With record corn prices likely to go higher this year, farmers are quick to point out, without ethanol, the pain at the gas pump would be even worse. Wayne Schnelle, who raises corn near Lockwood for an ethanol plant, knows the numbers.

Schnelle estimates drivers in Missouri saved about $185 million last year-- ten cents on every gallon -- because of a requirement that gasoline sold in Missouri be 10-percent ethanol.

Ethanol is cheaper to produce because it’s subsidized but vehicles get fewer miles to the gallon than with ethanol than with gasoline.

The green truth is “it was the wonder fuel to get us out of trouble and it won't,” said David Summers, a biofuels researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.

Summers predicts corn ethanol production will never keep up with demand. He says world production is only one million barrels a day, making ethanol as much the problem as a solution to cutting dependence on imported oil.

It's still a politically popular fuel. The president and Congress want biofuels production to increase another 500 percent over the next decade, despite higher food prices.

Missouri is beginning to play the heavyweight in the food-versus-fuel prices debate. State agriculture officials say farmers aren’t to blame but rather higher energy costs for producing, packaging and transporting food.

Even Missouri's governor says ending biofuel mandates won't bring down prices. Gov. Matt Blunt says it’s “very difficult to compare food and fuel.”

Some agriculture economists say otherwise. Pat Westhoff, a food economist, calculates, with 20 percent or more of the corn crop going into ethanol, and half that much into food on our dinner tables, the shift to ethanol is the biggest factor in market prices.

Wall Street speculators and commodity traders who cash in on higher fuel prices create even more volatility.

“We will be paying more for gas,” said Summers.

Summers is not an optimist about present technology and energy policy.

“People don't know how bad it’s going to get,” he said.

Summers expects a rerun of something like the oil embargo days of the ‘70s.

“We may see places with no gas, or long lines. Schools will have to close, things that like,” he said.

Summers believes new biofuels must be developed rapidly. He's experimenting with converting hydrogen and carbon in algae into a biofuel. Grown indoors, there are no worries about the weather, as with corn or soybeans.

“You can get 3,600 gallons per year per acre, compared to just 300 for ethanol and 48 for biodiesel from soybeans,” said Summers.

Back on the farm, Schnelle is coping with expensive fertilizer and higher-than-ever tractor fuel just to put in a crop.

Not all ethanol in gasoline is from American corn. U.S. oil companies also import cheaper, cleaner burning Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. Many environmentalists believe boosting biofuel production by destroying rain forests across the Amazon and in Indonesia to create farmland is adding to global warming.