“Ethanol, of course, is big talk around the country, especially in the big Midwestern states where they grown corn,” says Dr. Walden, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. “And, of course, corn growers are benefiting tremendously because ethanol does use corn.

“But we shouldn’t necessary expect that ethanol plants, the refinery plants, are going to be a good investment down the road,” he adds. “I think ... one reason is that you are going to see corn prices, which again are the raw material of ethanol, jump significantly as ethanol becomes more widely used as a fuel. And so when that happens that’s going to increase the cost of producing ethanol.

“At the same time we are probably going to see more ethanol producers out there -- more refineries built -- so there’s more competition,” Walden continues. “All of this is going to put a squeeze not necessarily on the farmer producing the corn but on the ethanol refinery.

“And so I think down the road what you could see is that squeeze actually lead to less production and ethanol being less productive and less profitable. I think that is a few years off, however.”