Intelligent people can disagree, and usually do, about the cost/benefit energy ratio of corn-based ethanol.

But with crude oil prices approaching $100 per barrel, the economic arguments in favor of investing in more renewable fuels are adding up fast. And in today's increasingly destabilized world, the political arguments in favor of domestically-produced ethanol are also easy to make.

While we have reservations about the environmental issues involved with using up large quantities of diesel fuel, herbicides, water and topsoil to produce corn-based ethanol, we particularly like the Biofuels Innovation Program that Sen. John Thune has included in the Senate version of the 2007 Farm Bill.

Thune's legislation would kick-start a cellulosic ethanol industry that is admittedly in its infancy. Cellulosic ethanol is produced from native perennial grasses, such as switchgrass, and other biomass materials, such as wood chips and corn cobs. Here in western South Dakota, where dryland corn isn't a good crop risk in even the wettest of years, other kinds of ethanol-producing materials make more sense. Forest waste from logging operations and tree-thinning projects come to mind.

BIP would provide $200 million in producer incentives to deliver those kinds of biomass to a fledgling industry. By cost-sharing with farmers to establish energy-dedicated crops that don't have to be replanted each year, like switchgrass, and paying farmers competitive land rent until those crops mature for market, cellulosic ethanol would take advantage of the infrastructure developments that corn ethanol has already made without so many of corn's drawbacks.

Thune estimates the per-ton payments contained in his bill could spur approximately 100 million gallons in cellulosic ethanol production.

"With the significant potential our state holds when it comes to producing ample supplies of cellulosic ethanol feedstock such as switchgrass, South Dakota would be at the epicenter of the next stage of the renewable fuels revolution," Thune said.

We like the promise that cellulosic ethanol holds for South Dakotans, both at the gasoline pump and in the farm field. We hope Congress votes to increase research and production dollars for cellulosic ethanol and that its promise as a commercial alternative to foreign oil is one day a big boost to South Dakota's economy.