Compared to the other things you can use corn for:

 Beef/Pork CAFO production
 High fructose corn syrup

I actually think that ethanol is probably only the 3rd worst thing you can do with acreage/fertilizer/energy and food.  In fact, if ethanol is putting a squeeze on factory farms, I'd say it's a good thing.

It would probably be better if we just didn't grow the corn at all.  Let's take the ethanol out of gas, get more efficient cars (or give up the cars), swear off CAFO meat and soft drinks/processed food.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

The U.S. should turn all its corn into ethanol, so that investors flock to farmers in the developing world.

This is already happening, but not fast enough.

Remember: 75% of the world's poor are farmers. They urgently need investments, and this only happens when agricultural prices stay high.

The worst thing that could happen to the world's poor, is a drop in food prices, back to the catastrophic levels seen over the past decades.

So that's the only real benefit I can see in America's corn ethanol adventure. It is stimulating the most important investment cycle of the past 200 years, capable of ending world poverty and hunger once and for all.

But that's a huge benefit, isn't it?

"about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."

I was using 296, but I'll take that.

The vital fact on ammonia fertilizer is that the nitrous oxide it emiotsd is equal in GHG effect to 2/3 of the CO2 that the crop absorbs.

So even if one would buy the fallacy that corn ethanol is carbon neutral because it emits CO2 that was previously absorbed by the crop, that would set the purported (fake) neutrality back by 2/3.  

That's a big cut.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Those who have advocated agricultural policy reform (like yours truly) were hoping that with a successful conclusion of the WTO's Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, there would be sharp cuts in the kinds of crop-specific production and export subsidies that have (pre biofuels boom) artificially driven down the price of grains on world markets. That would have allowed developing countries to compete with developed countries on a more-level playing field.

In the case of U.S. corn specifically, that would have meant restoring its price to levels reflecting production costs, rather than levels that for years fell below production costs.

But -- no surprise -- resistance to that kind of approach has been strong among crop producers in the USA and the EU. So, rather, we have gotten instead a new Farm Bill that maintains the status quo, and a biofuels policy that has driven grain prices far above long-run production costs.

Jonas's enthusiasm for that policy is bizzare, for the reasons BioD explains. The kind of gradual return to market rather than policy-determined prices envisaged by the agricultural policy reformers would have allowed both producers and consumers in the developing world time to adjust to the new situation. The kind of boom-bust situation that we are experiencing instead is good for few people other than those who own good arable land already and supply the inputs to farming, and of course those adroit speculators who can make a fast buck in the commodity markets.

These are only my personal opinions.

I mean your carbon, water and land footprints.

World's resources are finite and these are being exploited by a select few, in total disregard to the rest.

USA is a huge country. It has enormous energy, land and water resources. It is sparsely populated (if you compare with the densities in Europe, Japan, China or India). So in principle, USA should be comfortably taking care of itself.

But no. It is importing a lot of highly finished products which depend on a lot of raw materials. For example, animal feed is being imported from other countries. Finished goods which require a lot of energy, water and metals are being imported from China. And energy is being imported from middle east.

Americans leave an enormous footprint everywhere else in the world. Several places where they leave their footprint are still unindustrialized and suffer continued poverty. For energy, Americans use 7794.8 kg of oil equivalent per capita per year.

USA is not alone in doing this. Japan leaves a huge water footprint everywhere else. No industrialized country can escape this guilt.

If the size of these footprints can be reduced, the rest of the world will have an access to resources. This can be done very painlessly, due to increased efficiency in our technologies. We should just stop wasting resources - whether energy, land or water.

Each step in reducing this wastage will help the rest of the world grow in prosperity.

Biofuels are only a minor footnote in the list of resources that Americans are hogging. Further, as long as biofuels are not being imported, they will remain purely American and leave no footprint elsewhere in the world.

If Americans can reduce their energy demands, the energy prices will fall and the rest of the world will be able to afford energy.

As the noble prized economist Amartya Sen demonstrates, it is not the quantity of food available that is responsible for famine, but the affordability of food amongst the poor.

When the world's population grows rich uniformly, there will be no hunger anywhere. The poor countries lack capital for investment in automating their means of production. When this capital arrives somehow, their economies will grow and their farm yields will also improve.

What Jonas says is that biofuels might push American investors to invest in farmlands abroad.  I think this is plausible, but we don't have to wait for biofuels to release this investment.

In fact, providing this investment is a promise made by USA, Europe and Japan in their commitment to the millenium development goals. 0.7% of their GDP is sufficient kickstart economic development in poor countries.

As long as this is not done, poor countries will remain poor. They cannot afford either food or energy.

Further, as long as biofuels are not being imported, they will remain purely American and leave no footprint elsewhere in the world.

The issue of displacement has been hashed and rehashed on Gristmill for months if not years. It is the central premise of Tim Searchinger et al.'s (2008) analysis of the net GHG effects of devoting arable land to the production of biofuels.

You mentioned that "animal feed is being imported from other countries". Why do you think that is so? In part it is so because more and more grains (feedwheat, barley, oats) that would have otherwise gone into the production of animal feed are being displaced by corn and now have to be produced in other countries.

In 2007, U.S. farmers expanded their corn acreage by 19.5%, mainly at the expense of soybeans. Some of that reduced U.S. soybean production was displaced to formerly forested land in Latin America.

We live in an integrated world. We cannot expect that a massively inefficient import substitution policy will not have knock-on effects elsewhere.

These are only my personal opinions.

The real world and not some ideologically compromised Washington bureaucrat will be the ultimate decider of how much corn continues to be pissed away on America's highways.

Moving up the demand curve toward 55% of the corn crop along with tight supplies and short carryovers will keep corn prices high enough to make corn ethanol unprofitable.  And should that 55% become completely untenable when a major Midwest drought significantly lowers crop yields, the government would be forced to enter the market, ration supply and at least temporarily reduce  the corn ethanol squeeze.  

Should Obama become president, I don't expect any change in the policy with a new EPA administrator.  And especially not if Bayh, a champion of corn ethanol, becomes his VP.
In a technocracy, chosen technologies, good or bad, along with the ideologues, special interests, investors, and compromised politicians and appointees have a long shelf life and momentum -- the blind stampede.  And it is largely those of us who have fuel tanks to fill and who are geared to the technocratic machine that are ultimately responsible for this fiasco.  But even though we are dependent on it does not mean we have to defend it or justify it by furthering irrational or insane course adjustments.    

The fact is that Americans consume a heck of a lot of fuel for transportation. That fuel derives almost entirely from imported oil, which a) generates pollutants, and b) transfers wealth to quasi-hostile nations. All things considered, the use of ethanol in fuel is a step toward alleviating these problems and it is thus a net win. Whatever else might be said about Stephen Johnson, in this instance he stood up to the demands of Rick Perry and the interests he represents, and so in my opinion he did a solid for the environment. It's ridiculous how much more clean a fuel like E85 ethanol is than regular gasoline, and if anything we need to use more of it.

Jonas, you had better watch what you wish for: you just may get it. Money, and not human lives or(HA!) poverty reduction is what drives these corps(e).

The mellotron is your friend.