It’s always a struggle to establish a market for a “big-picture” product like ethanol. Great progress has been made on that front, and the pending energy-development bill should be a leap forward, with its requirement for a substantial level of ethanol use.

Next, those in the ethanol industry have to figure out how to protect what they have and deal with oncoming waves of competition. That phase might not be too far in the future.

We tend to think of ethanol production as a way to help Iowa’s corn farmers, but that’s just an early chapter in the story. Researchers tell us that kernels of corn are not really the best source of ethanol.

According to a Department of Energy report, “Ethanol costs could be reduced dramatically if efforts to produce ethanol from biomass are successful. Biomass feedstocks, including forest residue, agricultural residue and energy crops, are abundant and relatively inexpensive, and they are expected to lower the cost of producing ethanol and provide stability to supply and price.”

So while we’re producing corn on expensive land with intensive management, our competition will be looking for ways to feed ethanol plants from marginal land with relatively little effort.

Those other routes to the same fuel have some other advantages, too. Ethanol made from cellulose-based material offers a “net energy balance” more than twice as great as corn, according to researchers. Cellulosic ethanol also does substantially more to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

And there’s no shortage of candidates. We see corn and wonder how best to use it; people who live in other regions look around and see potential in sugar beets, sunflowers, various grasses, fast-growing trees such as poplar, willow and silver maple, and even the waste material from logging operations.

Some studies suggest that future ethanol plants will have the potential to compete “directly and unsubsidized with conventional corn-to-ethanol technology.”

The good news for Iowa agriculture is that “stover,” the trash left on a cornfield after harvest, is a fine and abundant source of cellulose. We have lots of erodible acres suitable for grass production, too.

But as government programs gradually make the ethanol market more attractive, more people will become interested in beating us at our own game.

We should compete as hard as we can – and also make sure not to become too dependent on this new source of income. The search for more Iowa crops isn’t over.