Sonny Kirby has to oversee 2500 acres of crops and this season he decided it was more feasible to plant corn than cotton. "We have planted more corn than we usually would have. We kind of flip flopped our acreage,” admitted Sonny Kirby, UNI Plantations. Corn production has doubled in Louisiana from 300,000 to 600,000 acres this past year, mostly because of the demand for ethanol, an alternative fuel cultivated from starchy vegetation such as corn. Even though that is good news for some farmers it will make for a hectic harvest. "This year the increase of acres of corn is going to be a challenge to handle because corn is a bulky commodity that produces a lot of pounds or bushels of product and it all has to be handled with in a 2 month period,” explained Steve Logan, Logan Farms. Steve Logan is also getting fed up with the price of gasoline that is why he is excited about the thought of ethanol being used on a regular basis more specifically to increase octane and improve the emissions quality of gasoline. "It doesn't require a lot of new infrastructure, most of the automobiles produced can run on a certain amount of ethanol,” commented Logan. Kirby is optimistic that ethanol is here to stay, but he also thinks there could be a balance between the oil companies and Mother Nature. "We are definitely dependent on it but I think a combination of the petroleum industry and the agricultural industry for supplying some of the energy would work in the long haul, because the agricultural aspect is renewable.”
