A recent news report says farmers are growing maize, instead of soybean, because of unremunerative prices for soybean, and steady demand for maize, thanks to the government’s programme of blending ethanol into petrol.Maize is mostly starch, which, when fermented, generates ethyl alcohol or ethanol. Some recent inference from archaeological evidence suggests that ancient homo sapiens took to grain and the idea of cultivating it, thanks to the pleasant sensation experienced after sampling fermented grain. Whether grain was first cultivated as a food crop or a drink crop is a fascinating debate that need not detain us here. Suffice it to say that when the ethyl alcohol contained in the fermented mash of maize is concentrated by distilling it out of the mash, you get a combustible spirit, which can be mixed with petrol up to a point for use in the normal internal combustion engine that burns petrol, without requiring any major modification of the engine.
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