The vast majority of corn (~96%) used for ethanol production is rain-fed, requiring no irrigation. And, while ethanol production has increased, the number of acres under irrigation has remained largely unchanged.

Ethanol production is rapidly reducing its water needs, with biorefineries today already reducing water need to produce ethanol and distillers grains to less than 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. In addition, they are developing technologies to use pre-treated or “gray water” that has already been used for another industrial purpose. Since 2001, water use at ethanol biorefineries is down 26%.