A new investigation has revealed that the United States' ethanol mandate is severely harming the environment without producing enough tangible benefits.

Since the Obama administration began implementing the ethanol mandate - requiring a certain level of the biofuel to be added to the gasoline supply - the Associated Press found that the damage done by the program has dwarfed any suspected benefits, many of which failed to materialize in the first place.

Since President Obama took office, roughly five million acres of land set aside for conservation have been lost in the drive to harvest more corn for ethanol, the investigation found. Farmers have plowed into land previously unused for farming, releasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the air that would take native plants decades to reduce naturally.

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