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tics like hydraulic fracturing or pulls from carbon-heavy tar sands.
• Leroy Perkins, the farmer agonizing about what to do with his 91 acres, says he likes ethanol as a product and an industry. But he knows it fuels the corn prices that are transforming his county.
• "If they do change the fuel standard, you'll see the price of corn come down overnight," he said. "I like to see a good price for corn. But when it's too high, it hurts everybody."
• Investors from as far away as Maryland and Pennsylvania have bought thousands of acres in Wayne County, sending prices skyrocketing from $350 per acre a decade ago to $5,000 today.
• One in every four acres of in the county is now owned by an out-of-towner.
• Those who still own land often rent it to farming companies offering $300 or more per acre. Perkins could make perhaps $27,000 a year if he let somebody plant corn on his land. That's nothing to dismiss in a county where typical household income is $36,000.
• But he knows what that means. He sees the black streaks in his neighbor's cornfields, knowing the topsoil washes away with every rain. He doesn't want that for his family's land.
• "You have to decide, do you want to be the one to. ."
• He doesn't finish his sentence.
• "We all have to look at our pocketbooks."
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