Ethanol corn is the same as the corn grown for animal feed. https://iowarfa.org/ethanol-center/ethanol-facts/food-and-fu... It isn't human-grade corn.

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trollbridge 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Er… it’s the same corn used to make corn syrup, corn flakes, and many other things.

It’s just not sweet corn like you’d eat with corn on the cob.

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Cytobit 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What do you think they are feeding the animals for? To make food.

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triceratops 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Massively inefficient approach to "food security". Burn fossil fuels to grow animal fodder, feed and raise animals, wtf. Huge amounts of energy lost at each stage of that process.

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jfengel 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Meat is hugely inefficient, but Americans demand it. If you told Americans in a crisis, "For food security reasons you're all limited to a quarter pounder per day", we'd have a national riot. They're used to three times that.

They'd insist that they'd die without enough protein, and vegetable protein sources don't count. Even limiting their meat to a half-pound per day would cause riots, even though that is more than enough protein.

So efficiency just isn't on the table here. We're going to over-support our meat industry.

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triceratops 10 hours ago | parent [-]

That doesn't explain growing corn for ethanol.

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Brian_K_White 10 hours ago | parent [-]

You can't turn farming capacity on and off. If you need a given level of capacity, it has to already be there up & running, the entire system including all the people filling all the roles with all the experience, and all the machinery, all the distribution and economic relationships and countless support dependencies.

What you CAN do quicker is change what you use that capacity for.

And even what you do with the current product right this moment even before you have time to change what you will harvest next year. Corn that that is normally only fed to animals is still absolutely a ready resource for people if they need it. Most of our food is fully artificially constructed out of base ingredients these days. Every box and bag and can on the shelves that needs a carbohydrate barely cares at all where it comes from or what it originally tastes like raw.

	▲	sfink 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That can explain a little. Not the 40% of all corn grown that is used for ethanol. Which would be better for the nation's security? Having all this ethanol, or having 31x the energy provided by that ethanol via solar production? We couldn't actually use that much solar power right now, but that's part of the opportunity cost: we aren't gearing up to make use of it because we're generating all of this ethanol that we don't need instead! The capacity maintenance argument works both ways: pay to maintain the capacity to grow vastly more corn than we'll ever need, or pay to maintain the capacity to generate tons more energy that we're far more likely to need. (Also, taking land that has been largely destroyed by industrial corn farming and changing it into land that's growing some more valuable food crop isn't just a matter of changing your mind about what to grow the next year.)
	▲	triceratops 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But what is this system trying to secure against? America already grows enough animal fodder without counting corn for ethanol. If some calamity strikes corn production for animal fodder, it will equally affect corn production for ethanol. Because it's the same crop. And also why can't you scale farm production up and down? It isn't like manufacturing and factories. Preserve farmland and produce enough for the country's consumption needs. That'll keep farm labor and machinery sufficiently busy. It also prevents the waste of fertile soil growing food that's never eaten.

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margalabargala 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Food availability is orders of magnitude higher than needed to feed all humans. Efficiency isn't an issue. Any hunger is an economic and logistical problem not a production problem.

	▲	bitmasher9 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Efficiency is a long term issue, especially water efficiency.

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Teever 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Given that there are significantly cheaper, healthier and more efficient alternatives to eating animals isn't it more accurate to say that they're feeding the animals to make money?

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quickthrowman 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not sweet corn, but it’s still edible.

It could be ground into cornmeal or corn flour and consumed by humans in the event of a global food supply chain collapse. I’d rather eat cornmeal than starve or have to invade Canada to get wheat or whatever.

Ethanol in gasoline is food security policy that exists to have something to use the corn for rather than throw it away.

Corn subsidies are a few billions of dollars a year, that’s pretty cheap for food security.

	▲	sfink 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Corn subsidies are a few billions of dollars a year, that’s pretty cheap for food security. A few billions a year to destroy farming capacity in the rest of the world, and even within our country for growing anything non-corn (because it has to compete with subsidized ethanol production). You could get more benefit and do less harm by using those billions to maintain production capacity for other crops (even if you're not even growing anything but a cover crop!), plus generate far more energy from solar production. I'd say it's pretty expensive for food insecurity plus opportunity cost. > Ethanol in gasoline is food security policy that exists to have something to use the corn for rather than throw it away. That's just false. The mandate (The Renewable Fuel Standard) forces ethanol production. The law says you have to overproduce. If we wanted to preserve capacity, we wouldn't grow the corn, we'd subsidize maintaining the ability to grow it -- and other crops -- which would be way cheaper and also provide more food security.
	▲	triceratops 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Preserving farmland and maintaining a one- or two-year reserve supply of crucial cereals makes sense for food security. In the event of a global food crisis, getting fallow land under plow should be relatively straightforward. It isn't like manufacturing where the skills and jobs and factories just went overseas. Farmers and farming aren't going away. Needlessly growing corn degrades farmland. That's the opposite of food security.