I drove through “flyover country” — from California to Chicago — last month. It turns out that there’s more to America (and its economy) than what’s on the two coasts. By simply observing from the highway, you cannot help but be overwhelmed by the amount of land devoted to agriculture, and, to a lesser extent, to manufacturing. One who didn’t know better could drive thousands of miles through America and remain convinced that the nation’s gross national product is driven by growing corn and building cars.

Of course, it is not, as downtown Chicago’s massive, gleaming skyscrapers remind you. Illinois, powered by Chicago, is the fifth biggest economy in America. Chicago is thriving because, as Federal Reserve economist William Testa explains, it has transitioned from an industrial economy to “a professional and business services center and business meeting place.” In contrast, neighboring states have struggled slightly as manufacturing, particularly the automobile industry, has fallen on hard times. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Michigan was the only state in the region (and in the nation) to have negative gross domestic product growth from 2005 to 2006.

The long decline of American auto manufacturing has hurt. As a recent report by Mr. Testa about the impact of the carmakers’ troubles put it, “many midwestern communities have experienced falling jobs, income, tax revenues and public services.” The automobile industry has been diversifying out of the Midwest almost since it was born 100 years ago, first throughout America and then abroad. Now, not only are technological advances driving down demand for labor in the Midwest, but also “the overall industry continues to disperse to other states, especially in the South.” Ironically, while the demise of the automobile manufacturing industry threatens the overall health of the Midwestern economy, fueling these vehicles offers an opportunity for recovery The agricultural sector has taken advantage of the avowed national interest in finding a way to both reduce dependence on oil imported from unstable parts of the globe and in lessening the environmental impact of Americans’ dedication to their cars.

As a result, the Midwest is enjoying a mini “ethanol boom.” Because of increasing demand for ethanol, net farm income is forecast by the Department of Agriculture to hit $87.1 billion this year — nearly $30 billion above its ten-year average. Additionally, the increasing demand for ethanol has spurred the building of more ethanol processing plants. These plants, reports Crain’s Chicago Business, create about 50 jobs each, plus involve a few hundred people in construction.

Unfortunately, the massive rise in ethanol’s popularity is not purely market driven. Congressional mandates, and subsidies, have distorted the market. Thus what the ethanol boom giveth, the ethanol boom may taketh away. Already a glut looms, for ethanol itself and for the infrastructure being built to process it. Ethanol prices are dropping, and processing plants, according to Crain’s, are struggling to remain profitable.

Exacerbating ethanol’s economic problems is a growing backlash. In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, economists and agricultural experts C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer warned that the shift of more corn production to ethanol — and more overall agricultural production to corn — could “starve the poor,” so to speak, by driving up the cost of other agricultural products that rely on corn. The distorted market for ethanol (that is, subsidies) means that planting corn for ethanol is incentivized at the expense of food.

The rumblings have expanded. The Economist recently made the same points (in an article titled “Ethanol, schmethanol”), adding that ethanol is not even a very good alternative to gasoline: it’s “a lousy fuel.” And just last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the ethanol lobby is running into trouble on Capitol Hill because other agricultural industries, such as meat and poultry, are blaming the higher corn prices caused by ethanol demand for decreases in their profits.

A final broadside against ethanol is that using it to diminish American dependence on imported fossil fuels is an exercise in futility. As Messrs. Runge and Senauer point out, if all of the acreage in America used to grow corn were devoted to ethanol production, ethanol would still be able to meet only “12-15 percent of the country’s transportation fuel needs.” This is about what America might get out of another controversial method of meeting our energy needs — drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Of course, environmental considerations have mooted the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the time being. But if ethanol is valuable not only for reducing dependence on foreign oil but also for the sake of the environment, it is a bit curious, as some observers have noted, that its domestic advocates are working to prevent the importation of Brazilian ethanol. Mysteriously, the need to end dependence on oil imported from unstable parts of the globe and to combat global warming is not so glaring as to warrant importing ethanol from a friendly neighbor.

The ethanol backlash is unfortunate for farmers and for Midwestern workers who saw the burgeoning industry as a new source of income. But these new problems should serve as a reminder of the dangers of government efforts to conduct industrial policy. As the Economist reported, efforts are already underway to find more efficient and more advanced biofuels. Meanwhile, to soothe ethanol’s detractors and keep the industry alive, maybe we can compromise by figuring out a way to grow corn in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Mr. Fleisher is a graduate student of political science at the University of Chicago.