out of business, then he succeeded on the subsidies only and the equipment charges to cost were valid.
Moreover, the free market would have decided and corrected itself.
If we have to tease and coax the figures to prove that a fuel is actually a viable source of energy, then there’s a problem.
To test whether something really is a fuel: remove any subsidies - and remove any taxes from competing fuels. Then see if anyone buys it.
Anything else is just a mare’s nest.
So the farmers’ costs for his equipment are not part of his costs, you say? But just with regard to this one purpose?