I saw an article this morning in the Evansville Courier & Press regarding an Owensboro, Kentucky company that plans to open a biodiesel plant using soybeans. This plant alone, will have the capacity to produce 50 million gallons of biodiesel per year. What was even more impressive was the following statistic: Americans used 75 million gallons of biodiesel last year, which was up from a mere 500,000 gallons consumed in 1999. That's an increase of 74.5 million gallons in about six years! New and expanded biodiesel operations could add about 714 million gallons of biodiesel capacity, according to the article. When you think about how many diesel-fueled buses and trucks there are on the roads today, delivering goods across the country or taking our children to and from their schools, this increase in biodiesel production and consumption could have a huge effect in this country. Not only will it eliminate the need for a lot of oil but also, it should help with pollution generated from these large vehicles. I don't know exactly what burning soybeans does environmentally but I would guess it would be a lot better than diesel pollution and the particulate matter from diesel vehicles. I read somewhere that ethanol use actually helps alleviate some of the effects of global warming--does it get rid of carbon dioxide?? If that is true, I would guess that soybean burning might have some positives in that regard, too. In any case, as the article mentions, when you have school buses getting eight miles/gallon, biodiesel seems like a definite step in the right direction. Kentucky is using biodiesel for many of its school buses now, which is a great way to support the local farms growing the soybeans and the companies producing the biodiesel. I guess we're still left with the question of where the energy is coming from to produce the biodiesel; hopefully something cleaner than coal or tire burning. It would be great if soybeans could supply the energy to convert other soybeans into biodiesel.