The Ethanol Trap in Iowa & Why to Matters to Michigan

Guest Opinion

By Rick Cross | Oct. 18, 2025

Drive I-80 through Iowa and you’ll see wind turbines standing tall over endless fields of corn. It might look like the future and the past working hand in hand. But if you’ve spent any time on that land, like I have, you know it’s more complicated than that.

When I was in Iowa, corn and soybeans were the backbone of the rotation. Corn one year, beans the next. Everyone knew that wasn’t really enough. We talked about the need for a third crop like it was the holy grail. But no one could name one that actually worked. Not in terms of markets, not in terms of equipment, not in terms of profit. We were locked in. We still are.

Iowa’s black dirt is some of the most productive soil on Earth. I remember walking those rows as a kid, picking rocks, checking for cutworms, and watching the sky for hail storms that could wipe out a year’s income in 10 minutes. Neighbors talked about rotating in oats or alfalfa, planting vegetables, or raising more livestock. But no one wanted to be first—and no one could afford to be wrong. So the corn went in, year after year.

About 40 percent of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. Another 35 to 40 percent goes to animal feed. Only a tiny fraction becomes food for people, and even that usually means high-fructose corn syrup.

This isn’t a food system. It’s a commodity treadmill. Ethanol didn’t solve any agricultural problem. It just gave us a place to dump the surplus. The result is land that could produce a real diversity of food and fiber instead gets worn out churning out more of the same.

You don’t have to be in Iowa to see the impact. In northern Michigan, we’re not blanketed in corn, but we still live with the consequences. We pay more at the pump because ethanol mandates distort the fuel market.

Our farmland faces pressures too—not from overproduction, but from underutilization and conversion to non-farm uses. We’ve got pasture and hay ground that could help diversify our local economy and food supply. But like in Iowa, politics and habit get in the way of good land use.

Here in northern Michigan, our sandy loam may not be Iowa’s black gold, but it’s good soil for pasture, orchard, berries, vegetables, small grains—crops and livestock that feed neighbors, build soil health, and keep farms viable. Too much of it sits idle, or worse, gets paved over for storage units, big-box stores, and second homes that nobody actually farms.

We accepted wind turbines in cornfields because they don’t get in the way. They leave 98 percent of the land open to plant around. But this idea that big monocultures are the best use of good soil has kept us from investing in smarter, more diverse farm systems. Instead, the Corn Belt’s political clout props up ethanol mandates, farm subsidies, and a crop insurance system that rewards planting the same crop over and over, not innovating or adapting.

I’m not here to knock farmers. Most are doing exactly what the system pays them to do. I get it. I’ve lived it. But we have to stop pretending this is an economic issue alone. It’s a political and policy issue, and until we face that, we’re going to keep wasting some of the most valuable farmland on Earth growing a crop most people can’t eat, for a market that only exists because Congress says it should.

Northern Michigan might not be the Corn Belt, but we still have choices to make. About how we use our land. About whether we protect our farmland for agriculture or watch it become the next vacant subdivision or RV park. And about whether we let Washington politics keep dictating rural economics from thousands of miles away.

There’s no single fix. But we can reward farmers who rotate crops wisely, support local processors and markets so diverse crops and livestock pay, and pass local ordinances that protect good soil from permanent pavement. It’s not easy work. But it’s better than staying locked in an ethanol trap that enriches lobbyists and middlemen more than the families working the land.

If we want a smarter, more resilient future for northern Michigan’s farmland—whether it’s in Emmet County or Leelanau County—we can’t just follow the ruts carved by corn politics. We’ve got to chart our own path.

Rick Cross has worked the land in both Iowa and Michigan. A seventh-generation Michigander with a background in botany, he now writes from northern Michigan about how politics shapes what we grow—and what we don’t.