Kent Barton raises turkeys.

And both can dissect U.S. energy policy - corn subsidies, the wake of Midwest flooding and the price per barrel - like armchair economists. The problems with corn-based ethanol are obvious where Moroni Feed Co. meets Tony Divino Honda: at the state Capitol.

Chambers, the state's fleet manager, has been buying ethanol cars for several years now. Whether she wants to or not, they come cheaply from the factory like that - 900 are parked in government lots.

Meanwhile Barton, Moroni Feed's spokesman, announced last month that the high price of feed would force Sanpete County's largest employer to shutter after Thanksgiving, cutting turkey production by 20 percent and laying off more than 400 workers for a few months.

Chambers and Barton are not working at cross purposes, though it might seem like it. They're simply caught up in the fallout of decades of presidential primary politics, co-opted environmental theory and globalized food markets. While waterlogged farmers, American carmakers and Iowa lobbyists hoping for a $7-a-bushel corn windfall still boast the "green" benefits of the alternative fuel, Chambers and Barton know better.

Neither one of them likes the fuel.

"We have to move away from corn ethanol," says Barton.

While Congress and the American car market have combined to require Chambers to buy essentially obsolete ethanol-fueled cars for state workers to drive, Governor's Office of Economic Development executives are brainstorming ways to help Moroni Feed stay open.

"This is not your typical company," says Jason Perry, GOED Director. "It will impact not just the people who work there but local businesses. That's a lot of jobs in a rural community."

The irony of the state's situation isn't lost on anyone involved. But while Chambers' moral quandary seems to be fading away with $4 gas, the future of Moroni Feed is a longer, bleaker prospect.

Chambers is required by the 1992 Energy Policy Act to make certain that three-fourths of the vehicles she buys for the state's 7,500-car fleet run on alternative fuels. At the same time, Detroit stopped making cars that run on natural gas. So Chambers turned to more economical ethanol-fueled cars last year. She's tried to balance those cars with hybrids - 93 Priuses and Civics and another 93 to be delivered in September.

There's no effort to make state workers buy ethanol at one of four stations statewide. "Ethanol's good for the Midwest," says Chambers. "It's not available here. It's expensive. It's not the best option."

Soon, Chambers hopes, she won't have to explain the ethanol cars, won't have to buy them. Automakers are once again shipping compressed natural gas (CNG) models straight from the factory - cheaper cars that will enable Chambers to turn ethanol vehicles into CNG.

"I'm delighted," she says. "It's all starting to come together for us."

Barton has less reason to hope. With the mandates and then the floods, the cost of corn has gone up steadily, doubling and tripling from the price-per-bushel of a few years ago. Still, the subsidies go on. To maximize the "feed conversion" rate, when Moroni Feed reopens next spring, workers will kill younger and smaller birds.

"Even if ethanol was efficient and good fuel, at the very least, we should be competing on a level playing field for that corn," says Barton. "We have other alternatives for energy. We don't have a lot of other alternatives for food."

walsh@sltrib.com