Food and Fuel Security Act of 2007: A Goal and A Vision (Sen. Ben Nelson)

Ethanol has been a mainstay of the alternative fuels process as grinding corn — wet milling and dry milling — has created an industry.

But it’s more than an industry; it’s a movement now toward becoming self-reliant on our own energy sources to the extent that we can. Ethanol is a good start but it’s only a start — we’ve got soybeans, we’ve got other kinds of opportunities for alternative energies and, thanks to ethanol, people are now looking at this with a vision toward the future: becoming self-sustaining for our own energy needs.

That’s why we need to be self-sustaining for our food production — we don’t want to import more of our food than we produce here at home, we want to produce our fuel here at home to the extent we can, and that’s why I think the farm bill should be called the “Food and Fuel Security Act of 2007,” because that’s the goal and that’s the vision.