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The bankruptcy filing by South Dakota-based VeraSun Energy Corp. has attracted a lot of attention recently, but it’s just the latest item in a year of disastrous news for the biofuels industry.

A few examples:

In October, the Greater Ohio Ethanol plant near Lima filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Gateway Ethanol LLC in Pratt, Kan., also filed for Chapter 11 protection, saying it owed creditors between $50 million and $100 million.

In September, the parent company of the Beatrice, Neb., biodiesel plant filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Contractors have filed more than $3.8 million in contractor’s liens. The plant was completed in March but never operated.

The industry’s downward spiral has quickened as gasoline prices have plunged. Ethanol prices have tumbled right along with them.

Grain prices have been cut in half since mid-summer, but that hasn’t been enough to stabilize the ethanol producers. Meanwhile, the trend has made the agricultural economy more unsteady.

As crop prices dropped, the steady escalation of farmland prices also began to seem less sensible. We heard a report of a recent Central Iowa land auction that failed to draw a bid of $3,500 per acre from a room full of qualified bidders.

Iowa has tried hard to capitalize on the ethanol boom, and if that ends, the state’s economy will suffer some consequences.

The winner of the presidential campaign probably is a better friend of biofuels than the runner-up would have been, but there are more problems with the industry than politics can solve. There’s probably no government bailout coming for ethanol companies.

Corn just isn’t the ideal source for transportation fuel.

Should we give up on alternative fuels? No. University and private researchers need our support. The trouble we’re seeing now stems from people jumping on the bandwagon, and that’s not a research or government problem.