Corn: Ethanol versus Food
Subsidized production of ethanol generates strong opinions. Either it is saving the world from greenhouse gas emissions or endangering our food and water. This blog has a few unbiased statistics to guide your opinion.
This blog only has space to consider ethanol impacts on food; water and greenhouse gas emissions will have to wait.
Ethanol production requires a huge share of the U.S. corn production: In 2012 U.S. farmers produced 10.8 billion bushels of corn (down from 12.4 billion bushels in 2011), and 4.6 billion bushels were used for ethanol production. Using these numbers, ethanol consumed 42 percent of all our corn. But, before you start hoarding tortilla chips, we need to …




