The Great Plains of Kansas are being transformed by America’s thirst for alternative fuels. Some are calling it an ecological disaster. Leonard Doyle reports from Beaumont. Beaumont, (pop 286, 70% Rep, 30% Dem,) is a town so tucked away in the Flint hills of Kansas that it boasts its own fly-in hotel. It is way off the beaten track, far from the bustle of the Interstates, the four-lane arteries that slice through the Great Plains. It was here that I met Pete Ferrell, a rebel rancher burning with anger at the way he says American agriculture is being subverted to the detriment of the planet. And now almost unnoticed by urban America, one of the great ecological disasters of modern times is unfolding as an ethanol-fuelled gold rush engulfs the Great Plains and risks destroying what is left of North America’s most endangered ecosystem, the native prairie. The last 35 million acres of prairie, deliberately left alone to preserve a precious ecology, is being ploughed up to produce ethanol from corn. The tiny Beaumont hotel is famous (among aviators at least) for having three different guest registers: one each for pilots, motorcyclists and other guests. Pete the […]