DN has in a series of articles made it look as if all those who use their ethanol-driven cars tear the bread out of the mouth of starving people in Africa. The truth is completely different. Sweden and Europe have had big problems with surpluses of corn and butter, for instance.

In an effort to reduce overproduction, there are currently extensive subsidies paid to farmers in order to prevent them from using large areas in Sweden. In the relatively bare northwest of Sweden alone, farmers receive subsidies to let about 3,000 hectares of field lay fallow, which is about 6 percent of the available area. Due to extensive public subsidies the productivity is now in relatively good balance.

Sekab has nearly100 percent of the market for the E85 that is sold in Sweden. Almost 100 percent of the ethanol comes from the sulfite factory in Domsjö outside Örnsköldsvik and from sugar cane in Brazil. Not a single liter comes from wheat. The small amount of ethanol that is produced at Agroetanol AB in Norrköping is used for low-level mixing in almost all gasoline in Sweden, currently 5 percent.

It is accurate that ethanol is made out of wheat -- wheat that is difficult to dispose of on the world market. The goal is to produce ethanol by using cellulose; that is among other waste products from lumber, by-products from cellulose factories, and energy crops.

Sekab conducts prominent world-leading research within this field. The ethanol that is produced today in the world's leading ethanol country Brazil is made when the sugar or juice is squeezed out of the cane. Then the 'straw', which is called solid residue and is waste product, is left. A lesser part is used in combined power and heating plants in Brazil. There are now attempts to convert the solid residue to ethanol to make the production even more efficient.